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Wangari wa Nyatetu-Waigwa

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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

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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

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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

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  • "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

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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

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  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.
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