Micere Githae Mugo, 80, a retired Syracuse professor, died on June 30 after a 16-year battle with multiple myeloma.
Born in Kenya, she was at the forefront of desegregation of that country’s schools. She was the first black child to attend the all-white Limuru Girls’ School, a prestigious girls’ high school in Kenya.
She received a bachelor’s degree from Makerere University in 1966, a master’s degree in literature in 1973 from the University of New Brunswick and completed her PhD at the University of Toronto in 1978.
It is said John Ruganda’s character Nankya in The Floods was modeled after Micere. In the play Nankya is accused of climbing up the university ladder courtesy of warming some big shot professors’ beds
At some point the writer claims the Vice Chancellor overlooked Dr. Miceree qualifications to became a Dean, and once she did, down the line her medical leave was extended way beyond the rules.
Here is where i see the hand of his brother in law
I expect it to be beneath Prof Indangasi to write something like that about a former colleague. Whatever the cause of their friction, it serves no good purpose now, and that flowery, scathing piece he proudly penned to The Daily Nation leaves a very bad taste. He should have raised the issues with her when she could have answered him, yet he doesn’t say they ever had that heightened intellectual discourse he accuses the late professor of lacking capacity for. He doesn’t even say he ever attempted to engage her in any literary discussion of some depth, possibly because he disliked both Moi’s and Mugabe’s politics, whom she was allegedly linked to, and he saw himself as the nobler but disadvantaged intellectual.It’s extremely spiteful to wait to dishonour someone after death, and I think Henry Indangasi can be a more respected literary critic, without waging personal wars of this low sort. He owes that to himself.
Huyu Indangasi should have have concentrated on Miceres scholarly works, not her private life. Hio mucene ameandika should have been left to Miceres mboches.
The good professor talks of literary depth. Fair enough, let’s get literary: what’s the worth in literary gold of that mean-spirited prose he sent to the newspaper? Based on its rambling, haughty and hostile essence, what would a literary magazine editor call it in journalistic parlance–an opinion?
He probably has facts, but the eve of a fallen comrade’s memorial is not the time or place to publish them, neither is he, an academic rival, the man to take the high moral ground to tear up someone’s character in the eyes of family and the world, at death. What was he waiting for all those decades, an opportunity to shame her? What manner of tribute is that, for someone one claims to have known well and conversed with in high professional circles?
It is normally thought that many years of education should cultivate in the academic a significant depth of wisdom and human warmth.
This piece of insensitive marketplace gossip is unworthy of association with an outstanding scholar. It’s not even in the same universe with the artistic finesse of things literary.
Spot on my guy. That’s very callous of him. Academic critiques don’t belong in an obituary. I’m a layperson as far as literary discourse goes but I don’t think cheap shots have any place there. Sounds like a jilted lover in any case.
There is history. After Ngûgî went to exile, Prof Indangasi was for a long time the chair of litt. Dept. A Nyayo professor like his other mainly Luhya profs like Aseka, Eshiwani and Mwanzi and the flamboyant luo Ochieng he stated that his main role was to rid the dept of “Ngugism”. They insisted on literary analysis must be “text bound” and refrain from commenting on socio-political issues contrary to what akina Ngûgî were doing, using literature to understand society and prescribe solutions. Ngûgî was accused of favoring kikuyus in the dept yet two Luhyas were their star students; Chris Wanjala the first phd who akina Ngûgî worked to get scholarships for like Indangasi who went for his phd in US.
That said, his article is simply demystifying Micere who weaved a narrative around her oppression and exile to Zimbabwe kumbe mzito Mugabe was pinching slices
