Biography Essay

When he was incarcerated as a political detainee in Kamiti Maximum Security Prison near Nairobi in 1978 for his part in the production of his Gikuyu-language play Ngaahika Ndeenda (performed, 1977; published, 1980; translated as I Will Marry When I Want, 1982), Ngugi wa Thiong'o caused consternation among the warders by refusing to submit to the ritual of being chained before being transported out of the prison for medical treatment or family visits. It was made clear that refusing to be chained meant he would receive no visits from his family and no treatment for his abscessed tooth, but for Ngugi, always alert to the symbolism of colonial and neocolonial oppression, being chained was too high a price to pay for the privileges.

Ngugi's refusal to submit to shackles in Kamiti can be seen as an appropriate symbolic culmination of nearly twenty years of writing and lecturing in which he...