First-hand accounts of how Ngugi wa Thiong'o's life and work have intersected, and the multiple forces that have converged to make him one of the greatest writers to come out of Africa in the twentieth century. This collection of essays reflects on the life and work of Ngugi wa Thiong'o, who celebrated his 80th birthday in 2018. Drawing from a wide range of contributors, including writers, critics, publishers and activists, the volume traces the emergence of Ngugi as a novelist in the early 1960s, his contribution to the African culture of letters at its moment of inception, and his global artistic life in the twenty-first century. Here we have both personal andcritical reflections on the different phases of the writer's life: there are poems from friends and admirers, commentaries from his co-workers in public theatre in Kenya in the 1970s and 1980s, and from his political associates in the fight for democracy, and contributions on his role as an intellectual of decolonization, as well as his experiences in the global art world. Included also are essays on Ngugi's role outside the academy, in the world of education, community theatre, and activism. In addition to tributes from other authors who were influenced by Ngugi, the collection contains hitherto unknown materials that are appearing in English for the first time. Both a celebration of the writer, and a rethinking of his legacy, this book brings together three generations of Ngugi readers. We have memories and recollections from the people he worked with closely in the 1960s, the students that he taught atthe University of Nairobi in the 1970s, his political associates during his exile in the 1980s, and the people who worked with him as he embarked on a new life and career in the United States in the 1990s. First-hand accounts reveal how Ngugi's life and work have intersected, and the multiple forces that have converged to make him one of the greatest writers to come out of Africa in the twentieth century. Simon Gikandi is Robert Schirmer Professor of English, Princeton University. He is President of the MLA and was editor of its journal PMLA, from 2011-2016. Ndirangu Wachanga is Professor of Media Studies and Information Science at the University of Wisconsin. He is also the authorized documentary biographer of Professors Ali A. Mazrui, Ngugi wa Thiong'o and Micere Mugo.

This monograph examines the roles and functions of Swahili in war/conflict situations, and the impact of wars on the destiny of the language. Covering a period of over a century, the monograph explores this sociolinguistic theme in the context of six wars/conflicts: the Maji Maji resistance against German rule, the two World Wars, the anti-colonial resistance to British colonialism, the wars of the Great Lakes region, the cold wars, and the ongoing war against terrorism. In geographical focus, some of the war situations explored here are “local,” others are “transnational,” and others still rather “global” in scope and ramifications. In the final analysis, the monograph provides important snapshots of the conflict-based history of the Swahili language, demonstrating once again that language is a malleable tool that can be appropriated and galvanized to serve the interests of either party in a conflict and sometimes as a means of creating hegemonic and anti-hegemonic meanings.

Africa is a marriage of cultures: African and Asian, Islamic and Euro-Christian. Nowhere is this fusion more evident than in the formation of Swahili, Eastern Africa's lingua franca, and its cultures. "Swahili beyond the Boundaries: Literature, Language, and Identity "addresses the moving frontiers of Swahili literature under the impetus of new waves of globalization in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. These momentous changes have generated much theoretical debate on several literary fronts, as Swahili literature continues to undergo transformation in the mill of human creativity.
Swahili literature is a hybrid that is being reconfigured by a conjuncture of global and local forces. As the interweaving of elements of the colonizer and the colonized, this hybrid formation provides a representation of cultural difference that is said to constitute a "third space," blurring existing boundaries and calling into question established identitarian categorizations. This cultural dialectic is clearly evident in the Swahili literary experience as it has evolved in the crucible of the politics of African cultural production.
However, "Swahili beyond the Boundaries" demonstrates that, from the point of view of Swahili literature, while hybridity evokes endless openness on questions of home and identity, it can simultaneously put closure on specific forms of subjectivity. In the process of this contestation, a new synthesis may be emerging that is poised to subject Swahili literature to new kinds of challenges in the politics of identity, compounded by the dynamics and counterdynamics of post-Cold War globalization.

This book is the first full-length examination of the cultural politics at work in the act of translation in East Africa, providing close critical analyses of a variety of texts that demonstrate the myriad connections between translation and larger socio-political forces. Looking specifically at texts translated into Swahili, the book builds on the notion that translation is not just a linguistic process, but also a complex interaction between culture, history, and politics, and charts this evolution of the translation process in East Africa from the pre-colonial to colonial to post-colonial periods. It uses textual examples, including the Bible, the Qur'an, and Frantz Fanon's Wretched of the Earth, from five different domains - religious, political, legal, journalistic, and literary - and grounds them in their specific socio-political and historical contexts to highlight the importance of context in the translation process and to unpack the complex relationships between both global and local forces that infuse these translated texts with an identity all their own. This book provides a comprehensive portrait of the multivalent nature of the act of translation in the East African experience and serves as a key resource for students and researchers in translation studies, cultural studies, post-colonial studies, African studies, and comparative literature.

This book is the first full-length examination of the cultural politics at work in the act of translation in East Africa, providing close critical analyses of a variety of texts that demonstrate the myriad connections between translation and larger socio-political forces. Looking specifically at texts translated into Swahili, the book builds on the notion that translation is not just a linguistic process, but also a complex interaction between culture, history, and politics, and charts this evolution of the translation process in East Africa from the pre-colonial to colonial to post-colonial periods. It uses textual examples, including the Bible, the Qur'an, and Frantz Fanon's Wretched of the Earth, from five different domains - religious, political, legal, journalistic, and literary - and grounds them in their specific socio-political and historical contexts to highlight the importance of context in the translation process and to unpack the complex relationships between both global and local forces that infuse these translated texts with an identity all their own. This book provides a comprehensive portrait of the multivalent nature of the act of translation in the East African experience and serves as a key resource for students and researchers in translation studies, cultural studies, post-colonial studies, African studies, and comparative literature.