Abstract :
[en] Waterlines (waterlinesproject.com) is a residency programme jointly organized by the International College of Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, Venice Foundation and San Servolo Metropolitan Services of Venice. It combines writing with other artistic disciplines to reaffirm the role of Venice as a place of artistic and cultural production. In April 2018 the programme had the privilege of hosting one of the most prominent inter- national intellectuals, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, who lived in Venice for three weeks, participated in the literary festival “Incroci di civiltà” and two other public meetings with local artist Moulaye Niang ‘Muranero’. On 11th April, Ngũgĩ was interviewed by students from the International College and Radio Ca’ Foscari, the university web radio, on San Servolo island.
Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o was born in Kenya in 1938. A many-sided intellectual, he is a novelist, essayist, playwright, journalist, editor, academic, and social activist. Imprisoned and exiled in the ’70s because of his opposition to the regime, he has taught in many American universities, including Yale and New York University, and is currently Distinguished Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of California, Irvine. A UCI Medalist, Ngũgĩ is recipient of twelve Honorary Doctorates from universities all over the world and has been nominated for the Nobel prize many times. Following his well-known decision to abandon the English language and start writing his books in his mother tongue, Kikuyi, he has become an advocate of linguistic diversity in Africa and all over the world. His works, several of which have also been translated into Italian, include the essays Decolonising the Mind: The Politics of Language in African Literature (1986), Moving the Centre: The Struggle for Cultural Freedom (1993), and Secure the Base: Making Africa Visible in the Globe (2016), the memoir Dreams in a Time of War: A Childhood Memoir (2010), and the works of fiction A Grain of Wheat (1967), Petals of Blood (1977) and Wizard of the Crow (2006). The outcome of his Waterlines residency is the collection Venice Poems, written in Kikuyu and translated into English by the author, which were published in December 2018 by Damocle Edizioni with an Italian translation by Barbara Del Mercato and illustrations by Daniela Murgia.
