Ngugi's Minutes of Glory at Yankee Stadium
- By Olatunde Olusesi
- Published May 11, 2009
- Features
- Unrated
Olatunde Olusesi
Dr. Olusesi, a social worker, lives in New York.
The setting, ambience, and weather could not have been more favorable for the over 25,000 people, including thousands of graduating students, honorees, families, and well-wishers that attended the 176th Commencement of New York University on May 14, 2008. Looking resplendent in their glorious panoply of purple, the graduating students’ exhilaration and exuberance appeared to proclaim their sentience of the import of the moment. What a great honor to have that important event of their lives in the “House that Ruth Built!”
I had recognized Ngugi in the academic procession. Unmistakably African, he was a much older man than his picture on the back of Weep Not, Child, his classic novel, the first one to come out of East Africa, which I had read as a schoolboy. He walked with grace and confidence, side by side with the other honorees: Thomas Buergenthal, American Judge on the International Court of Justice; Michael J. Fox, Professional actor and eloquent fighter against Parkinson’s Disease; Indra Krishnamurthy Nooyi, Chief Executive Officer of PepsiCo; and Laurence Henry Tribe, eminent professor of constitutional law at Harvard. Also in the procession were Michael Strahan, a world-class football player of the New York Giants; and Constance Silver, social work practitioner and philanthropist, who were to receive the Lewis Rudin Award and Albert Gallatin Medal, respectively.
The lush lawn of the ballpark; the large electronic billboards; and the elevated tracks on which screeched the wheels of trains worming their way through upper Manhattan provided a postcard-background for the grand festivities unfolding before the audience. What they were witnessing was history that would never be repeated. For, at the end of this season, that Mecca of Baseball where they were being certified smart, will be torn down. The hallowed-grounds where Babe Ruth, DiMaggio, Lou Gehrig, Mickey Mantle, Don Larsen, and Roger Maris and others set and broke baseball records would be no more.
So enthralling was the setting that William Lopez, one of the graduands, took his pants off and jumped onto the historical field and started running frantically to steal a home. He could have succeeded but for the phalanx of sprightly cops that tackled him to the ground. It was a comic relief, one that earned the BFA graduate a Desk Appearance Ticket for trespassing, and got him on the front page of the Daily News. If he ever gets before a judge, he probably would be lucid. He could claim a temporary mesmerism defense for the stupefying stunt, or just tell the judge that he was not to let the golden opportunity to mimic the Yankee greats slip through his fingers. That prankster nearly stole the day from Ngugi and the other accomplished individuals on whom were bestowed New York University prestigious awards and honorary degrees.
By conferring honorary degrees on Buergenthal, Fox, Nooyi, Ngugi, and Tribe, New York University, a great American institution, was recognizing excellence qua excellence. It didn’t matter that none of them was born in the United States. Buergenthal survived Auschwiz and Sachsenhausen concentration camps; Fox was born in Canada; Tribe was born in Shanghai, China, to Eastern European Jewish parents; and certainly, Kamiriithu in Kenya and Chennai in India, the birthplaces of Ngugi and Nooyi, respectively, were very far away from Yankee Stadium.
Moments later, I saw Ngugi on the electronic billboard listening to his citation. He was standing beside John Sexton, the cerebral president of New York University, beaming with smiles, his swarthy face shining under the sun. Clearly, not many people in the audience recognized him. I stood up in the crowd, clapped, and said to no one in particular: “He is an African elder in exile.”
How could anyone who has met Ngugi in person or through his works not salute him at such a moment? Currently, the distinguished Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of California, Irvine, he was the Erich Maria Remaque Professor of Languages at New York University. He has at least twenty-seven books and countless articles under his belt. His erudition, humanism, and commitment to human rights make him one of the literary giants whose thoughts have shaped the cultures and histories of their people.
