Decolonising the Mind: The Politics of Language in African Literature by Ngũgĩ wa Thiongo

Decolonising the Mind: The Politics of Language in African Literature Reviews

• 
  Rowena

  “Education, far from giving people the confidence in their ability and capacities to overcome obstacles or to become masters of the laws governing external nature as human beings, tends to make them feel their inadequacies, their weaknesses and their incapacities in the face of reality; and their inability to do anything about the conditions governing their lives.”- Ngugi wa Thiong’o, Decolonising the Mind
  
  I’ve never seen colonialism described as succinctly as in the following passage:
  
  “The real aim of colonialism was to control the people’s wealth: what they produced, how they produced it, and how it was distributed; to control, in other words, the entire realm of the language of real life. Colonialism imposed its control of the social production of wealth through military conquest and subsequent political dictatorship. But its most important area of domination was the mental universe of the colonised, the control through culture, of how people perceived themselves and their relationship to the world.”
  
  I read this book with my experiences in Africa, conversations with my relatives and friends, and my education at the back of my mind. Trying to make sense of history and my place in it made this book invaluable to me, and helped clarify and reiterate a lot of things. The more I read books on Africa, be they about art, language, history, or politics, the more I’m amazed how the continent is seen, in many people’s minds, as a homogeneous country. This passive thinking really masks the complexity of issues in the continent. Even without colonialism Africa would have been quite intricate but colonialism has truly caused mayhem in the entire continent. And in many ways, language is one of the biggest weapons the colonialists used to do so.
  
  I like wa Thiong’o a lot. Not only is he a great writer, but it’s also clear he is a very passionate person with a lot of love for his country, his continent and his language, and a great advocate for the traditional arts. He is very blunt and I admire that a lot. Nobody is safe from his criticism, even a few of my personal favourites such as Achebe, Soyinka, Cesaire. In a sense he thinks they were brainwashed for putting the language of the colonizers on a pedestal. I think it’s an interesting argument to be had but it’s hard for me to pick a side because I’m admittedly colonized myself and English-dominant, although it’s not my first language. I found it useful to read wa Thiong’o’s perspective regardless.
  
  And wa Thiongo’s perspective is important. He grew up during colonialism after all, so he, unlike me, had the opportunity to study in his native language and unfortunately had to endure being forced to assimilate into the English language.He details how the British tried to suppress local languages in Kenya, how they arrested those who tried to encourage cultural proliferation, and controlled the gathering of people in places. He sees the differences in himself and his society before and after English language education was forced on him, and his explanations and insights are very precise and often personal.
  
  wa Thiong’o is very thorough in how he discusses the role of language as a carrier and transmitter of culture, and what happens when that language is taken away from people. This is such a common story, not just in Africa but even here in Canada, and I think we’re beginning to understand just how damaging it is to suppress and devalue language. In what planet does it make sense that a Kenyan student in colonial Kenya would be punished for speaking Gikuyu or Swahili instead of English? Personally I remember how I was often treated better than my cousins just because I could speak English and they couldn’t; I learned early on how language can be elitist:
  
  “I believe that my writing in Gikuyu language, a Kenyan language, an African language, is part and parcel of the anti-imperialist struggles of Kenyan and African peoples. In schools and universities our Kenyan languages– that is the languages of the many nationalities which make up Kenya– were associated with negative qualities of backwardness, underdevelopment, humiliation and punishment.”
  
  Another great thing about wa Thing’o is how he respects the peasantry (his choice of word). The other day I was reading about the Third Estate in France during the 19th Century revolution and this reminded me of how in Africa the peasantry are the majority, and that’s where the culture comes from. Who makes the oral stories, who upholds the culture? It’s nice to see the peasantry being accredited with maintaining culture and tradition:
  
  “These languages, these national heritages of Africa, were kept alive by the peasantry. The peasantry saw no contradiction between speaking their own mother tongues and belonging to a larger national or continental geography. They saw no necessary antagonistic contradiction between belonging to their immediate nationality, to their multinational state along the Berlin-drawn boundaries, and to Africa on the whole.”
  
  I was struck by the violence caused by colonialism. Colonialism was celebrated, and that’s the world I grew up in: gratitude to the colonialists for “rescuing” us. But what we know now is that it was very very violent and the wounds are still there. If, like wa Thiong’o said, in 1984 the president of the West German Federal Council visited Togo in order to celebrate the centennial of Germany establishing Togo as a German colony, "to commemorate not the resistance to colonisation but the glory of colonisation,” then clearly we haven’t learned much and dialogue still needs to be had.
  
  The constant unlearning, the decolonizing, that needs to be done because we were lied to, is something that I thought of throughout this book. And it’s only now that I’m realizing in more detail just how horrific colonialism was, just how much we’ve lost. What I aim to do myself, how I aim to decolonize my own mind, is by reading more of my history. I’ve also been thinking about how I’ve been influenced by other cultures so I wonder how far I can be decolonized. This got me thinking about globalization and how that has affected us, I would be interested to hear Thiong’o’s thoughts on this. This is definitely a must-read for everyone, there is so much we don’t know or realize about the impact of the actions of those who came before us, and this is a great start.
• 
  Sawsan

  اللغة الأصل موروث لا ينبغي التفريط فيه, ومفردات كل لغة لها خصوصية تُعبر عن أصحابها
  اللغة جزء من هوية الانسان, وبجانب انها وسيلة اتصال هي حامية وحاملة للثقافة والفكر والتراث من جيل لآخر
  الكتاب مقالات أصلها محاضرات للكاتب الكيني نجوجي واثيونجو يناقش فيها موضوع اللغة في الأدب
  يحكي فيها أجزاء من سيرته الذاتية ويعرض التطور في الكتابة الأفريقية بمختلف أنواعها
  واثيونجو عمل لسنوات رئيس لقسم الأدب في جامعة نيروبي وهو من المدافعين عن اللغات والهوية الثقافية الأفريقية
  يعرض واثيونجو سياسة سيطرة الاستعمار الثقافي على البلاد الأفريقية بإحلال اللغة الأوروبية محل اللغات الأصلية بوصفها مرادفة للضعف والتخلف
  والوقوف ضد كل أنواع الثقافة الوطنية, الفنون والمسرح والأدب والموروثات الشعبية
  يكتب عن تجربته في التعليم في المدارس الكولونيالية حيث يرى الطفل الأفريقي العالم بعيون المستعمِر ويعرف أرضه وبيئته وشعبه من خلال لغة وثقافة الاستعمار
  وبالتفصيل عن التجارب الإبداعية المسرحية التي اشترك فيها في المراكز الثقافية في القرى, والجامعة والمسرح الوطني الكيني
  الكثير من كُتاب أفريقيا المبدعين كتبوا الأدب الأفرو أوروبي, لكن بعد الاستقلال يرى واثيونجو ضرورة كتابة الأدب باللغات الأفريقية ليصل لكل طبقات الشعوب
  " كل لغة أفريقية هي جزء من نضال الشعوب ضد الاستعمار, نحن الكُتاب الأفارقة مُلزمون أن نؤدي للغاتنا ما أداه الكُتاب في تاريخ العالم للغاتهم".
  واثيونجو يكتب بحب وغيرة على لغته ووطنه وتراثه
• 
  Warwick

  Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o had already published four acclaimed novels in English when, in 1977, he gave up the language as a vehicle for fiction. A few years later he published this polemic, which he said would be his last writing in English in any genre.
  
