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'OIf poverty was to be sold three cents today, i can’t buy it.
More Ngugi wa Thiong'o Quotes
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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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They want to be the ones telling people: “This is what we have done in history” but when people begin to say, “No this is what we have done in history” it’s a different thing.
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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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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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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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We can appreciate each other’s languages. And the question of being uncomfortable about our languages would go away.
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The Pan-Africanism that envisaged the ideal of wholeness was gradually cut down to the size of a continent, then a nation, a region, an ethnos, a clan, and even a village in some instances But Pan-Africanism has not outlived its mission.
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There is no way we can survive as a nation in the world without finding unity.
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I’m more trying to connect; I’m more listening to people. Whatever I get is very meaningful to me.
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I’m writing for those people in Kenya, but in Irvine and in New York.
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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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If a novel is written in a certain language with certain characters from a particular community and the story is very good or illuminating, then that work is translated into the language of another community.
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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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We think of politics in terms of power and who has the power. Politics is the end to which that power is put.
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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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