Mugo, Micere Githae 1942–

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Micere Githae Mugo 1942–

Author

Kenyan-bom Micere Githae Mugo’s English-language verse and drama draws heavily upon indigenous African cultural traditions. As a critic, she has also written extensively on contemporary African literature. Mugo was forced to depart Kenya in 1982 after becoming the target of official government harassment, and has worked, written, and taught from abroad in the years since. She is a professor of African studies at Syracuse University in New York state. “Mugo is a poet with a mission in her society, which embraces the black race, the underprivileged class, and her specific female gender,” remarked World Literature Today reviewer Tanure Ojaide. “She appears to speak for Africans and blacks, women, and the downtrodden.”

The writer was born Madeleine Mugo in 1942, in Baricho, Kenya. At the time, her country was a colonial possession of the British Empire. The daughter of two teachers, Mugo’s parents were progressive in their beliefs. They insisted that she receive a solid education, and Mugo became one of the first black students to be allowed to enroll in what had previously been a segregated academy. Her adolescence was disturbed by the Mau Mau uprising, which endured from 1952 to 1956. This armed revolt against the British colonial government and its economic and social discrimination brought much bloodshed to Kenya, and Mugo was once taken with other students from her school to see the bodies of those killed in the fighting.

Mugo’s parents hoped that she would become a doctor, but Mugo harbored literary ambitions. She was already writing poetry in her teens, and attended Makerere University, where she studied drama and even won an award for best actress at the Uganda Drama Festival. Her literary ambitions were encouraged by acclaimed writer Chinua Achebe during this time. After graduating with honors in 1966, Mugo became active in leftist politics, and was once arrested and detained in a jail cell with only men. Deciding to leave Kenya, she enrolled in a graduate program at Canada’s University of New Brunswick. Her play, The Long Illness of Ex-Chief Kiti, was written during this period. Published in 1976, it chronicles the tale of a war’s effect on one family, and how varying ideologies cleaved it. That same year, Mugo’s first volume of poetry was published. Daughter of My People, Sing! is partially about the strength of women, but also concentrates on the consumerism and competition that arose in post-colonial Kenya.

Mugo finished her M.A. in 1973, and went on to the University of Toronto to earn a doctoral degree. She teamed with acclaimed Kenyan literary figure Ngugi wa Thiong’o to write The Trial of Dedan Kimathi, which recounted the political persecution of the Mau Mau uprising’s martyred leader. Issued by the London publisher Heinemann in 1976, it was Mugo’s first work to be published outside of Africa. Her dissertation was published in 1978 as Visions of Africa: The Fiction of Chinua Achebe, Margaret Laurence, Elspeth Huxley, and Ngugi wa Thiong’o. Leaving Toronto, she returned to Kenya, and enjoyed a prominent post at the University of Nairobi as a senior lecturer and dean until 1982, when her political opinions once again threatened her safety. Kenya had become a one-party

At a Glance…

Born Madeleine Mugo in 1942, in Baricho, Kenya; daughter of two teachers. Education: Makerere University, B.A. (with honors), 1966; University of New Brunswick, M.A., 1973; University of Toronto, Ph.D., 1978. Politics: Marxist.

Career: Poet, playwright, and scholar. University of Nairobi, senior lecturer and dean, until 1982; University of Zimbabwe, instructor; Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY, professor of African American studies, currently.

Addresses: Office —Department of African-American Studies, Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY 13244. Agent —c/o East African Educational Publishers, Brick Court, Mpaka Road/Woodvale Grove, P.O. Box 45314, Nairobi, Kenya.

state after 1978, and the government of Daniel Arap Moi was forced to put in place harsh measures against internal dissidence in order to secure its political power.

Mugo went to Zimbabwe for a time, where she found a teaching post, and continued to write. Her second work of literary criticism, African Orature and Human Rights, appeared in 1991. The work is a discussion of the storytelling culture of the Ndia people in Kenya’s Kirinyaga District and that culture’s relation to politics. In such a society, Mugo’s thesis maintained, the orature artist is a defender of human rights in the community. “The verbal arts express both the society’s negative and positive qualities, its strengths and challenges, its justice and injustices, its realities and ideals,” explained Research in African Literatures critic Adeleke Adeeko. Ndia elders recount proverbs, while less respected groups vent their frustrations through satirical stories featuring a hyena or an ogre. Mugo argues that this forum allows all to speak freely, and that such a deeply ingrained, collectively held freedom of speech is impossible to censure or prosecute. “Mugo’s discussion of how the Ndia society ensures that its ideals are always open to frank debates offers a very fresh perspective about our understanding of artistic license in orature epochs,” remarked Adeeko.

In 1994 Mugo’s second volume of poetry, My Mother’s Poem and Other Songs, was published. Its themes can be roughly divided into four sections: poems about children and youth, works addressing feminist concerns, others paying homage to the political spirit of the community, and finally, verse of a more reflective nature. The poems, however, do share some common themes, as Adeeko noted. “A good number of the poems about the decay of childhood and youthfulness speak to the political causes of the neglect and the steep prices which the abandonment will exact in the future,” the critic wrote. “The poems also express the pain and anguish of the active mother and woman who witnesses the neglect.”

One of Mugo’s poems, “Mother Afrika Matriots,” ties in the political struggle of African women with that of other groups, linking their spirit to uprisings elsewhere on the continent and even Black Panther politics in urban America. In another work, “The Woman’s Poem,” Mugo exhorts her reader to imagine “that/our wombs/issued forth/one populous/global family/of women/combatants/building a ladder/to step up the struggle/founding a wall/to firm up resistance/resting on shoulders/of reckoning victory!” Verse that addresses political awareness touches upon the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa, for example, or critiques post-colonial political leadership in other African nations.

In the more personal final section of the volume, Mugo includes the title piece, “My Mother’s Poem,” which commemorates a long-distance telephone call with her mother shortly after the death of her father. Weeping and far away, Mugo yearns to be near her family, but her mother cautions her not to miss home too deeply. “For many who are home/have jail/for home/Thousands who are home/have streets/for home/Millions who are home/are crying/for home.” Tanure Ojaide’s review in World Literature Today, though terming some of the poems as “ideologically too one-dimensional,” called the volume “a welcome female addition to contemporary African poetry that is considerably male-written.”

Selected writings

Daughter of My People, Sing! (poetry), East African Literature Bureau (Kampala), 1976.

The Long Illness of Ex-Chief Kiti (play), East African Literature Bureau, 1976.

(With Ngugi wa Thiong’o) The Trial of Dedan Kimathi (play), Heinemann (London), 1976.

Visions of Africa: The Fiction of Chinua Achebe, Margaret Laurence, Elspeth Huxley, and Ngugi wa Thiong’o (criticism), Kenya Literature Bureau (Nairobi), 1978.

African Orature and Human Rights, National University of Lesotho (Roma, Lesotho), 1991.

My Mother’s Poem and Other Songs: Songs and Poems (poetry), including “Mother Afrika Matriots, “‘The Woman’s Poem” and “My Mother’s Poem,” East African Educational Publishers (Nairobi), 1994.