  Consequently, he's now probably even more famous among sociolinguists than students of literature, because Decolonising the Mind is a rare example of a top practitioner setting out a total rationale, complete with backstory and running examples, of the political and cultural implications of choosing one language over another.
  
  It would be possible to argue on purely artistic grounds that a local language is simply better at describing certain things – the rhythms of daily life, say, or regional wildlife – than another. But what makes Ngũgĩ's argument so powerful is that his grounds are not artistic, but political. Writing in Kikuyu may give him access to new and interesting aesthetic effects, but that's not why he does it – he does it to resist cultural appropriation and to target a more primary audience.
  
  There's always been a big irony in literature from former colonies that uses a colonial language – what Ngũgĩ calls ‘Afro-European’ literature, a useful term that I'm happy to adopt. Abroad, it's often praised in proportion to how well it shows us the details of different, alien lives, and yet it's obviously aimed at us, not them: the people described are often exactly those excluded from reading it. Chinua Achebe's descriptions of yam farmers in Nigeria will rarely be read by yam farmers in Nigeria, because most of them can't read English.
  
  Ngũgĩ had a crisis about this after writing his third novel, A Grain of Wheat (still the only one of his that I've so far read).
  
  

  I knew whom I was writing about but whom was I writing for? The peasants whose struggles fed the novel would never read it.

  
  
  There's an obvious answer, of course, which is that people write in order to communicate ideas, and writing in a major world language communicates your ideas more widely than doing so in a small regional language. Six or seven million people speak Kikuyu, whereas four hundred million speak English natively and probably almost as many again as a second language. The implications of this are not just remunerative – though that's no small consideration – they're also practical, if you're interested in influencing bigger audiences.
  
  Nevertheless, for Ngũgĩ this is an argument for having a better translation culture, not for the abandonment of a writer's native language. The attempt to wrangle African languages into English has been invigorating and transformative for English – one thinks of Amos Tutuola or Ben Okri – but, at the end of the day, why the hell should we be benefitting at the expense of other languages? ‘We cannot have our cake and eat it,’ he says.
  
  

  Why, we may ask, should an African writer, or any writer, become so obsessed by taking from his mother-tongue to enrich other tongues?

  
  
  It's a fair point. For Ngũgĩ, there's little difference between a postcolonial English enriching itself from African languages, and a colonial England enriching itself from African labour or resources. The problem is circular, because the lack of literatures in many smaller languages leads to an assumption, even from native speakers, that they are unable to support a literature, let alone a world literature. But if addressing that misconception is not the job of writers, whose job is it?
  
  

  We African writers are bound by our calling to do for our languages what Spencer, Milton and Shakespeare did for English; what Pushkin and Tolstoy did for Russian; indeed what all writers in world history have done for their languages by meeting the challenge of creating a literature in them, which process later opens the languages for philosophy, science, technology and all the other areas of human creative endeavours.

  
  
  As an English-speaker, one reads this book with, first of all, a renewed sense of gratitude that so many writers have in fact chosen to write in English, along with a troubling re-evaluation of why they felt it was necessary to do so. At the very least everyone should agree that more translated fiction should be out there, and not just coming from the major languages. Ngũgĩ is one of the few big writers putting his money where his mouth is by writing only in his native tongue, but even he's had to make concessions: his major work, Wizard of the Crow (Mũrogi wa Kagogo), was translated into English by Ngũgĩ himself, so he did actually write the text of the English novel that everyone's reading. If that's not having your cake and eating it, I'm not sure what is.
• 
  leynes

  Decolonising the Mind: The Politics of Language in African Literature had been on my radar for a long time. It is among the most important texts of the postcolonial canon, and one of the most iconic essays written by an African writer ever.
  
  On top of that, I fell in love with its author – Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o – through my reading of his magnum opus Wizard of the Crow. Ngũgĩ’s distinctive writing style, the rich narrative, its urgent message, and, of course, the fact that he wrote this 800-page novel in Gikuyu, his native language, as opposed to English. When he embarked on that project in the early 2000s, he had been writing his fictional works in Gikuyu since 1978. He was amongst the first African writers to honour his native language in that way.
  
  Today, the Kenyan author is one of the most important voices of literature from Africa. Time and again, he has been considered a candidate for the Nobel Prize in Literature [and one day, he’ll get it … JUST YOU WAAAAIT]. Decolonising the Ming, published in 1986, is probably his most influential essay. Nonetheless, it took over 30 years for it to be translated into German.
  
  For Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o, the German translation of his essay closes a circle. For it was here in Germany that he began working on it. Ngũgĩ lived for a short time in Bayreuth in 1984, where he taught at the university as a visiting professor. After that, he was to give a series of lectures at the University of Auckland in New Zealand. He was allowed to choose the topic freely, but had his difficulties with it, as he recalls: "I had to give these four connected lectures, and I couldn't think of anything. But in the silence of Bayreuth, the first lecture, which later became 'Decolonizing the Mind,' took shape in my mind. That's why the connection to Germany is very important to me.”
  
  In this new German edition, Ngũgĩ’s essays are supplemented by current contributions from African authors and scholars who deal with the significance that Ngũgĩ's theses have attained in their homelands: Boubacar Boris Diop (Senegal), Achille Mbembe (Cameroon), Petina Gappah (Zimbabwe), Sonwabiso Ngcowa (South Africa), and Mukoma wa Ngũgĩ (Kenya). For this additional essays alone, it is worthwhile to check out the German translation over the English original.
  
  The degradation of African languages
  
  In this essay, Ngũgĩ shows how imperialism lived on, not only in the minds of the African people but also in the core structures of the many African states that were officially declared independent from former European colonial powers. These lingering “metaphysical empires”, whether English, French or Portuguese, ensured the continued oppression of Africans through the degradation of their native languages.

  But the night of the sword and the bullet was followed by the morning of the chalk and the blackboard. The physical violence of the battlefield was followed by the psychological violence of the classroom. But where the former was visibly brutal, the latter was visibly gentle. ... The bullet was the means of physical subjugation. Language was the means of the spiritual subjugation.

  For decades, African children were, and in some states still are, punished and shamed in school for using their mother tongue. No longer by the British, French, Belgian or Portuguese occupiers, but by native teachers. Who, in turn, implement the directives of their respective governments. The attitude that African languages are inferior has been completely internalized by these successors of the former rulers.
  
  The colonial brainwashing was thus exceedingly successful and persistent in its effects, Ngũgĩ remembers: "When I first used this term [decolonizing the mind], I reaped some opposition, even hostility from African intellectuals. Some of them judged my argument in favor of African languages as a kind of reversion to the past, even a 'retreat into the wilderness.' One could not give up English or the other European languages. Although I didn't say anything about giving up these languages, but that we have to find our roots again in the African languages. And that only African intellectuals can develop their own language, nobody else can do that for us."
  
  A “real” African literature
  
  And Ngũgĩ wasn't just about talk, he was all about action. Since 1978, he has written all of his novels in Gikuyu. Since 1984, he continued with also writing most of his nonfiction in Gikuyu as well. He then translates everything into English himself, to make his texts available for a broader and international audience as well ... but his priorities lie with his own people. He wants to write for his people, many of which (especially of the older generation, like his mother and grandmother) aren't capable of reading in the colonial language and are therefore excluded from this cultural goods. By writing in Gikuyu, he makes literature accessible for them. And Ngũgĩ's endeavors prove successful: his novels in Gikuyu, published by local publishing houses, are bestsellers in his home country.
  