Named James by his Kikuyu parents, who had suffered oppression, incarceration, and humiliation under British colonial rule in Kenya, Ngugi later changed his name to Ngugi wa Thiong’o and renounced Christianity. His early works, including The Black Hermit; Weep Not, Child; The River Between; A Grain of Wheat, and Petals of Blood, were written in English. However, after suffering incarceration in his native Kenya, he decided to start writing in his native Gikuyu. To him, any African literature not written in an African language was mere Afro-European Literature. He also wrote short stories, one of which was entitled Minutes of Glory.
Ngugi has used literature to reinvigorate and reinvent the enervated Gikuyu language and culture, which like many other indigenous languages and cultures in Africa, continue to be threatened with abeyance. By deciding to write in Gikuyu, Ngugi probably knew the world would not ignore his works no matter the language he used. World literature as well as the Gikuyu culture and language are the better for that decision. All the major works that he wrote in Gikuyu have been translated to English either by him or others. So Ngaahika ndeenda: Ithaako ria ngerekano is accessible to us through the English translation: I Will Marry When I Want; Caitaani mutharaba-Ini has become Devil on the Cross; and Murogi was Kagogo has become Wizard of the Crow.
Ngugi also understands the importance of shaping children’s minds. For them, he wrote insightful books like Njamba Nene na Chibu King'ang'I or Njamba Nene and the Cruel Chief; Njamba Nene na Mbaathi i Mathagu or Njamba Nene and the Flying Bus and Bathitoora ya Njamba Nene or Njamba Nene's Pistol.
A literary critic of rare vision and immense stylistic power, Ngugi also wrote many critical essays, including Writers in Politics: Essays; Education for a National Culture; Barrel of a Pen: Resistance to Repression in Neo-Colonial Kenya; Decolonising the Mind: The Politics of Language in African Literature; Writing against Neo-Colonialism; Moving the Centre: The Struggle for Cultural Freedom; Penpoints, Gunpoints and Dreams; and the Performance of Literature and Power in Post-Colonial Africa.
All these sterling literary works must have been on the minds of the New York University authorities in drafting the citation for the degree of Doctor of Letters, honoris causa for Ngugi:
“Ngugi wa Thiong’o- as one of the world’s foremost writers and most significant political, social, and cultural thinkers, your role in the development of Gikuyu written culture is foundational, your place in modern Kenyan culture and politics unique, your stature in African culture at large nonpareil.”
Ngugi is just one of the African literary icons in exile in the United States. While he might be in political exile in the US, given his bitter experiences in the hands of dictators in his native Kenya, others like Chinua Achebe, the novelist at Hastings-on-the-Hudson; Niyi Osundare, the poet in New Orleans; Ogaga Ifowodo, the poet at Cornell; Tanure Ojaide, the poet at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte; as well as Abiola Irele and Biodun Jeyifo (Igilago Geesi), the accomplished literary critics at Harvard, and their ilk hiding in the West, are really running from the unremitting anomie in their native Nigeria. Anomic exile?
Ngugi, Achebe, Osundare, Ojaide, Ifewodo, Irele, Jeyifo, and all other African men and women of letters understand the problems of their continent. In fact, they have diagnosed these problems ad-nauseam in their works. Achebe actually wrote a book he aptly titled: The Trouble with Nigeria. As Robert K. Merton, the distinguished American sociologist, posits in his strain theory, the legitimate means for them to reach their shared goal of a sane continent to which they can contribute meaningfully are circumscribed by its very many structural limitations and concomitant anomie. While they love their great continent manqué, they cannot allow their creativity to be manacled by its structural contradictions.
What is more? African writers know what living and working in a well-run country like the US feels like. Whatever problems that they may be encountering in exile, they have continued to contribute to literature, life, and the struggle against injustice in Africa. Osundare has risen from the muddy throes of Katrina to create more lapidary poetry that limn the sad condition of man. Ngugi’s Wizard of the Crow is a lyrical lampoon of the liege lords holding court in their labyrinthine looting lairs all over Africa. These cack-handed rulers have made the provision of basic modern amenities like electricity, clean water, good roads, and good healthcare for their people a mirage. Life is brutish and hellish for the poor.
