At age 87, Kenyan author Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o remains impassioned about the power of language

“I miss Kenya, because they gave me everything,” he says. “All of my writings are based in Kenya. … I owe my writing to Kenya. It’s very hard for me not to be able to return to my homeland.”

Ngũgĩ has published a handful of books over the past decade, including the novel “The Perfect Nine” and the prison memoir “Wrestling with the Devil,” and was otherwise in the news in 2022 when his son, Mũkoma wa Ngũgĩ, alleged that he had physically abused his first wife, Nyambura, who died in 1996 (“I can say categorically it’s not true,” Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o responds).

His U.S. publisher, The New Press, has just released “Decolonizing Language,” which the author praises as a “beautiful” title. “Decolonizing Language” includes essays and poems written between 2000 and 2019, with subjects ranging from language and education to such friends and heroes as Nelson Mandela, Nadine Gordimer and Chinua Achebe, the Nigerian author whose 1958 novel, “Things Fall Apart,” is considered by many the starting point for modern African literature. Achebe also helped launch Ngũgĩ’s career by showing a manuscript of an early novel, “Weep Not, Child,” to publisher William Heinemann, who featured it in the landmark African Writers series.

In one essay from “Decolonizing Language,” Ngũgĩ declares that writers must “be the voice of the voiceless. They have to give voice to silence, especially the silence imposed on a people by an oppressive state.” During his AP interview, Ngũgĩ discussed his concerns about Kenya, the “empowerment” of knowing your native language, his literary influences and his mixed feelings about the United States. Ngũgĩ’s comments on subjects have been condensed for clarity and brevity.