  Ngũgĩ advocates for African literature to be actually written in African languages. What seems to be the most normal thing for almost any other part of the world (...of course German literature is written in German, and not in Xhosa), is subject for discourse and opposition when it comes to African literature.
  
  In the tradition of Chinua Achebe, Africa's most influential writer up to this day, the Western world has defined African literature as one being written in either English, French or Portuguese. Those are the writers and texts that are being perceived as literary worthy, those are the books that get published – mainly by Western publishing houses, for Western audiences. It's a paradox that is as frustrating as it is infuriating.
  
  Language is so much more than just language. It transports myths, ways of thinking, it is the carrier of the culture and mentality of the people who speak it and are anchored it in. To strip someone of their language is a horrible thing. And although things have changed and the idea of decolonization has spread, literature being written in African languages is still the exception rather than the rule.
  
  Young authors recognize themselves
  
  Like I mentioned before, six different African writers were invited to share their thoughts on Ngũgĩ's essay for its German translation. Petinah Gappah from Zimbabwe, for example, describes how she lost her mother tongue, Shona, at school. Today, Gappah translates European literature into Shona, such as George Orwell's Animal Farm, as she has rediscovered the worth and value of her mother tongue.
  
  Sonwabiso Ngcowa from South Africa reports that his neighbors in the township are proud of him as a writer but take issue with the fact that he is writing in English, they demand texts in Xhosa from him. That's a significant shift, as it illustrates how the sense of self-worth and appreciation of their culture has grown over the past decades. African people want to read African literature, written by them, for them. Boubacar Boris Diop also tells of progress, since the number of educational institutions in Senegal that offer studies in Wolof, not just French, has increased over the past decades as well.
  
  Most of these authors, however, continue to write and publish not in their native languages but in the colonial ones. Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o's son Mukoma wa Ngũgĩ, best known in Germany for his Nairobi crime novels, is no exception: As a professor at Cornell University on the U.S. East Coast, he promotes literature in Kiswahili but writes in English himself, as do his four siblings. His father doesn't blame anyone for that:

  "The problem is that you can hardly find publishers who want to publish literature in African languages. Governments act hostile or indifferent toward African languages. There is no supportive climate, and that would have to exist first, an alliance between publishing houses and progressive government policies."

  It is hard enough to publish books as it is. Ngũgĩ knows that if you're an aspiring writer (who isn't famous like himself) who wants to publish in Gikuyu, you won't find a publisher. Your book will disappear in a drawer for a long time, but if you write in English or French the likelihood of being published within a years increases tenfold.
  
  Thus, Ngũgĩ concludes sadly: "Whoever writes in English or French gets immediate attention. Whoever writes in an African language remains invisible." In order to change that, we need a system change, many of the persistent colonial structures, not just within the publishing industry, but also the educational system and the government, need to be uprooted. It will be a long way, a hard struggle, but a necessary one. I salute every African writer who takes up this task!
• 
  Zanna

  In this work Ngugi wa Thiong'o bids farewell to his practice of writing in English, adding that he hopes translation will enable him to continue to communicate with all. He then explains the passionate reasoning behind his belief in the use of African languages by African writers.

  I have come to realise more and more that work, any work, even literary creative work, is not the result of an individual genius but the result of a collective effort

  
  Taking as a founding principle that imperialism and its internal allies will never develop Africa, he critiques the notion that tribal conflict is the source of discord in Kenya and across the continent (invariables like biological nationality cannot be the true source of conflict, which would be eternal and unchanging if that were the case, he says). Rather, the divide and rule practices of colonialism are at the root of such conflict. He identifies two traditions of thought in Kenya: the imperialist tradition of the international bourgeoisie and 'flag waving native ruling classes' and subjugation of the people enforced by police boots, barbed wire, clergy & judiciary, supported by state intellectuals AND the resistance tradition of the working people/peasantry and 'patriotic' petty-bougeoisie/middle class including students and intellectuals, supporting all nationalities in the area against imperialist domination.
  
  Imperialism is the monopolistic and parasitic rule of consolidated finance capital. The freedom for Western finance capital to go on stealing from the working people of the global south is maintained by conventional and nuclear weapons, but more importantly by 'the cultural bomb' that annihilates the self belief and solidarity of the people. Ngugi wa Thiong'o explains that language allows us to define ourselves in relation to our national and social environment:

  our capacity to confront the world creatively is dependant on how those images [of nature and nurture formed by the dynamic process of history & culture reflecting each other] correspond or not to that reality, how they distort or clarify the reality of our struggles

  
  He describes his experience of learning-through-storytelling alongside everyday communication and shared experience in his mother tongue, Gikuyu, and how the harmony of his learning life was broken in colonial schools, where speaking Gikuyu was punished while all achievement in English was rewarded and prioritised. Native languages are associated by colonial education with low status, humiliation, corporal punishment, stupidity and barbarism. For the African child in this context, thought itself takes the visible form of a foreign language, and thus she feels disassociated from her natural and social environment. Ngugi wa Thiong'o explains that culture is transmitted not through language in universality but in its particularity of a specific social/historical context. The way English is used in African countries is not the same as the way it is used in Scandinavian countries as a tool of communication, but as an instrument of control.
  
  Literature written by Africans in European languages by anti-imperial petty bourgeois authors articulated resistance to racist European colonisation and drew on African cultures and histories to give that class self-confidence. This work armed uprisings inspired by political awakening and drew stamina and substance from proverbs and fables of the peasantry, helping struggles for independence. But, as neo-colonial/pro-imperial governments gained power this literature became disiullsioned and cynical. Its authors wanted to communicate with a working class/peasant (WC/P) audience but they were hampered by their use of Euro languages. They created WC/P characters who spoke English and projected their own evasive self-contemplation, existential anguish and crises of identity onto them, falsifying historical processes and realities.
  
  While African authors were worrying about a crisis of identity in African literature and accepting (with some exceptions) the 'fatalistic logic' of linguistic Europeanization of African cultural output, the very neo-col rulers they were haranguing in their books were busy issuing 'distortions, dictatorial directives, museum-type fossils paraded as African culture, feudalistic ideology, superstitions and lies' in the languages of the WC/P! So the result of colonial education, as intended, is to cut off communication between petty-bourgeois intellectuals and their intended audience.
  
  Ngugi wa Thiong'o delineates a minor tradition (praising its great talents such as Achebe, Armah etc and works) of Afro-European literature, which he says will last as long as neo-colonial rule. Since writing in Gikuyu he has been asked why he chose to do so by all kinds of people. Some academics have asked 'why have you abandoned us?' But Gikuyu is his mother tongue! This reversal of common sense relates directly to other upside-down (thanks
  Fela Kuti) logics of imperialism:

  Africa enriches Europe, but Africa is made to believe that Europe needs to rescue it from poverty. Africa's natural and human resources continue to develop Europe and America, but Africa is made to feel grateful for aid from those quarters that still sit on the back of the continent

  
  
  I love the section on African theatre. Colonialism pretends there is no tradition of African theatre, but is it has a long and deep heritage in Kenya, where it was destroyed by the British (any free public gathering is dangeous to authoritarian domination). Part of this tradition was the concept of 'empty space' among the people where theatre took place. Colonialism attempted to destroy this by confining that space in community halls, proscenium theatres and even in prisons and detainment camps where inmates were encouraged to produce neo-colonial and anti- Mau-Mau propaganda plays. Radio drama was also encouraged in which the African as clown was ridiculed: laugh at your own stupidity and simplicity, forget about all this freedom nonsense!
  
