How Mukoma wa Ngugi can honor his mother without cursing his father

Though a prophet warned him, Oedipus ended up killing his father and marrying his mother. Mukoma wa Ngugi is in a similar situation. He is making every effort to avoid a similar fate. If you read news headlines of these trying days, you will hear Mukoma say things like, “I weep for mother, but I do not love my father any less.” What Mukoma wa Ngugi must avoid in trying to honor his mother is cursing his father in the process.

I met Ngugi wa Thiong’o at Bard’s College in upstate New York on Chinua Achebe’s 70th birthday. Every literature star from across the globe was there. Here are some of those present: K. A. Appiah, John Ashbery, Don Burness, Chinweizu, Johnetta Cole, Jayne Cortez, Tsitsi Dangarembga, Joseph Duffey, Michael Eric Dyson, Nuruddin Farah, Henry Louis Gates Jr., Nadine Gordimer, Michael Harper, C. L. Innes, Bernth Lindfors, Norman Manea, Ali Mazrui, Toni Morrison, Micere Mugo, Gil Noble, Emmanuel Obiechina, Charles Ogletree, Sonia Sanchez, Ruth Simmons, Richard Sklar, Wole Soyinka, Ekwueme Michael Thelwell, Ngugi wa Thiong’o, and John Edgar Wideman.

Of all of them, it was Ngugi that I wanted to meet. And I did meet him, surrounded by friends, media types, and well-wishers. It wasn’t easy to get a one-on-one with him. But I shook his hand and said habari yako. He was with his wife and two…