Mĩcere Gĩthae Mũgo
Poet, playwright and scholar
She treated literature as a place to question power.
- Theme
- Arts & Letters
Mĩcere Gĩthae Mũgo combined poetry, theatre and scholarship with a commitment to social justice. She co-wrote The Trial of Dedan Kimathi with Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o, bringing the independence struggle into a form that could be performed and debated.
Political repression forced her into exile. Her later teaching at Syracuse University continued a life of intellectual work concerned with freedom, African knowledge and the responsibilities of the writer.
Life and work
Mĩcere Gĩthae Mũgo (born Madeleine Mĩcere Gĩthae; 12 December 1942 – 30 June 2023) was a Kenyan professor, playwright, author, activist and poet. She was a literary critic and professor of Literature, Creative Writing and Research Methods in the Department of African American Studies at Syracuse University. She was forced into exile in 1982 from Kenya during the Daniel Arap Moi dictatorship for activism and moved to teach in the United States, and later Zimbabwe. She taught Orature, Literature, and Creative Writing.
Mũgo's publications include six books, a play co-authored with Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o and three monographs. She also edited journals and the Zimbabwean school curriculum. The East African Standard listed her among the 100 most influential people in Kenya in 2002.
Mũgo was born on 12 December 1942, in Baricho, Kirinyaga District, Kenya. The daughter of two progressive (liberal) teachers – Senior Chief Richard Karuga Gĩthae and Mwalimu Grace Njeri Gĩthae – who were politically active in Kenya's fight for independence.
Mũgo went on to attend Makerere University (where she gained her B.A. degree in 1966). She enrolled at the University of Nairobi in September 1966, later leaving for Canada to attend in 1969 the University of New Brunswick, where she earned her M.A. and PhD in 1973. She returned to Kenya to take up a teaching position at the University of Nairobi in 1973, and in 1978 became Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, making her the first female faculty dean in Kenya. She taught at the University of Nairobi until 1982, St. Lawrence University (1982–1984) the University of Zimbabwe (1984–1991) and was a visiting professor at Cornell University (1992).
Mũgo was a political activist who fought against human rights abuses in Kenya. Her political activism led to her being harassed by the police and arrested. Mũgo and her family (including two young daughters) were forced to depart Kenya in 1982 after the attempted coup of the Daniel Arap Moi government, following which she became a target of official government harassment. She was stripped of her Kenyan citizenship, but after one year, the Zimbabwean government invited her to apply for Zimbabwean citizenship, which she held until the mid-1990s, when she regained her Kenyan citizenship.
After leaving Kenya, she worked, wrote, and taught from abroad, and later said:I'm a child of the universe, I have lived in almost all continents.
The poem "Speaking of Hurricanes" by Ama Ata Aidoo, included in Aidoo's 1992 collection An Angry Letter in January, was written "for Micere Mugo and all other African exiles".
In 1993, Mũgo joined Syracuse University, where she taught Orature, Creative Writing, Caribbean Women Writers and Research Methods in the Department of African American Studies (AAS). In 2007, she was awarded the Laura J. and L. Douglas Meredith Professor for Teaching Excellence. In 2013, while at Syracuse University, she participated in the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) conference at the United Nations, the theme of which was "The Elimination and Prevention of Violence Against Women and Girls", and in her address she said:
Writing can be a lifeline, especially when your existence has been denied, especially when you have been left on the margins, especially when your life and process of growth have been subjected to attempts at strangulation.
After 22 years of service, Mũgo retired in 2015, and was awarded Emeritus status. Marking her retirement from the AAS faculty at Syracuse, a symposium was held in her honour.
That same year, she delivered the keynote International African Writers Lecture, entitled "African Orature Artists and Writers birthing humanizing Sankofa-visions of Utu, Ubuntu and Justice for All", at the University of South Africa (UNISA) as part of the 4th Africa Century International African Writers Conference.
This section adapts selected passages from Micere Githae Mugo by Wikipedia contributors. It is shared under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected passages; pronunciation guides, lists and reference markers omitted; punctuation and paragraph breaks adjusted. Photographs have separate licences.