  Anti-imperial petty-bourgeois writers tried to break from colonial control by taking control of the Kenyan National Theatre, touring productions of anti-colonial plays, but these were often hampered by the use of English and confinement within walls - this approach brings culture to the people rather than involving them in its creation. By contrast, his production of I Will Marry When I Want in Kamiriithu was defined and shaped by the decision to use Gikuyu, which forced a discussion with the peasants and factory workers about the use of language and about the language of theatre.
  
  Perfection of an art form as a process with a shared history is, Nguigi wa Thiong'o points out, in opposition to the conventional secrecy of rehearsals culminating in a presentation intended to cause amazement and a sense of 'wow, I couldn't do that'. This approach is in keeping with alienating bourgeois education which is a process of weakening people, making them feel incapable, mystifying knowledge. It produces 'a gallery of active stars and an undifferentiated mass of grateful admirers'. Those involved in the Kamiriithu project talked about how it made them feel valuable and integral, how it raised their awareness. The play's license was withdrawn and its writer incarcerated...
  
  Another example of the upside down logic of imperialism and capitalism generally is the possibility of development it offers and then makes impossible . The arrival of the printing press in Kenya was accompanied by the familiar rhetoric of spreading education and culture and dispelling African awe of nature and superstition, but with heavy censorship and careful selection it really pushed a message of subserviance via Christianity, and increased awe of the whip/gun-wielding master. Writing novels in a neo-colonial context meets several obstacles, one of which is that reality is often beyond satire in its grim absurdity. Another is the lack of libraries and book shops in rural areas and the corresponding excuse 'the people are poor and illiterate so they don't need libraries and bookshops'. Yet Ngugi's first book in Gikuyu sold; it was read by literate community members aloud at gatherings, in bars, it was embraced. Build it and they will come...
  
  Finally Ngugi wa Thiong'o addresses the question of relevance and the creation of appropriate education programs. He argues that orature, rooted in WC/P sources of anti-imperial resistance should be centred in Kenyan schooling. Historically, he points out, the great Western humanist authors like Shakespeare, Austen etc who provide incisive comment on bourgeois culture have been treated as if the only themes they dealt with were universal love, fear, birth, death etc. Western education, in my experience, has the same imbalance, universalising and depoliticising the personal, diminishing the particularity of history.
  
  Many African writers have expressed concern to enrich Western literature by making African wisdom accessible and translatable - Ngugi asks why they do not centre the African tradition and seek to enrich that with riches from foreign cultures. He comments on the commitment fellow Kenyan authors expressed (in an advocacy document) not to replace English chavinism with national chauvinism, centring Kenyan orature and literature but including all African and diasporic writing, speaking of the need to introduce the Kenyan child to the world context of black experience. Latin American and Asian literatures would also be studied, with Euro-American not excluded but perhaps lowest in priority.
  

  The search for new directions in language, literature, theatre poetry, fiction and scholarly studies in Africa is part and parcel of the overall struggles of African people against imperialism in its neo-colonial stage. It is part of that struggle for that world in which my health is not dependent on another's leprosy, my cleanliness not on another's maggot-ridden body, and my humanity not on the buried humanity of others

  
  I loved reading this and agreed with it strongly, but I would like to write a few words in defence of contemporary African authors like Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie who write in English. I want to humbly suggest that the paths to decolonisation may be as many and various as the people in need of it (noting that the distinction between coloniser and colonised is blurred, not least by class conditions) and that the uses of literature are also many and various (noting that the distinction between creator and audience is blurred). Perhaps my colonisation and indoctrination into individualism is speaking, but it seems plausible that Ngugi's Marxist conception of literature has some limitations? I look forward to reading more about this subject and how thought in the area has developed.
• 
  Monika

  "But the search for new directions in language, literature, theatre, poetry, fiction and scholarly studies in Africa is part and parcel of the overall struggles of African people against imperialism in its neocolonial stage. It is part of that struggle for that world, in which my health is not dependent on another's leprosy; my cleanliness not on another's maggot-ridden body; and my humanity not on the buried humanity of others."
  
  Ngugi wa Thiong'o's Decolonising the Mind: The Politics of Language in African Literature is a series of essays which discusses about language and the role it plays in history, culture, literature and the lives of its people. The deeply enmeshed reality of linguistic imperialism demarcated uniformity: be it the uniformity of identity, of culture or of language. Seen from a colonial stance, it turned children into "witchhunters" through its need of acceptance. Our languages serve as our reflection. The clearer our sense of identity, the more 'atrociously' visible we will be for the world, but the closer we will feel with our surrounding. Perhaps, as can be digged out from the essays, so away are we from our mother tongue that we no longer feel its absence. The sense of belongingness is now gone. Barring the exceptions, as Ngugi said, only the peasantries and working classes compendiate the African languages.
  
  The sense of African identity and African belongingness was snatched away to be replaced by those of the Westerners. It became so deeply rooted that the heterogeneous identity failed to probe through the works of art. In this process, African novels were also affected. The control of "the printing press, the publishing houses and the educational context" as well as the rise of African universities and colleges deepened the problems further. He then talked about his struggle of writing in Gikuyu language, from tonal variations to the limitations of the prevailing orthography and the surprising reception of his works in Gikuyu.
  
  "How we see a thing even with our eyes is very much dependent on where we stand in relationship to it."
  The eyes of imperialism has blinded our other world views and is driving us to homogenised thinking, which, in turn, is taking away our ability and closeness to our surrounding.
• 
  Claire

  Decolonizing the Mind is integral, I think, to understanding anti-colonialist struggles. The western world understands colonialism in terms of the most visible aspects of a nation, namely its leadership. People fail to recognize the long-term effects of colonialism such as widespread poverty. Decolonizing the Mind reminds us of another of these aftereffects, specifically, the domination of language by the Western World. In a sense, the language barrier has enabled social apartheid where legal separation was considered anachronistic. By dominating African languages, and asserting the superiority of European ones over them, Western nations did (and African administrations still do) perpetuate a system where educated whites rise to the highest social strata while native Africans are resigned to the working classes and peasantry. This domination of language has effectively prevented any native African from rising into intellectual ranks, because, as Ngũgĩ puts it, the use European languages splits African soul in two, forcing him to relinquish his roots if he wishes to climb the social ladder.
• 
  Shadin Pranto

  “Prescription of the correct cure is dependent on a rigorous analysis of the reality.”
  ― Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o
  
  'উড়ে যায় পক্ষী, রেখে যায় পালক' - এই সুবচনের মতো সাম্রাজ্যবাদীরা উপনিবেশ ছেড়ে গেলেও তার চিহ্ন নানান আকারে-প্রকারে রেখে গেছে।সাম্রাজ্যবাদের হাতিয়ারগুলোর অন্যতম হলো ভাষা ও সাহিত্য। কেনিয়ার ঔপন্যাসিক ও তাত্ত্বিক নগুয়ি ওয়া থিয়োঙ্গি ঔপনিবেশিকতার জিঞ্জির মুক্ত হওয়ার কথা বলেছেন আফ্রিকার সাহিত্যের আলোকে। মূলত, ১৯৮৪ সালে দেওয়া একটি ভাষণের অনুলিখন হলো 'Decolonising The Mind'. দীর্ঘ এই বক্তৃতায় পুরো আফ্রিকা মহাদেশের সাহিত্য আজকের দিনেও কেমনভাবে ঔপনিবেশিক প্রভুদের অদৃশ্য হাতের দখলে তা দুর্দান্ত ভঙ্গিত ব্যাখা করেছেন থিয়োঙ্গি।
  
