So what I thought was just an African problem or issue is actually a global phenomenon about relationships of power between languages and cultures.
NGUGI WA THIONG'OYou 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.
More Ngugi wa Thiong'o Quotes
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A person who acquires English has access to all the things that that language makes possible.
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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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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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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 poverty was to be sold three cents today, i can’t buy it.
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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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I 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.
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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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We can appreciate each other’s languages. And the question of being uncomfortable about our languages would go away.
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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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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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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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Seen as an economic, political, cultural, and psychological re-membering vision, it should continue to guide remembering practices
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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.
NGUGI WA THIONG'O