Yet, for some, returning to West Africa at this juncture may actually be suicidal. For instance, having sustained debilitating injuries in a motor accident during one of his visits to Nigeria, Achebe is paralyzed and needs intensive medical care. While it may be desirable for him to be among his people in his old age, therefore, asking the master of prose to return to a country with a derelict healthcare delivery system is tantamount to prescribing poison for his paraplegia.
Also, in spite of the ravages of Hurricane Katrina, which he narrowly survived, Niyi Osundare has remained in New Orleans partly because relocating to his native country with his visually impaired daughter may have a negative impact on her future. America especially cares for those who are challenged. A perfect example is David Paterson, the blind African American governor of the great State of New York, who is currently undergoing treatment for glaucoma.
It is not only little people that suffer from the sad state of the health care delivery in Nigeria. Umaru Yar’adua, the president of Nigeria, even with the stupendous resources of the state at his disposal, has been running back and forth to Germany for the past twenty-two years to treat catarrh and other undisclosed ailments. Also, doctors in Nigeria misdiagnosed Gani Fawehinmi, a 70-year-old legal luminary and gadfly of oppressors, with pneumonia. By the time he was properly diagnosed in Europe as having cancer of the lungs, the debilitating disease had spread. Fawehinmi was quick to add that it was not that Nigerian doctors were not good; they simply lacked the necessary diagnostic equipment. The lack of equipment should not be surprising. The immediate past minister of health, high-ranking Federal Ministry of Health officials, and a sitting senator are currently facing criminal charges for misappropriating N300 million. Then there is the power probe in the House of Representatives. The clangor of the sagas of corruption, violence, cruelty, penury, avoidable disasters, disease, and suffering firmly glues the feet of even the most patriotic of people to the lands of their exile. Indeed, for any of these writers to return to Africa they have to look beyond the seamy side of life over there, like Femi Ojo-Ade, Professor Emeritus of French at St. Mary’s College of Maryland; Ropo Sekoni, a noted literary scholar and semiotician formerly of Lincoln University; and Adebayo Williams, the former Amy Freeman Lee Chair of Humanities and Fine Arts at the University of The Incarnate Word, San Antonio. Suffice it to say that they have to look beyond the pervasive anomie at home and find avenues to make a selfless contribution no matter how small or large their spheres of influence.
I had recognized Ngugi in the academic procession. Unmistakably African, he was a much older man than his picture on the back of Weep Not, Child, his classic novel, the first one to come out of East Africa, which I had read as a schoolboy. He walked with grace and confidence, side by side with the other honorees: Thomas Buergenthal, American Judge on the International Court of Justice; Michael J. Fox, Professional actor and eloquent fighter against Parkinson’s Disease; Indra Krishnamurthy Nooyi, Chief Executive Officer of PepsiCo; and Laurence Henry Tribe, eminent professor of constitutional law at Harvard. Also in the procession were Michael Strahan, a world-class football player of the New York Giants; and Constance Silver, social work practitioner and philanthropist, who were to receive the Lewis Rudin Award and Albert Gallatin Medal, respectively.
The lush lawn of the ballpark; the large electronic billboards; and the elevated tracks on which screeched the wheels of trains worming their way through upper Manhattan provided a postcard-background for the grand festivities unfolding before the audience. What they were witnessing was history that would never be repeated. For, at the end of this season, that Mecca of Baseball where they were being certified smart, will be torn down. The hallowed-grounds where Babe Ruth, DiMaggio, Lou Gehrig, Mickey Mantle, Don Larsen, and Roger Maris and others set and broke baseball records would be no more.So enthralling was the setting that William Lopez, one of the graduands, took his pants off and jumped onto the historical field and started running frantically to steal a home. He could have succeeded but for the phalanx of sprightly cops that tackled him to the ground. It was a comic relief, one that earned the BFA graduate a Desk Appearance Ticket for trespassing, and got him on the front page of the Daily News. If he ever gets before a judge, he probably would be lucid. He could claim a temporary mesmerism defense for the stupefying stunt, or just tell the judge that he was not to let the golden opportunity to mimic the Yankee greats slip through his fingers. That prankster nearly stole the day from Ngugi and the other accomplished individuals on whom were bestowed New York University prestigious awards and honorary degrees.