  উপমহাদেশের বিশ্ববিদ্যালয়গুলোতে ইংরেজি ভাষা ও সাহিত্য পড়ানো হয়। কখনো ভেবে দেখেছেন আপনার দেশে কেন ইংরেজি সাহিত্য বিশ্ববিদ্যালয়ে পাঠ্য হবে? ইংরেজরা এসেছিল দেশ লুটতে, তারা কেন এদেশে ইংরেজি সাহিত্য বিভাগ খুলতে গেল তা আপনাকে ভাবায় কি না, নিজেকে প্রশ্ন করুন। ভাবুন, বাংলা সাহিত্যের তুলনায় ইংরেজি সাহিত্যপাঠ এদেশে কেন বেশি লোভনীয়। ইংরেজি বিভাগগুলোতে যা পড়ানো হয়, তা কোন ধরনের টেক্সট তার খোঁজ-খবর নিন। তাহলে আপনার জ্ঞানচক্ষু উন্মোচিত হবে।
  
  অর্থনৈতিক শোষণের চাইতে সাংস্কৃতিক শোষণ বেশি ক্ষতিকর ও সুদূরপ্রসারী। আফ্রিকার স্বদেশি ভাষায় সাহিত্যচর্চা দাঁড়াতে পারেনি, বিশ্বের কাছে পরিচিতি পায়নি নিজ দেশের জনতার ভাষায় রচিত সাহিত্য। কারণ সভ্যতার পীঠস্থান আফ্রিকা মহাদেশের নামজাদা লেখকদের কলমের ভাষা স্বদেশি নয় ; বরং ভিনদেশি। তারা মায়ের ভাষায় লিখতে স্বাচ্ছন্দ্যবোধ করেন না। সাম্রাজ্যবাদীদের যাঁতাকলে তাদের মনের গঠনে ঔপনিবেশিক ভাষার রেশ একটুও কমেনি। তাই এখনও তারা লিখছেন সাবেক প্রভুদের ভাষায়। সাম্রাজ্যবাদের মেফিস্টোফেলিস তাদের বাহ্যিক অবয়বকে সাময়িকভাবে ছেড়ে গেছে বটে। কিন্তু মগজে রেখে গেছে দাসমনোবৃত্তির চিরস্থায়ী বন্দোবস্ত। আফ্রিকার বদলে এশিয়ার যে কোনো দেশ বসিয়ে দিন এবং ভাবুন।
  
  ভীষণ খটোমটো লেখা। তবুও অবশ্যই ইংরেজিতে লেখা মূল বক্তৃতাখানাই পড়ুন। দেখবেন চিন্তার একটি নতুন রাজ্যের দুয়ার খুলে দিয়েছেন থিয়োঙ্গি আর সেই দুয়ার ধরে অগ্রসর হলেই হয়তো মিলবে মনের উপনিবেশের স্বাধীনতা।
• 
  Andy

  Exceptional writing. Puts into words my anxieties with ex pat African writers writing in colonial languages. Brain engaging stuff.
• 
  سماح عطية

  39 _ 52
• 
  Elankumaran

  அடையாள மீட்பு ❤️
  •
  காலனிய ஆதிக்கத்தின் பிடியில் சிக்கிய ஆபிரிக்கர்கள் தங்கள் தாய்மொழி, கலை, இலக்கியம், பண்பாடு மற்றும் கலாசாரம் போன்ற தங்கள் அடையாளத்தை மீட்டுக்கொள்ள மேற்கொண்ட போராட்டங்களையும், தேவையான மாற்றங்களையும், மாற்றங்களின் அவசியத்தைப் பற்றியும் கூகி வா தியாங்கோ அவர்களால் எழுதப்பட்ட Decolonising The Mind: The politics of language in African Literature என்ற நூலின் தமிழாக்கமே இது.
  •
  காலனிய அதிகாரத்தில் தம் சுயம் இழந்து, வேற்றுக்கலாச்சார முகமூடிகளை அணிந்து கொண்டு தம் மெய்முகத்தை தாமே தமக்கு சற்றும் தொடர்பில்லா பார்வையில் கீழ்மையாக எண்ணி, தம் தாய்மொழியின் அத்தியாவசியத்தையும் தம் கலாச்சாரத்தி���் அழகியலையும் மறந்த அத்தனை இனத்தவரும் தொடர்புபடுத்திப் பார்க்கக்கூடிய வகையில் ஆழமான கேள்விகளையும் அறிவார்ந்த உரையாடல்களையும் எழுப்பும் வண்ணம் அமைந்திருக்கிறது இந்நூல்.
  •
  “தேசிய, சனநாயக, மனித குல விடுதலை இதன் மையம். எமது மொழியை மீள் கண்டுபிடிப்பு செய்து மீட்டுருவாக்கம் செய்வதற்கான அறை கூவல், ஆப்பிரிக்காவிலும் உலகெங்கிலும் உள்ள கோடிக்கணக்கான புரட்சிகர சொல்லாடல்களுடான, புதுப்பிக்கப்பட்ட மீள் தொடர்புக்கான அறைகூவல் ஆகும். மனித இனத்தின் உண்மை மொழியை மீள் கண்டுபிடிப்பு செய்வதற்கான கூக்குரல் அது; போராட்ட மொழியை முன்னெடுப்பதற்கான குரல் அது. அதுதான் நமது வரலாற்றுக்கு அடிப்படையான பொதுமை மொழி. போராட்டமே வரலாற்றைப் படைக்கிறது. போராட்டமே நம்மை உருவாக்குகிறது. போராட்டத்தில் தான் நமது வரலாறு, மொழி, இருப்பு தங்கியுள்ளது. அது நாம் எங்கிருந்தாலும் தொடங்கும்; எது செய்தாலும் இருக்கும். அப்போது நாம் மாட்டின் கார்ட்டர் கண்ட கோடிக்கணக்கான மக்களுடன் சேர்வோம்: நாம் கனவுகாண உறங்குபவர் அல்ல; உலகை மாற்றக் கனவு காண்பவர்கள்.”
• 
  Mariano Hortal

  Gracias a los premios Nobel de literatura se pueden descubrir autores que de otra manera permanecerían ignotos por la mayoría de habitantes de la comunidad lectora. Tal es el caso del keniata Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, un excelente autor que, gracias a estar a punto de ganarlo dos años consecutivos, hemos visto publicados este año dos libros de la mano de PMRH en su completísimo sello Debolsillo; uno ha sido una reedición que tenían de su catálogo de Alfaguara, El brujo del cuervo; el otro, Descolonizar la mente: La política lingüística de la literatura africana, una pequeña edición que nos trae cuatro conferencias-ensayos resumiendo su pensamiento al respecto de la lucha contra el neocolonialismo que subyuga al pueblo africano además de enfocarlo como una experiencia vital autobiográfica. Lo excepcional es que el autor, de manera clarividente, lo enfoca hacia el uso del lenguaje como elemento imprescindible para salirse del yugo colonizador constituyendo un texto que bien puede encuadrarse entre lo más florido de los estudios postcoloniales. El lenguaje, en las palabras de Ngũgĩ se convierte en un elemento crucial para la descolonización mediante la construcción de la identidad vernácula
• 
  Moataz

