Committed literature and the role of the African writer in Ngugi Wa Thiong'o's Essays

Abstract EN

The present paper aims to study the Kenyan writer Ngugi wa Thiag'o's conception of committed literature in his essays.

It attempts to elucidate the role he assigns to Kenyan and African writers in contemporary post-colonial Kenya and Africa characterized by conditions of neo-colonialism and imperialism.

The corpus of the study comprises selected essays from his collections Homecoming (1972), Writers in Politics (1981), Barrel of a Pen: Resistance to Repression in Neo-Colonial Kenya (1983), and Pen points, Gun points and Dreams (1998).

Analysis of the essays is based on Sartre's theory of literature developed in his book What is Literature? (1976) and Frantz fanon's theory of Literature of combat.

It will be argued that Ngugi is committed to social reform and convinced that the African writer has the obligation to address the issues of the day and to help solve Africa's current problems.