KDRTV News – USA: Renowned Kenyan author and academic Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o was cremated in the United States on June 5, 2025, in accordance with his personal wishes, his son Mukoma wa Ngũgĩ confirmed today.
Ngũgĩ, who died on May 28 at the age of 87 in Bedford, Georgia, had battled kidney failure for several years and relied on regular dialysis treatments in his later life. Rather than a traditional burial, he specified cremation and no formal gravesite choices that align with his lifelong spirit of challenging convention and celebrating transformation through fire.
Born in colonial Kenya in 1938, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o rose to global prominence with novels such as Weep Not, Child (1964) and A Grain of Wheat (1967), which examined the scars of colonialism and the promise of liberation. In 1977, authorities imprisoned him for staging a Gikuyu-language play critical of post-independence inequality, an experience that prompted him to abandon English and write exclusively in his native tongue.
Over six decades, he published more than 30 works across fiction, drama, and essays – most notably his manifesto Decolonising the Mind (1986), which argued that language is central to cultural freedom.
Leaders in literature and human rights lauded the decision to honor Ngũgĩ’s final request. In a statement, his family said: “He lived a full life, fought a good fight. Let us remember him in spirit and in the words he loved.”
Scholars are planning to commemorate the event in Nairobi and Irvine cities that shaped his journey. His cremation stands as a fitting finale for a writer who believed words could rise from ashes to inspire new worlds.
Read:https://www.kdrtv.co.ke/news/africas-literary-icon-ngugi-wa-thiongo-passes-on-at-87-years/