  من الغباء اعتقد انى اكتب تعليق بالأنجليزى على كتاب بيتكلم عن تحرير العقل من الأستعمار. الكتاب تم كتابته باللغة الأنجليزية مش تناقد، إنما للوصول لكل الأوروبيين اللى بيتحدثوا بلغة غير لغة الأم. بيبدأ الكتاب فى أنتقاد لسنين من الزمان والأدب الأفريقى بيتكتب بلغات الأستعمار، مش اللغة الأم. فى الأول بيتكلم عن مؤتمر سخيف للأدباء الأفارقة، الكاتبين باللغة الانجليزية على وجهه الخصوص، وبكدا خرجوا عدد من الأدباء الكبار فى أفريقيا لانهم بس بيكتبوا باللغة الأفريقية الأم. بعد كده، بدأ الكاتب يتناول أراء لأدباء كبار وعالمين زى أتشيبي وغيره وهم بيعظموا فى لغة الأحتلال ويذموا فى اللغة الأفريقية. لدرجة ان فيه كاتب كان بيقول ان اللغة الأفريقة دم وطين، لكن اللغة الفرنسية ألماس. المؤلف "نجوجى"، بيبدأ بعدها يتكلم ازاى اللغة مهمة فى تكوين الفرد، خصوصا فى الطريقة اللى الشخص بيها بيتخيل او تتخيل او بتعبر عن نفسها، او ازاى بتشوف العالم و بتشوف نفسها. وبعدين بدأ يتكلم عن ازاى المستعمر بدأ يكره الناس فى لغتهم من خلال التعليم ومن ثم يكرههم فى نفسهم وثقافتهم. بيقول - من خلال تجربته الشخصية للأسف اثناء الدراسة - ان كان بيتم معاقبة الشخص اللى يقول كلمة من لغته الأم فى أى وقت بأنه يلبس طايقة مكتوب عليها انا غبى، إلى ان يفتن على شخص تانى، وبكدا الشخص التانى يلبس القبعة. وهكذا.. اتكلم عن الكتابة بلغتك الأم كان عقابها اكبر، هو انك تتضرب بعصاية كبيرة على مؤخرتك العارية قدام المدرسة كلها. وبكدا يثبت جوا أدمغة الأطفال، بشكل لا واعى، ان لغتهم تترادف مع الإهانة او الغباء انعدام الكرامة. بيقول كل ده كوم، والمنهج الدراسى كوم تانى. كان الأطفال بيدرسوا، لأدباء و مؤرخين أوروبيين، والمنهج كان بيتحدث بطلاقة عن وجهه نظر البيض فى الأفارقة، كونهم حيوانات، غير متحضرين، وأقل من أى ابيض فى الجسد فى العقل وفى الروح.
  اتكلم الكاتب برده عن أهمية الثقافة فى اللغة، لان بكل بساطة - وده بديهى - الثقافة محملة فى اللغة. اللغة مش بس تعبير وانما هى أفكار بتساهم فى تعريف الفرد لنفسه وللناس اللى حواليه، لان - بديهى برده - اللغة هى وسيلة للتواصل جوا الفرد و مع الناس اللى حواليه.
  الكتاب بدأ يتكلم عن الطبقة البرجوازية اللى تخلفت الأستقلال. وهو قال انها مش برجوازية هى اشبه بيها. الطبقة دى - هو نفسه منها - اتعلمت تعليم أجنبى، حلمت بالأستقلال و الحرية و الحضارة. وكان عندها رفض للثقافة الأفريقية - تعباً للتعليم اللى خاضواه. وعندهم مبدأ اساسى واحد "انهم يبقوا أوروبا جديدة." وعشان كدا حتى بعد الأستقلال التعليم ظل باللغة الأستعمارية، من أجل تحويل باقى الفلاحين والطبقة العاملة لمتحدثين باللغات الأوروبية. المبهر ان ده فشل، الناس بقت بتتكلم اللغتين. لان قبل الأستقلال، الأحتلال بدأ يقسم البلاد ديه، ويحط جوا الحيز الواحد من الدولة عدد مختلف من الثقافات اللى بيتكلموا اكتر من لغة. فالواقع الناس تبنت اللغة الأوروبية - بس - عشان يتكلموا مع أقرانهم من الناس. لكن لما يرجع قريته بيتكلم بلغته الأم تانى.
  الكاتب اتكلم عنها عن عبقرية. اتكلم عن الكتابة باللغة الأوروبية حتى مصير محتوم او طريق ميت، مجرد فترة مغفلة فى التاريخ الأفريقى. وقال ان ده اللى المفروض يحصل أصلا. الناس دول وجودهم فى التاريخ بس عشان يوصل للأستعمار - بلغته - هو سبب ايه. انك تكتب بالأنجليزى للأنجليز هم البشاعات اللى عملوها هنا او هناك. وبعد كدا، الخطاب ده هينتهى، وهتبدأ بخطاب قومى بيستهدف العامة. وهنا الكاتب تجاهل تماما تعدد اللغات جوا البلد الواحد. ازاى يكون فيه لغة موحدة، مش عارف. اللغة الأوروبية كان ليها دور كبير فى الأستقلال و التحاور مع الأحتلال. اللغة الأوروبية ليها دور فى الدعاية. لو اتشيبى او غيره، مكنش بيكتب بالأنجليزى، انا مكنتش قريت عنهم. مافيش اى أديب تم ذكر انه بيكتب باللغة الأفريقية انا سمعت عنه قبل كدا. مش لأى شيئ، وإنما لان اللغات الأستعمارية لغات عالمية. وعليه اعتقد الحل هو أعطاء اللغة الأفريقية أهمية بالغة، لكن لايعنى ان الكتابة باللغة الانجليزية طريق مسدود.
  
  فى عصر النهضة المصرى أغلب أدباء العصر كان بيسعوا لنفس المبدأ، الفكرة انه كان بشكل مختلف. الفكرة ان الإسلام حتى لو مكنش قوى عسكرياً ضد الأحتلال، يظل كان قوى ثقافياً كفاية ان اللغة العربية ماتندثرش وانها تبقى لغة الثقافة و الحضارة اللى استخدمها طه حسين، عباس العقاد...إلى اخر الأدباء فى هذا العصر. لكن يظل المبدأ الأوحد "نريد ان نكون مثل أوروبا"، او زى ما البعض يحب التسمية الأخرى "نريد ان نكون عصر إسلامى ذهبى جديد" برده لنلحق بركب أروربا. شعور المجتمعات تحت الاحتلال الأوروبى بالصغر والضائلة، بالجهل و الحقارة، شعور عالمى. كان دافعهم، فى كل انحاء العالم انهم يرغبوا ان يكونوا زى أروروبا. المشكلة اننا خلاص تحت تأثير أوروبا ويبدوا ان مافيش اى طريقة لعكس التأثير ده. وبنتخبط كتير جدا - بشكل لاواعى طبعاً - فى الهوية الدينية و الهوية الثقافية، فى العصر الحالى بالتحديد، لأنعدام مفكرين على أوزان طه حسين و عباس العقاد (انا بذكر دول بأستمرار لانهم متضادين فى الفكر تماما)، حد فيه درس فى فرنسا وفكره أوروبى، وحد فيهم درس العروبة و التاريخ الإسلامى الصرف. فنحن بنعيش فى عصر عجيب من العولمة و محاولة التشبث فى الدين، فى غياب الوعى و الثقافة - او بالأحرى الثقافة النابعة من شبكات التواصل الاجتماعى و التليفزيون.
  