By conferring honorary degrees on Buergenthal, Fox, Nooyi, Ngugi, and Tribe, New York University, a great American institution, was recognizing excellence qua excellence. It didn’t matter that none of them was born in the United States. Buergenthal survived Auschwiz and Sachsenhausen concentration camps; Fox was born in Canada; Tribe was born in Shanghai, China, to Eastern European Jewish parents; and certainly, Kamiriithu in Kenya and Chennai in India, the birthplaces of Ngugi and Nooyi, respectively, were very far away from Yankee Stadium.
Moments later, I saw Ngugi on the electronic billboard listening to his citation. He was standing beside John Sexton, the cerebral president of New York University, beaming with smiles, his swarthy face shining under the sun. Clearly, not many people in the audience recognized him. I stood up in the crowd, clapped, and said to no one in particular: “He is an African elder in exile.”
How could anyone who has met Ngugi in person or through his works not salute him at such a moment? Currently, the distinguished Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of California, Irvine, he was the Erich Maria Remaque Professor of Languages at New York University. He has at least twenty-seven books and countless articles under his belt. His erudition, humanism, and commitment to human rights make him one of the literary giants whose thoughts have shaped the cultures and histories of their people.
Named James by his Kikuyu parents, who had suffered oppression, incarceration, and humiliation under British colonial rule in Kenya, Ngugi later changed his name to Ngugi wa Thiong’o and renounced Christianity. His early works, including The Black Hermit; Weep Not, Child; The River Between; A Grain of Wheat, and Petals of Blood, were written in English. However, after suffering incarceration in his native Kenya, he decided to start writing in his native Gikuyu. To him, any African literature not written in an African language was mere Afro-European Literature. He also wrote short stories, one of which was entitled Minutes of Glory.
Ngugi has used literature to reinvigorate and reinvent the enervated Gikuyu language and culture, which like many other indigenous languages and cultures in Africa, continue to be threatened with abeyance. By deciding to write in Gikuyu, Ngugi probably knew the world would not ignore his works no matter the language he used. World literature as well as the Gikuyu culture and language are the better for that decision. All the major works that he wrote in Gikuyu have been translated to English either by him or others. So Ngaahika ndeenda: Ithaako ria ngerekano is accessible to us through the English translation: I Will Marry When I Want; Caitaani mutharaba-Ini has become Devil on the Cross; and Murogi was Kagogo has become Wizard of the Crow.
Ngugi also understands the importance of shaping children’s minds. For them, he wrote insightful books like Njamba Nene na Chibu King'ang'I or Njamba Nene and the Cruel Chief; Njamba Nene na Mbaathi i Mathagu or Njamba Nene and the Flying Bus and Bathitoora ya Njamba Nene or Njamba Nene's Pistol.
A literary critic of rare vision and immense stylistic power, Ngugi also wrote many critical essays, including Writers in Politics: Essays; Education for a National Culture; Barrel of a Pen: Resistance to Repression in Neo-Colonial Kenya; Decolonising the Mind: The Politics of Language in African Literature; Writing against Neo-Colonialism; Moving the Centre: The Struggle for Cultural Freedom; Penpoints, Gunpoints and Dreams; and the Performance of Literature and Power in Post-Colonial Africa.
All these sterling literary works must have been on the minds of the New York University authorities in drafting the citation for the degree of Doctor of Letters, honoris causa for Ngugi:
“Ngugi wa Thiong’o- as one of the world’s foremost writers and most significant political, social, and cultural thinkers, your role in the development of Gikuyu written culture is foundational, your place in modern Kenyan culture and politics unique, your stature in African culture at large nonpareil.”
