‘I’m just his son, extremely proud of the name,’ says Mukoma wa Ngugi

Growing up wasn’t easy… he was sent to prison, then he went on exile; he had a brush with the police. But we would later have a moment as a family free from fear of the government. My dad was sent to detention and exile. But the role my mom played was significant, because we forget the roles mothers play in the lives of troubled writers.

Mukoma said he doesn’t feel the burden of carrying the literary heritage of his father, noting, “I don’t feel any pressure. I’m just his son, extremely proud of the name. Best gift we have from him is being our father. For me, it’s seamless. My US and Kenya heritage is in my works, Nairobi Heat. I’m interested in blacks in diaspora. That really has shaped how I see the world

By Anote Ajeluorou

IT’S perhaps a wonder that Ngugi’s name has not entered the Guinness Book of Records for the most writers to come from the same family. There’s the patriarch himself, Ngugi wa Thiong’o and his three sons, Tee, Nducu, Mukoma and daughter, Wanjiku – five writers from the same family. Ordinarily, some form of rivalry would have ensued, but Mukoma said this isn’t the case, as the family rather turns its writerly genius into workshop sessions instead to make better their craft, with the family sage acting as editor and cheerleader for his sons before he passed on.

This much Kenyan-American writer, Mukoma wa Ngugi, the fifth child of legendary Kenyan writer, Ngugi wa Thiong’o, who joined his ancestors in May, said in Lagos at the 9th edition of Quramo Festival of Words (QFest) 2025. Mukoma was the headline guest writer for the festival and had ‘Up Close and Personal’ conversation with culture communicator and Programme Chair of Committee for Relevant Art (CORA), organisers of Lagos Book and Art Festival (LABAF), which 27th edition will hold from November 10 – 16 with the theme ‘Change: Imagining Alternatives’. This year’s QFest had as theme ‘A Brave New World’ and assembled some of the best culture minds in a 4-day feast of words from October 2 — 5.

“My dad loved reading my manuscripts,” Mukoma recalled, while reminiscing about his father. “He called one of my scenes ‘a beautiful scene.’ There was a point where we shared manuscripts within the family and had a writer’s workshop within the family.”

There was always the risk as a political writer in post-colonial Africa, when African politicians were just as intolerant of criticism as the colonisers they just supplanted. Mukoma’s father, like many across the continent, would soon run fowl of this intolerant temper and clamped into prison for many years, as Mukoma looked back to those dark years, but also the fondness as a family when they had moments of respite from the unjust strictures around them. He acknowledged the role wives of these dissidents played in keeping the home together in the dark days of their husbands’ absence.

“Growing up wasn’t easy,” he recalled those harsh days, “he was sent to prison, then he went on exile; he had a brush with the police. But we would later have a moment as a family free from fear of the government. My dad was sent to detention and exile. But the role my mom played was significant, because we forget the roles mothers play in the lives of troubled writers.”

Mukoma expressed a deep sense of duty and gratitude to the first generation of cultural workers like his father, Wole Soyinka, Chinua Achebe, Ken Saro-Wiwa, when he said, “We need to recognise the sacrifices they made as patrons. There were rivalries among my dad, Achebe but they were building African literature still.”

Against the backdrop of his father’s intimidating stature, Mukoma said he doesn’t feel the burden of carrying the literary heritage of his father, noting, “I don’t feel any pressure. I’m just his son, extremely proud of the name. Best gift we have from him is being our father. For me, it’s seamless. My US and Kenya heritage is in my works, Nairobi Heat. I’m interested in blacks in diaspora. That really has shaped how I see the world.

“My dad’s generation did all things – Achebe and Soyinka; so we should do all things, because that’s what we met. With my poetry, I speak about things I don’t have answers for. There’s genocide happening in Palestine. My poetry asks questions. In my scholarly essays, I’m trying to do an accounting. When did the rain start beating us? Where and when does African literature tradition begin? Was it at the 1962 conference at Makerere University, Uganda, as we tend to believe? But African literature actually began in the 1800s. When do we begin our literary tradition? What does it mean that my literary imagination began in the 1950s? This is a crime we commit against our own long literary tradition.”

Mukoma also spoke about the politics of language, of which his father was a vocal proponent of writing in the mother tongue.

“I’ve started writing more and more in Kikuyu,” he admitted, but he has posers to this African language affirmation. “Is English an African language? In a longer view, English was considered a vulgar language by the English themselves. But while fighting the French, they realised they needed a national language. Then it came to Samuel Johnson, who standardised English. Johnson has made English the envy of the world. To say English is an African language is to help them come to their mission. Whether we like it or not, we’re still grappling with the language question.”

Mukoma argued that African scholarship lacks the necessary innovation and ingenuity that should take it to its peak, saying, “How many prizes can you name for 53 countries or for the Yoruba or Igbo language? Or do you know any agents for local languages? What innovation or originality can we have for Achebe or Soyinka? We cannot keep writing about these people and expect any innovation. That’s where the true African scholarship will come from. What are we doing about translations from Yoruba and Igbo, for instance?”

Unlike other writers, Mukoma came into writing in the crime fiction sub-genre. Why did he choose that route to enter into African society instead of the pure literary fiction his father is known for?

“With crime fiction, it goes to the distinction between popular and literary fiction?” he said. “When you’re writing, you should enjoy it. When you think about the changing forms, for my dad’s generation, you’re looking at the realist novel. For my generation, there are ways we make sense – there’s neocolonialism, IMF, etc. So, we’re coming into it with another way of entry. What does pan-Africanism look like? What’s the content of this pan-Africanism? Just an egalitarianism concept? If you say we’re African, what do we mean? If all my political writing, all my writing cannot speak to Africa, what am I doing? My writing has to be people-centred. The contradictions and inequalities in African societies are so glaring. It’s amazing how a golf club can exist a few metres away from a festering slum?”

Mukoma is emphatic that “those of us who are older, we have to support the GenZs to grow,” noting that “the new generation of African writers is exciting. They are richer. They have a certain ownership of their world. There’s a lot of complexes I had as a writer. I think of the GenZs, as being more global. Most of them are MFA products. Most of their works are very clean.”

Mukoma is fascinated with the sacrifices his father and those of his generation made when they confronted the powers-that-be. Although they suffered imprisonment and exile, he believes they put their heart where their mouth was, and similarly believes the same can be true of the new generation of writers, like the recent example shown by South African writer and journalist, Zukiswa Wanner, who protested Israeli military’s onslaught against Palestinians and got arrested while taking food to starving Palestinians.

“On Zukiswa, here you have a writer who should be chilling somewhere, but she puts her life in the line for others. I’ve lived through about three or four genocides (in Africa). But Palestine is being televised and more. Writers have conscience that ought to have actions. In the Congo, about six million people have died. We need to become serious.”

Mukoma revisited the need to remedy Africa’s truncated imagination, saying, “Remedying imagination that’s truncated – the literature is there for younger generation to start looking at. We need earlier Africa writing to be an organic part (of what we’re doing today). Not sure how we can remedy it. If you’re an African professor teaching from Achebe, (Chimamanda) Adichie, then you’re the problem. I come from the tradition of neocolonialism of high language. There’s virtue in simplicity. Using high language sometimes means you don’t know what you’re saying.”

Mukoma’s other works include Black Star, Killing Sahara, Nairobi Heat, Unbury Our Dead with Song, The Rise of the African Novel: Politics of Language, Identity and Ownership, Hurling Words at Consciousness, among others.

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