Ngugi Wa Thiong'o: A Reading Poem by Bijay Kant Dubey

Ngugi wa Thiongo
Had I not about Ngugi wa Thiong'o,
I would not have
A great writer of East Africa,
One from Kenya,
Kenyan space

Born in 1938, in Kamirithu
Near Lumini
Kiambu District
Of Kikuyu descent,
Baptized as James Thiong'o
Got involved in Mau Mau uprising.

Thiong'o did his schooling from
Alliance High School
Then at Makerere University College, Kampala, Uganda
To attend African Writers Conference
To move abroad to Leeds

And continued with his literary publications,
In the form of novels,
Weep Not, Child,
The River Between,
A Grain of Wheat and others,
A prose writer and a critic too

But he left Leeds
And his thesis on Caribbean writers,
To take up teaching assignments,
Moving to different universities one after another,
As a visiting fellow too adorned the chair

And to read him is to think of
The colonizing and the decolonizing of the mind,
The African psyche,
To feel the pulse and the beat of,
The native aboriginal folks, ethnic and racial populace!