On April 7-9 1994, over 200 scholars from Africa, Asia, Europe, Canada and the United States gathered at the Penn State Berks Campus in Reading, Pennsylvania, to celebrate the work of Ngugi wa Thiong'o. The presentation of 150 papers, poetry readings by Sonia sanchez, Amiri Baraka, Kamau Braithwaite and a variety of distinguished poets in English and African languages, and a reading by Ngugi himself, made this the largest conference ever held to discuss an African writer. In addition to focusing on Ngugi, the conference included the discussion of other relevant African, Caribbean, Commonwealth, postcolonial and African American writers, issues of writings in European and/or African and other indigenous languages, political, social, cultural, historical, philosophical, pedagogical, economic and religious contexts, and questions of gender, orature, translations, film, poetics and aesthetics.

Ngugi wa Thing'o': Texts and Contexts contains a generous sampling of this unprecedented historic event. Containing many of the conference's most distinguished critical discussions of Ngugi's texts, this book also presents a wide variety of contexts which further illuminate the achievement of this self-addressed "unrepentant universalist" still rooted in his home of Kenya regardless of his exile. In Ngugi wa Thiong'o's Texts and Contexts, the book and the conference, as in The World of Ngugi wa Thiong'o, the texts upon which the conference was built, Ngugi's work becomes a site of accumulation, like many forms of African sculpture. In full agreement with Ngugi about the inseparability of political action and the actions of writing, this work testifies, in John Keat's words, "Ngugi's abiding 'anxiety for humanity,' and they ask if he 'has in truth epic passion, and martyrs himself to the human heart, the main region of his song."

Ngugi wa Thiong'o: Texts & Contexts is a generous sampling of a special conference celebrating the work of Ngugi wa Thiong'o that involved over 200 scholars from Africa, Asia, Europe, Canada, and the United States. The contents are the best of 150 papers, poetry readings (Sonia Sanchez, Amiri Baraka, et al. ), a reading by Ngugi himself. The conference also surveyed relevant African, Caribbean, Commonwealth, postcolonial and African American writes, including issues of writing in European and/or African and other indigenous languages, political, social, cultural, historical, philosophical, pedagogical, economic and religious contexts, and questions of gender, orature, translations, film, poetics and aesthetics. Ngugi wa Thiong'o: Texts & Contexts is a superlative addition to literary criticism resources and collections dealing with the African experience at home and around the world. -- Midwest Book Review

PUBLICATION YEAR
390 pages

PUBLICATION YEAR
1995