Seen as an economic, political, cultural, and psychological re-membering vision, it should continue to guide remembering practices
NGUGI WA THIONG'OI think a repressive regime always fears people who are awakened – particularly ordinary people. If they are awakened, I think governments all over the world feel uncomfortable about that; they want to be in control.
More Ngugi wa Thiong'o Quotes
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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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I think a repressive regime always fears people who are awakened – particularly ordinary people. If they are awakened, I think governments all over the world feel uncomfortable about that; they want to be in control.
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The Bible has affected their lives, but in translation, since they do not read the Bible in the original Greek or Hebrew.
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How could Europe lord it over a continent ten times its size? Why does needy Africa continue to let its wealth meet the needs of those outside its borders and then follow behind with hands outstretched for a loan of the very wealth it let go?
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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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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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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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Any writer likes to be near the area which is the location of his work.
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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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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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We can appreciate each other’s languages. And the question of being uncomfortable about our languages would go away.
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Life, struggle, even amidst pain and blood and poverty, seemed beautiful.
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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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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.
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Writing in African languages became a topic of discussion in conferences, in schools, in classrooms; the issue is always being raised – so it’s no longer “in the closet,” as it were. It’s part of the discussion going on about the future of African literature.
NGUGI WA THIONG'O