The Kenyan author’s son of Ngugi wa Thiong’o, Mukoma wa Ngugi, has accused his father of “physically abusing” his mother.
On his X page on Tuesday, the 53-year-old poet, author, and scholar shared a newspaper item about his mother captioned ‘a novelist’s lonely wife’.
Mukoma also said that his mother would seek sanctuary at his grandmother’s house after his father “beat her up”.
He went on to say that he was astonished by her silence during the alleged assault.
“My father @NgugiWaThiongo_ physically abused my late mother- he would beat her up,” he wrote.
“Some of my earliest memories are of me going to visit my grandmother’s, where she would seek refuge. But with that said it is the silencing of who she was that gets me. Ok- I have said it.”
My father @NgugiWaThiongo_ physically abused my late mother – he would beat her up. Some of my earliest memories are me going to visit her at my grandmother’s where she would seek refuge. But with that said it is the silencing of who she was that gets me. Ok- I have said it. pic.twitter.com/6iQ45ydI3K
— Mukoma Wa Ngugi (@MukomaWaNgugi) March 12, 2024
As of the publication of this news, Ngugi had not responded to his son’s charges.
The 86-year-old Kenyan author and professor is widely regarded as East Africa’s leading novelist.
He was also nominated for the 2017 Nobel Prize in Literature and has received other honors.
Mukoma, on the other hand, is an associate professor of English literature at Cornell University and one of the founders of the Safal-Cornell Kiswahili Prize for African Writing.
Ngugi and Nyambura married in 1987. They have six children: Thiong’o, Kimunya, Nduchu, Mukoma, Wanjiku, and Njoki.
Nyambura was reported to have died in 1995.