I have an early memory of meeting Professor Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o briefly at the National Theatre in Nairobi in 1977. I was one of the lucky primary school kids who had been taken along on what was an exciting journey that night with my parents and relatives, to see an evening show of The Trial of Dedan Kimathi. The performance left in me a lasting memory of patriotic song, dance, and palpable emotions during a powerful show of theatre and audience participation. Above all, I actually had the chance to shake the hand of the great writer at some point during that evening. In all, it was an unforgettable event that inspired a feeling of having taken part in a momentous occasion, and it planted in me a fascination with language, theatre and culture. Ever since that day, Ngũgĩ's writing, and his ideas about language and discourse on colonialism, have loomed large in my intellectual and even personal life. Sixteen years later in 1993, I was once again an excited member of a group of students from Michigan State University, driving down to Ann Arbor, Michigan, to listen to a lecture by Ngũgĩ, who was accompanied by Kamau Braithwaite, the Caribbean writer and poet. At the end of the lecture, we crowded to get autographs, mingle and generally rub our shoulders with these two great writers. But I was on another mission: in my nervous hands, I held a manuscript I had written several years before and which I wanted to hand over to Ngũgĩ, to read in the hope that he would offer a few words of encouragement, if I had an opportunity. I was sure that I was not the only one in that group of eager students and budding writers trying to get the author's attention. To my surprise and relief, he received my manuscript with humility and respect, looked me in the eye, and promised to read it later. I was thrilled when he slipped it into the pocket of his jacket.

I held the manuscript dear in my heart, and in fact, up to that point I was the only one who had read it—several hundred times. I wrote it while living and studying in Mexico in my early twenties, lonely and far away from Africa, home and all things familiar.