Ngũgĩ Thiong - Wizard of the Crow

Thank you Jancita Wabera Rebo for giving Thiong’o and Mümbi a home environment to learn Glküyü, and Henry and Rosalind Chakava and your children Sharon, Laura, and Yolanda, for giving us a home when we most needed it. Thanks to Pat Hilden, Tim Reiss, Sonia Sanchez, Susie Tharu, Peter and Mary Nazareth, Bhahadur and Yasmine Tejani, Manthia Diawara, Kassahun Checole, Kofi

Anyidoho, Haunani-Kay Trask, Gayatri Spivak, Meena Alexander, Susan Wheeler, Eva Lanno, and Ngügl wa Mlril for always being there. There are many more of you not mentioned here by name, but your spirit is part of this narrative.

But I simply have to mention my compatriots in the London-based Committee for the Release of Political Prisoners in Kenya (1982-1987), which organized a worldwide campaign against the Moi dictatorship in Kenya and for democracy. They allied with other London-based groups struggling against the Marcos dictatorship in the Phillipines, the Pinochet dictatorship in Chile, and the apartheid dictatorship in South Africa. Thank you Abdulatif Abdalla, Yusuf Hassan, Shiraz Durrani, Wanjirü and Wanylri Klhoro, Nish Müthoni, and Wangüi wa Goro. The images of dictatorship in this narrative date back to that period of our struggle.

Ngügi wa Thiong’o has taught at Amherst College, Yale University, and New York University. He is Distinguished Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of California, Irvine, and is director of the university’s International Center for Writing and Translation. His books include Petals of Blood, for which he was imprisoned by the Kenyan government in 1977. He lives in Irvine, California.