As a boarding school student in Kenya, in the early 1950s, Ngũgĩ wa Thiang’o – who grew up to become one of the world’s most influential storytellers – was expected to speak only English, the language of the country’s then-ruling class.

The stakes were high. If Ngũgĩ slipped into his native Gikuyu, the language of his village, he was beaten with a cane and forced to wear a sign with messages such as “idiot” or “donkey.”

“It was about more than the words. It was about control,” said Munyao Kilolo, a doctoral candidate at UC Irvine, where the man Kilolo and others called “Professor Ngũgĩ” spent the last decades of his life as a teacher and friend.

“The idea was to minimize, maybe eradicate, a culture.”

So it was deliciously ironic that Ngũgĩ, who died Wednesday at age 87, became a perpetual Nobel candidate by writing everything from novels and plays to memoirs and children’s books and essays in Gikuyu.

After gaining critical acclaim in the 1960s as a young English-language author from Kenya – telling stories about East African people in the language of their colonizers – he turbo-charged that career by penning his 1980 novel, “Devil on the Cross,” in Gikuyu.

That he composed an African-language novel while serving a year as a political prisoner in Kenya – and wrote it on prison-issued toilet paper – only added to Ngũgĩ’s growing literary mystique.

“That book was written on toilet paper. That part is true,” Kilolo said, laughing. “But you have to understand that the toilet paper, in Kenya, particularly in a prison, is quite different from the toilet paper you experience in this country.”

What was key, according to Kilolo and others, is that Ngũgĩ created a world in the language used by the characters – and, often, the most ardent readers – of the story. English, French, Spanish; the languages of European colonizers around the world became no more or less important than the hundreds of languages spoken by people native to Africa and the Americas.

Ngũgĩ’s choice to use their words – and his growing acclaim – gave those people a voice.

“Our African languages were continually subjugated,” Kilolo said. “The world made everything African, especially our languages because that’s where our culture resides, unimportant.

“But Professor Ngũgĩ changed that,” Kilolo added.

“The very existence of that text was important.”

Language itself was often a theme. In many of his best reviewed novels – “The Wizard of the Crow” and “Petals of Blood,” and in memoirs such as “Birth of a Dream Weaver,” or the influential critique “Decolonizing the Mind” – Ngũgĩ touched on the idea that language can be a form of control, and that imagination can be an act of power.

The choice to write in Gikuyu also changed the nature of what he wrote, according to Kilolo and others. Stories told in languages with long oral traditions shift a little, depending on who is doing the telling and on how the story is being told. The essence of the tale becomes more important than any one phrase or scene.

“African stories are told with movement and sound, and they respond to the audience,” said Kilolo, who worked with Ngũgĩ to translate one of his short stories. “They aren’t initially meant to be written down and put away. They live and change.”

Ngũgĩ’s stories – favoring the oppressed and mocking people in power – were appreciated by several generations of critics. In 2009, he was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, and in 2012, he was a finalist for a National Book Critics Circle prize. In 2016, he won the Pak Kyong-ni Literature Award. That same year, UCI officials were convinced that Ngũgĩ would win the Nobel Prize for literature, and cancelled a press conference at the last minute when Bob Dylan was named that year’s winner.

If Ngũgĩ’s career arc was largely a success, his life was often shaped by conflict.

Born in 1938, with the name James Thiang’o, Ngũgĩ survived Kenya’s Mau Mau uprising in the 1950s and was in his 20s when Britain gave over control of Kenya to native Kenyans in 1963. Ngũgĩ left the country, in part because he became disillusioned with the country’s new leaders, and he and his family later faced political harassment. His mother was imprisoned and held in solitary confinement, one brother was killed in sectarian violence and another – deaf and mute – was shot dead when he didn’t stop to obey the command of a soldier.

He also was an enthusiastic teacher, according to Kilolo and others. He taught at several universities, including Yale, before coming to UC Irvine in 2002.

“He was curious about everything, and he had tons of energy; millions of plans,” said Adriana Johnson, who teaches Latin American literature at UC Irvine.

“He absolutely loved teaching,” she added. “He was incredibly generous.”

Kilolo, who worked as Ngũgĩ’s assistant and helped translate his short story “The Upright Revolution,” noted that his mentor was also a great friend.

“He probably called me more than I called him,” he said. “But he called everybody, and kept up with people. He was a very good man.”

Ngũgĩ’s death was confirmed Wednesday by his family, who said he died peacefully with family members by his side. UC Irvine officials said he remained a professor at the school. The school said he was survived by nine children, several of whom are writers.

It’s unclear how, or if, Ngũgĩ’s work has changed the role of oppression in Kenya.

Kilolo, 39, grew up in Kenya and, like his mentor, attended boarding schools as a child. And, like his mentor, he was punished for speaking his native language, Kamba.

“There are things still to do in that regard,” Kilolo said.