A person who acquires English has access to all the things that that language makes possible.
NGUGI WA THIONG'OThe Bible affects everybody’s life who is a Christian, from the middle class in Europe to the peasant in Africa and Asia.
More Ngugi wa Thiong'o Quotes
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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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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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If poverty was to be sold three cents today, i can’t buy it.
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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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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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People went to war as a result of it and even today, every Sunday.
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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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There is no way we can survive as a nation in the world without finding unity.
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Life, struggle, even amidst pain and blood and poverty, seemed beautiful.
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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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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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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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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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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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