People went to war as a result of it and even today, every Sunday.
NGUGI WA THIONG'OWhy did Africa let Europe cart away millions of Africa’s souls from the continent to the four corners of the wind?
More Ngugi wa Thiong'o Quotes
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Those who strive to build a protective wall around it, and those who wish to pull it down; those who seek to mould it and those committed to breaking it up; those who aim to open our eyes, to make us see the light and look to tomorrow […] and those who wish to lull us into closing our eyes
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Our lives are a battlefield on which is fought a continuous war between the forces that are pledged to confirm our humanity and those determined to dismantle it.
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Another phenomenon developing in Kenya is ethnic cleansing – and that’s the thing that has made me very sad. Because some people will use the cover of the problems of rigged elections to do things that are unacceptable like ethnic cleansing and displacement of people. It’s completely unacceptable.
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So what I thought was just an African problem or issue is actually a global phenomenon about relationships of power between languages and cultures.
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Then they begin to see through their language that the problems described there are the same as the problems they are having. They can identify with characters from another language group.
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What is translated from English and into English – and in what quantities – is a question of power.
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For me, being in prison writing in an African language was a way of saying: “Even if you put me in prison, I will keep on writing in the language which made you put me in prison.”
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Any writer likes to be near the area which is the location of his work.
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So we’re talking about the Bible itself being a translation of a translation of a translation. And, in reality, it has affected people’s lives in history.
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Seen as an economic, political, cultural, and psychological re-membering vision, it should continue to guide remembering practices
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And even in terms of justice, law codes, the legal system. A person who does not know English in Africa is excluded from that system because he can only operate through acts of translation.
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The Bible affects everybody’s life who is a Christian, from the middle class in Europe to the peasant in Africa and Asia.
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How did we arrive at this, that the best leader is the one that knows how to beg for a share of what he has already given away at the price of a broken tool? Where is the future of Africa?
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I’m writing for those people in Kenya, but in Irvine and in New York.
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Christianity and Western civilization-what countless crimes have been committed in thy name!
NGUGI WA THIONG'O