Wangari wa Nyatetu-Waigwa

Wangari wa Nyatetu-Waigwa
Born
Anne Elizabeth Wangari Waigwa

July 31, 1950
Kenya
DiedFebruary 4, 2024 (age 73)
Utah, U.S.
Other namesWangari Waigwa-Stone

Wangari wa Nyatetu-Waigwa (July 31, 1950 – February 4, 2024), born Anne Elizabeth Wangari Waigwa,[1] also known as Wangari Muringi Waigwa-Stone,[2] was a Kenyan literary scholar and college professor. She taught women's studies, French, and Swahili courses at Weber State University in Utah.

Early life and education

Anne Elizabeth Wangari Waigwa was born into a Kikuyu family and raised on a farm near Nyeri, Kenya, the daughter of Samuel Waigwa wa Gatamu and Salome Nyatetu wa Nganga.[3] "I was raised under an African sky," she told Terry Tempest Williams. "Darkness was never something I was afraid of."[4]

Waigwa attended Alliance Girls High School from 1964 to 1969. She studied French in Madagascar and in France. She earned a bachelor's degree at the University of Dijon in 1974, and a teaching certificate at the University of Grenoble.[3] she moved to the United States for graduate school in 1980. She earned both her master's and doctoral degrees at the University of Utah.[5] Her dissertation was titled "The liminal novel: Studies in the French-African Bildungsroman of the 1950s" (1989).[6]

Career

Wangari wa Nyatetu-Waigwa taught at Alliance Girls High School (AGHS) after college, from 1974 to 1979. Starting in 1989, she taught women's studies,[7] French, and Swahili at Weber State University.[8][9][10] She started a youth choir, TOUCH (Teens of Ogden United for Community Harmony), and raised funds for education in Kenya. She was a ruling elder at First Presbyterian Church of Ogden, and led the church's women's choir; she also organized an annual song festival at the church.[3]

Publications

  • "From Liminality to a Home of Her Own? The Quest Motif in Maryse Conde's Fiction" (1995)[11]
  • The Liminal Novel, Studies in the Francophone-African Novel as Bildungsroman (1996, book from her dissertation)
  • "The Female Liminal Place, or Survival Between the Rock and the Hard Place: A Reading of Anne Hébert's L'île de la Demoiselle" (2001)[12]

Personal life

Wangari wa Nyatetu-Waigwa married a fellow AGHS teacher, American-born Christopher Stone, in 1980 and had two sons.[3] She became a United States citizen in 2003. She died in 2024, at the age of 73, after several years with Alzheimer's disease.[13]

References

  1. ^ "Notice of Change of Name". The Kenya Gazette: 665. 1979-04-20.
  2. ^ "Change of Name". Kenya Gazette: 2128. 1994-11-04.
  3. ^ a b c d "Wangarĩ wa Nyatetũ-Waigwa". Standard-Examiner. 2024-02-28. Archived from the original on 2024-02-29. Retrieved 2025-07-05.
  4. ^ Williams, Terry Tempest (2015-03-18). Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. p. 137. ISBN 978-0-307-77273-2.
  5. ^ Rollins, Judy B. (1985-12-22). "There's a Utah Connection to Kenya". The Salt Lake Tribune. p. 130. Retrieved 2025-07-05 – via Newspapers.com.
  6. ^ Waigwa-Stone, Wangari Muringi. The liminal novel: Studies in the French-African Bildungsroman of the 1950s. The University of Utah, 1989.
  7. ^ Cordero, Carlos (1993-05-12). "Hemingway award given to professors". The Signpost. p. 3. Retrieved 2025-07-05 – via Newspapers.com.
  8. ^ Bridenbecker, Bernice (1991-02-20). "French teacher enriches classroom experience with culture of Kenya". The Signpost. pp. 3, 5. Retrieved 2025-07-05 – via Newspapers.com.
  9. ^ Reece, Chantal S. (1993-12-01). "Swahili taught at WSU". The Signpost. p. 3. Retrieved 2025-07-05 – via Newspapers.com.
  10. ^ Welling, Christy (1993-05-21). "Italian, Swahili to be Taught at WSU". The Signpost. p. 1. Retrieved 2025-07-05 – via Newspapers.com.
  11. ^ Nyatetu-Waigwa, Wangari wa (June 1995). "From Liminality to a Home of Her Own? The Quest Motif in Maryse Conde's Fiction". Callaloo. 18 (3): 551–564. doi:10.1353/cal.1995.0097. ISSN 1080-6512.
  12. ^ Nyatetu-Waigwa, Wangari Wa. "The Female Liminal Place, or Survival Between the Rock and the Hard Place: A Reading of Anne Hébert’s L’île de la Demoiselle." Pallister, The Art (2001): 187-95.
  13. ^ Kowalewski, Brenda Marsteller (2024-03-24). "Celebrating 'herstories'". Standard-Examiner. Retrieved 2025-07-05.
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is available under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 unless otherwise noted. Additional terms may apply for the media files.