Any writer likes to be near the area which is the location of his work.
NGUGI WA THIONG'OSo what I thought was just an African problem or issue is actually a global phenomenon about relationships of power between languages and cultures.
More Ngugi wa Thiong'o Quotes
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You get another person who operates only in an African language and there are many persons who operate only in African languages; he or she is excluded from all the goodies that come with English.
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Life, struggle, even amidst pain and blood and poverty, seemed beautiful.
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The Bible in translation is being read to thousands and thousands in Africa. It is an integral part of their functioning and the way they look at the world.
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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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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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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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In terms of language, English is very dominant vis-Ã-vis African language. That in itself is a power relationship – between languages and communities – because the English language is a determinant of the ladder to achievement.
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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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We can appreciate each other’s languages. And the question of being uncomfortable about our languages would go away.
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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 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 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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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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Seen as an economic, political, cultural, and psychological re-membering vision, it should continue to guide remembering practices
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Christianity and Western civilization-what countless crimes have been committed in thy name!
NGUGI WA THIONG'O