Ngugi is just one of the African literary icons in exile in the United States. While he might be in political exile in the US, given his bitter experiences in the hands of dictators in his native Kenya, others like Chinua Achebe, the novelist at Hastings-on-the-Hudson; Niyi Osundare, the poet in New Orleans; Ogaga Ifowodo, the poet at Cornell; Tanure Ojaide, the poet at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte; as well as Abiola Irele and Biodun Jeyifo (Igilago Geesi), the accomplished literary critics at Harvard, and their ilk hiding in the West, are really running from the unremitting anomie in their native Nigeria. Anomic exile?
Ngugi, Achebe, Osundare, Ojaide, Ifewodo, Irele, Jeyifo, and all other African men and women of letters understand the problems of their continent. In fact, they have diagnosed these problems ad-nauseam in their works. Achebe actually wrote a book he aptly titled: The Trouble with Nigeria. As Robert K. Merton, the distinguished American sociologist, posits in his strain theory, the legitimate means for them to reach their shared goal of a sane continent to which they can contribute meaningfully are circumscribed by its very many structural limitations and concomitant anomie. While they love their great continent manqué, they cannot allow their creativity to be manacled by its structural contradictions.
What is more? African writers know what living and working in a well-run country like the US feels like. Whatever problems that they may be encountering in exile, they have continued to contribute to literature, life, and the struggle against injustice in Africa. Osundare has risen from the muddy throes of Katrina to create more lapidary poetry that limn the sad condition of man. Ngugi’s Wizard of the Crow is a lyrical lampoon of the liege lords holding court in their labyrinthine looting lairs all over Africa. These cack-handed rulers have made the provision of basic modern amenities like electricity, clean water, good roads, and good healthcare for their people a mirage. Life is brutish and hellish for the poor.
Yet, for some, returning to West Africa at this juncture may actually be suicidal. For instance, having sustained debilitating injuries in a motor accident during one of his visits to Nigeria, Achebe is paralyzed and needs intensive medical care. While it may be desirable for him to be among his people in his old age, therefore, asking the master of prose to return to a country with a derelict healthcare delivery system is tantamount to prescribing poison for his paraplegia.
Also, in spite of the ravages of Hurricane Katrina, which he narrowly survived, Niyi Osundare has remained in New Orleans partly because relocating to his native country with his visually impaired daughter may have a negative impact on her future. America especially cares for those who are challenged. A perfect example is David Paterson, the blind African American governor of the great State of New York, who is currently undergoing treatment for glaucoma.
It is not only little people that suffer from the sad state of the health care delivery in Nigeria. Umaru Yar’adua, the president of Nigeria, even with the stupendous resources of the state at his disposal, has been running back and forth to Germany for the past twenty-two years to treat catarrh and other undisclosed ailments. Also, doctors in Nigeria misdiagnosed Gani Fawehinmi, a 70-year-old legal luminary and gadfly of oppressors, with pneumonia. By the time he was properly diagnosed in Europe as having cancer of the lungs, the debilitating disease had spread. Fawehinmi was quick to add that it was not that Nigerian doctors were not good; they simply lacked the necessary diagnostic equipment. The lack of equipment should not be surprising. The immediate past minister of health, high-ranking Federal Ministry of Health officials, and a sitting senator are currently facing criminal charges for misappropriating N300 million. Then there is the power probe in the House of Representatives. The clangor of the sagas of corruption, violence, cruelty, penury, avoidable disasters, disease, and suffering firmly glues the feet of even the most patriotic of people to the lands of their exile. Indeed, for any of these writers to return to Africa they have to look beyond the seamy side of life over there, like Femi Ojo-Ade, Professor Emeritus of French at St. Mary’s College of Maryland; Ropo Sekoni, a noted literary scholar and semiotician formerly of Lincoln University; and Adebayo Williams, the former Amy Freeman Lee Chair of Humanities and Fine Arts at the University of The Incarnate Word, San Antonio. Suffice it to say that they have to look beyond the pervasive anomie at home and find avenues to make a selfless contribution no matter how small or large their spheres of influence.