There is no way we can survive as a nation in the world without finding unity.
NGUGI WA THIONG'OI was wondering why I was put in prison for working in an African language when I had not been put in prison for working in English. So really, in prison I started thinking more seriously about the relation between language and power.
More Ngugi wa Thiong'o Quotes
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Of course it’s very, very important for me to feel Kenya, to feel, every day, this is where images come from. So to be taken away from that by political pressure or other means – one is taken away from the area, which is the basis of inspiration – is difficult.
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Through the act of translation we break out of linguistic confinement and reach many other communities.
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What’s good about writing is that when you write novels or fiction, people can see that the problems in one region are similar to problems in another region.
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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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If poverty was to be sold three cents today, i can’t buy it.
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People went to war as a result of it and even today, every Sunday.
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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 same questions are there in Native American languages, they’re there in native Canadian languages, they’re there is some marginalized European languages, like say, Irish.
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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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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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I’m writing for those people in Kenya, but in Irvine and in New York.
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Any writer likes to be near the area which is the location of his work.
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Christianity and Western civilization-what countless crimes have been committed in thy name!
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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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It was a revelation for me, in a practical sense, that you could write in an African language and still reach an audience beyond that language through the art of translation.
NGUGI WA THIONG'O