Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o and Latin America

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Ndi, Gilbert Shang:
Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o and Latin America.
In: African Studies Review. (2025) . - S. 1-6.
ISSN 1555-2462
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/asr.2025.10165

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Abstract

Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o (1938–2025) has gone down in history as one of the greatest
literary Pan-Africanists in modern times. Beyond that, he is one of Africa’s most
consequential authors in Latin America.1 Nearly all of his works are translated
into Spanish, making them accessible to a Hispanic Latin American market that
shares much with Africa but is largely disconnected from the latter by linguistic
barriers (among other factors). Ngũgĩ is thus a rare exception given the relatively
low traffic of creative texts between Africa and Latin America. Most of the
translations of African literature are done by Spanish scholars-translators in a
context where the enthusiasm for and reception of African literature leave much
to be desired. Marta-Sofia Rodriguez Lopez, who has translated major works by
Chinua Achebe and Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o in Spanish asserts that in Spain“People
are unaware, or not very conscious, of the existence of a vast and rich African
culture. Africa is associated with misery, poverty and illiteracy. It seems to me
that, to a large extent, we can therefore speak of simple ignorance” (2014, 243).
However, apart from the growing interest for African literature in Spain, these
translations are beginning to find critical readership among Latino scholars in
the USA but most importantly among engaged readers in Latin America. In the
latter case, African literature is not only gaining increasing interest among the
literati, its readership is growing most especially among Afro-descendant and
indigenous peoples who can relate with the major deconstructive and decolonial
potentials of that literature. In this contribution, I examine zones of inter-
section between Ngũgĩ’s works and Latin American historical context as reasons
why the Kenyan author’s works will continue to arouse the interest of Latin
American readers on a wide gamut of issues.