• 
  Mitchell Clifford

  A phenomenal text for all educators to read, especially those wishing to teach English and/or Drama!
• 
  Tinea

  God bless this man. Wow. Real review to come.
• 
  Alejandro Teruel

  For me, the least attractive parts of this 1981 book are its occasional descents into stock, strident, marxist-inspired, antiimperialist cant:

  I shall look at the African realities as they are affected by the great struggle between the two mutually opposed forces in Africa today: an imperialist tradition on one hand, and a resistance tradition on the other. The imperialist tradition in Africa is today maintained by the international bourgeoisie using the multinational and of course the flag-waving native ruling classes. The economic and political dependence of this African neo-colonial bourgeoisie is reflected in its culture of apemanship and parrotry enforced on a restive population through police boots; barbed wire, a gowned clergy and judiciary; their ideas are spread by a corpus of state intellectuals, the academic and journalistic laureates of the neo-colonial establishment. The resistance tradition is being carried out by the working people (the peasantry and the proletariat) aided by patriotic students, intellectuals (academic and non-academic), soldiers and other progressive elements of the petty middle class.

  The wonder of the book is that it manages to transcend such passages by interweaving the author’s personal experiences and an analysis of African literature and focusing on African authors’ growing realization of the implications of the decision they faced in choosing whether to write in their native, African language or in the European language imposed on them in their colonial past. This choice of language is a reflection of cultures brought to a crucial crossroads. On the one hand, African languages were, and are, the rich linguistic repositories of colloquial, everyday life and traditions, while the European languages were the languages of school, higher education, and technology. Should the African writer attempt to carve out a niche Anglo-African or Franco-African literature, a literature which might appeal to wider, foreign audiences but be would out of the reach of most of his country men, or should the African writer develop a literature for his country men even if this meant erecting higher barriers to reach world-wide audiences?
  
  By the time Ngugi wa Thion’o wrote this book he had no doubts about the path to take, he saw renouncing to Gikuyu as tantamount to alienating himself, and the people he most identified with from their common cultural heritage:

  The choice of language and the use to which language is put is central to a people's definition of themselves in relation to their natural and social environment, indeed in relation to the entire universe. Hence language has always been at the heart of the two contending social forces in the Africa of the twentieth century.

  He puts it even more bluntly, as an attempt to colonialize minds -hence the title of the book:

  The effect of a cultural bomb is to annihilate a people's belief in their names, in their languages, in their environment, in their heritage of struggle, in their unity, in their capacities and ultimately in themselves. It makes them see their past as one wasteland of non-achievement and it makes them want to distance themselves from that wasteland. It makes them want to identify with that which is furthest removed from themselves; for instance, with other peoples' languages rather than their own.

  It is an interesting political twist on the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis with Owellian overtones:

  In my view language was the most important vehicle through which [the power of imperialism] fascinated and held the soul prisoner.. The bullet was the means of the physical subjugation. Language was the means of the spiritual subjugation.

  Thiong’o points out that he first became aware of the key question, What is African Literature, when this was stated in a 1962 conference in Kampala, Uganda:

  The debate which followed was animated: Was it literature about Africa or about the African experience? Was it literature written by Africans? What about a non African who wrote about Africa: did his work qualify as African literature? What if an African set his work in Greenland: did that qualify as African literature? Or were African languages the criteria? OK: what about Arabic, was it not foreign to Africa? What about French and English, which had become African, languages? What if a European wrote about Europe in an African language? If ... if … if ... this or that, except the issue: the domination of our languages and cultures by those of imperialist Europe: in any case there was no Fagunwa or Shabaan Robert or any writer in African languages to bring the conference down from the realms of evasive abstractions. The question was never seriously asked: did what we wrote qualify as African literature?

  He disapproving quotes a 1964 speech by Chinua Achebe;

  Is it right that a man should abandon his mother tongue for someone else's? It looks like a dreadful betrayal and produces a guilty feeling. But for me there is no other choice. I have been given the. language and I intend to use it.

  Ngugi WaThiong’o is an eloquent and persuasive writer and his personal account of how he came to renounce English as his primary writing language is fascinating.
  
  The heart of this book is its first chapter, aptly titled The Language of African Literature from which all the previous quotes are taken. But the next two chapters, The Language of African Theatre and The Language of African Fiction, particularly the first of the two are just as masterful and interesting.
  
  It is a measure of Thion’o stature as a writer that this book is still of interest, not least because it has elements with which other subjugated nations and peoples or language minorities can clearly identify. This covers not only Amerindians or First Nation People, aboriginal australians, Maories, Indians but also writers from minority immigrant cultures growing up between ancestral Yiddish, Chinese, Hispanic, Arab, Iranian roots and the majority culture in the US, Europe, Brazil or whatever, Catalans and Galicians in Spain, not to mention emigré writers. In the end we do not think less of Joseph Conrad or R.K. Narayan for choosing to write in English, Milan Kundera for writing some of his work in French or Vladimir Nabokov in English, Thomas Mann for continuing to write in German while in exile in the US, Isaac Bashevis Singer in Yiddish or Hannah Arendt for choosing to write some of her books in German and others in English. However the importance of language considered as a key part of a personal, and cultural identity cannot be dismissed out of hand, as the politically motivated revivals of such languages as Norwegian, Hebrew or Irish have shown.
• 
  Yordanos

  Phew. Where to start with this book? While it is a deceptively short book (~114 pages), it took me months to finish it because unpacking, synthesizing, and critically engaging with what Ngūgī puts forth in these lectures demands such reckoning.
  
  First and foremost, as an African, this book hit home in major ways for me. In ways that required me to go back -- in memory, research, introspection, and further reading -- and examine my formative education (in school and beyond), the socio-cultural and political attitudes and philosophies that informed it, the language of my education, knowledge, and expression (self-, country-, continent-, et al), and so much more. The first chapter alone took me in a rabbit hole of research and reading into related matters that by the time I got back to this book, a considerable time had passed. At the core of it, this book opened up my eyes in very essential ways that have me questioning my past, present, and future -- questions that I'm intentionally and critically engaging with now more than ever, and deliberating on how I want to step into AND contribute to this ongoing conversation that Ngūgī impresses upon.
  
  The above said, there are several ideas Ngūgī posits in this book that could benefit from further dialogue and exploration. A couple of examples:
  - Ngūgī sees a clear demarcation b/n the peasantry and working class vs. the 'bourgeoisie' to the extent that he believes the true native language, knowledge, identity, 'core' of the nation lies in the former and not the latter. What is found in the latter is an adulterated, bastardized version that consciously or unconsciously further perpetuates the colonizers' agenda, mentality, and enforced erosion and erasure of culture, identity, language, etc. I get where he's coming from but this black and white framing of the issue doesn't sit well with me -- starting with the definitions and delineations that inform such designation, as well as the attitude and bias that informs such framing, I feel there's more to unpack on this point.
  - The romanticization of 'struggle'! Oi, this bothered me more and more with each mention of "the glorious struggle" permeating the book. As much as Ngūgī tries to implore Africans to go back to our roots and reclaim what lies there, the whole pre- and post-colonization frame seems to have skewed how even struggle is discussed. What's so glorious about struggle, especially when it's one forced upon people for many decades? I can't imagine any group of people that'd want to struggle as black people have, in Africa, Caribbean, America, and elsewhere, for generations. It was a necessary evil. It still is. I don't see anything 'glorious' about it. The fact that we still need to decolonize our minds, politics, culture, language, etc TO THIS DAY is (at least to me) the opposite of glorious, in any sense of the word.
  
