{"id":199139,"date":"2025-05-30T13:30:39","date_gmt":"2025-05-30T11:30:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/east-africa\/kenya\/kenya-they-wanted-to-erase-my-language-i-chose-to-write-in-it-ngugi-wa-thiongo\/"},"modified":"2025-05-30T13:30:39","modified_gmt":"2025-05-30T11:30:39","slug":"kenya-they-wanted-to-erase-my-language-i-chose-to-write-in-it-ngugi-wa-thiongo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/east-africa\/kenya\/kenya-they-wanted-to-erase-my-language-i-chose-to-write-in-it-ngugi-wa-thiongo\/","title":{"rendered":"Kenya: &#8216;They Wanted to Erase My Language &#8211; I Chose to Write in It&#8217; &#8211; Ng\u0169g\u0129 Wa Thiong&#8217;o"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<div>\n<p class=\"story-body-text\" data-para-word-count=\"23\">Prof. Ngugi wa Thiong&#8217;o was precise with his words, and the wordsmith delicately weighed them before he let them roll off his tongue.<\/p>\n<p class=\"story-body-text\" data-para-word-count=\"32\"><strong><em>&#8220;My wife was raped, not sexually violated. There was penetration, and you can&#8217;t downplay that in your paper,&#8221;<\/em><\/strong> he told me with a chilling tone from his Nairobi Hospital bed in 2004.<\/p>\n<p class=\"story-body-text\" data-para-word-count=\"41\">The night before, the renowned author and his wife had been brutally attacked in their suite as they slept, having broken his political exile after President Kibaki&#8217;s National Rainbow&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/allafrica.com\/stories\/202505300142.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Read more on AllAfrica.com<\/a><br \/>\n<br \/>South Africa Today Africa \u2013 East Africa <a title=\"Kenya\" href=\"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/category\/east-africa\/kenya\/\">Kenya<\/a> News<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Prof. Ngugi wa Thiong&#8217;o was precise with his words, and the wordsmith delicately weighed them before he let them roll off his tongue. &#8220;My wife was raped, not sexually violated. There was penetration, and you can&#8217;t downplay that in your paper,&#8221; he told me with a chilling tone from his Nairobi Hospital bed in 2004. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":199140,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cdn.allafrica.com\/static\/images\/structure\/aa-logo-rgba-no-text-square.png","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[250],"tags":[258,256,5226,43539,4688,430,9308,257,15281,254,15282,7919,12962],"class_list":["post-199139","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-kenya","tag-africa","tag-africa-news","tag-chose","tag-erase","tag-kenya","tag-kenya-news","tag-language","tag-news","tag-ngugi","tag-south-africa-today","tag-thiongo","tag-wanted","tag-write"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cdn.allafrica.com\/static\/images\/structure\/aa-logo-rgba-no-text-square.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199139","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=199139"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199139\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/199140"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=199139"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=199139"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=199139"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}