  Overall, this is a book I will revisit and reference well into the future. It's also one I'd highly recommend, esp. to Africans.
• 
  haleigh eustis

  I started this last week and forgot to log it on goodreads! It was really good, Thiong’o is an intellect who has eye opening philosophies that I had never thought of. A very easy and enjoyable read, and very informative. I learned a lot of language and it’s affect on culture — his writing style is very seamless and feels as though he’s speaking to the reader. The mixture of philosophy and personal stories and experiences kept me intrigued and grasped my attention. It’s not a terrible long book, and definitely worth the time to sit down and read!
• 
  Alba P

  De fet de contingut són 10 estrelles
• 
  Nikhil

  A collection of insightful essays about how to define self and reconstruct a system of knowledge in the aftermath of colonialism, and the role language, form, and content of literature has to play in this process. The main arguments are as follows: (1) African/post colonial literature should reflect the ideas, lives, language, sounds, thoughts of the people who live there; (2) this is the only way for these literatures to revitalize the consciousness of formerly colonized peoples and ensure that post colonial peoples cease to define themselves in relation to a moribund Europe; (3) to do this these literatures have to be in native languages, and reflect native literary forms/content/production processes. A natural corollary is that the post colony must reject the language of the colonizer and reemphasize learning and thought in native languages.
  
  Ngugi is a skilled rhetorician and writer, and these essays are no exception. A highlight is when he makes the point that writings by Africans in European languages constitute Afro-European literature, and that missionaries/colonizers/dictators are experts in African language requiring that African intellectuals use these languages to argue against these colonialist
  Propaganda. Another highlight is his appeal regarding what literature and education can do (create knowledge of self, empower individuals to see themselves in many different roles) as opposed to what it does in the post colony where educational systems preserve the colonial logic of training obedient clerks (tear people down and create despondency).
  
  A lot of the issues Ngugi describes apply to South Asia as well: schools that penalize students for speaking or writing in native languages, educational systems that prioritize English over knowledge of native language, educational systems that create docile clerks rather than empowered individuals, etc. I am curious as to whether folks in Latin America feel similarly, or if Spanish is sufficiently a native language? Ngugi agrees that European language can become native, but then the writing should be in the cadences and sound and form of the native version (which it usually isn’t). The point is to communicate with your own people, not Europe, so write accordingly.
  
  The arguments in these essays are worth articulating, even if they don’t seem too controversial today (or maybe they still are given that the education systems have not changed, see Rhodes must fall).
  
  
• 
  Meli

  This is difficult to rate. The ideas it contains, are, of course, essential. But the writing was lacking.
  
  Some of the limitations:
  - Repetitive. Thiong'o goes on for endless pages repeating the same ideas without building on them. He simply repackages them in differently worded paragraphs.
  - Imprecise. The could use a good editor. There are swaths of word soup where one has no clue what the author is trying to say (and I suspect he didn't either in those particular sentences.) More care and precision with his words would go a long way in delivering more impact.
  - Name/story dropping. There are whole chapters where he lists author after author, sometimes briefly explaining the basic premise and characters of their works, in repeat. Of course, we do need some of this when he is outlining the conditioning in the inherited colonial education system and contextualizing the need for an Afrocentric culture of literature. But instead, he seems to provide a shopping list of his entire university curriculum in the Department of English.
  - Vaguely misogynistic? Many different sections, but the most obvious is the bizarre part about "the wife of the rich, the wife of the elite" and, in the same section, the wife who wanted two "c*nts" because her husband sought two penises. Add to that the fact that I'm convinced Thiong'o has never read a word of literature by a woman author. He lists at least 200 books/authors in this essay (see my critique on name/story dropping), and not one, ONE, was by a woman. Or is he to suggest that African women do (or did not yet) have a place in the African canon? We all know this to be untrue. And then there were myriad unsettling gendered decisions, like referring to authors, politicians, readers, and the general Kenyan as "he" while the motherland of Kenya/Africa was a "she".
  
  Overall I'm glad to have read it. I was expecting more on theory and less on technical processes that rolled out the Kenyan/East African literature and cultural ethos in children's schools, publishing houses, and universities of today. But it was interesting to read how these subversive processes have taken place in a practical sense.
• 
  Mely

  Subway book because
  Wizard of the Crow is too heavy for the commute.
  
  First reread in about fifteen years. So far I've discovered I completely misremembered at least one major point: wa'Thiong'o, far from being hostile about the translation of his work into English, welcomes it as a continued communication. He just refuses to make English his primary language of literary communication.
  
  This discovery is not particularly surprising, given how I've seen other white people misread and miscomprehend similarly clear statements of intent from people of color in discussions of race.
  
  --
  
  Finished reread. I expect the first time I read it, I mainly wrestled with the question of literatures in African vs. English languages, the reconstruction of an Afro-centric canon, and what that might mean for a white woman in the US, as well as the chapters on the construction of the novel; this time I was fascinated by the depiction of the democratic development of theater, enabled by the shift from English to Gikuyu.
  
  Notes for eventual review:
  - wa Thiong'o's postcolonialism draws much of its theoretical basis from Marxism, although he is stronger on feminism (if not heterocentrism) than most of the base Marxist source texts
  
  - Marxism's great gift to cultural studies is the demystification of the economic basis of cultural practices (including but not limited to art and education). Be wary when Marxists mystify key steps in liberation (i.e., race will fall away after the revolution), a problem wa Thiong'o mostly avoids; I was delighted with his focus on concrete historical details.
  
• 
  Wim

  Very powerful book on how colonization did not only have an impact on economic development and governance, but also and more profoundly on culture and minds. Western culture and languages are up to today considered as being superior and more fit for modern societies than African languages: western culture and languages are still promoted through education throughout Africa. When entering primary school, African children receive the message that their own language and culture is worthless and that everything of value comes from the West: a very traumatizing experience that has profound consequences.
  
  Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o links liberation struggles of the masses against the imperialism of the local elite bourgeoisie to the promotion of African languages and cultures and calls upon African writers to reconnect with the rich African traditions of orature, storytelling, poetry, songs and theater. He has a clear message: real empowerment and decolonization of African populations is only possible through a revival of African languages and culture.
• 
  سلسبيل فرج

  واثينغو في كتابه هذا يدعو إلى العودة للذات، للغة الإفريقية، للكف عن استخدام لغات المستعمر الذي عاد مجددا بشكله النيو كولونيالي ليسرق "كنوز العقل الإفريقي" والفصل بين لغة الثقافة ولغة التعليم حيث يشتت الطفل ويعرضه "لثقافة هي نتاج عالم خارجي بالنسبة له" وهكذا..
  الكتاب جيد بصفة عامة، يعرض صورة واضحة لمفهوم تطويع المستعمر اللغة لخدمة مصالحه.
  
  
  (توصية أيمن عبدالرحيم في سلسلته الوعي اللغوي -مدرسة شيخ العمود)
• 
  Kirtida Gautam

  "Language, any language, has a dual characteristic: it is both a means of communication and a carrier of culture."
  ~ Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o
  
  This is by far the best non-fiction book I have read in 2020. In no uncertain terms, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o describes how language erosion has been used as a political weapon against colonized civilizations.
• 
  thuys

  I guess youll find echoes of what the author says about national language in many authors belong to small countries, esp colonised ones. What confused me the most is that if youre so passionated about your own mother tongue, why want so badly to be known by foreigners so you yourself translate right away what you write into a language that you yourself speak so against of?