We can appreciate each other’s languages. And the question of being uncomfortable about our languages would go away.
NGUGI WA THIONG'OHow 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?
More Ngugi wa Thiong'o Quotes
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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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So we’re talking about the Bible itself being a translation of a translation of a translation. And, in reality, it has affected people’s lives in history.
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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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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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Why did Africa let Europe cart away millions of Africa’s souls from the continent to the four corners of the wind?
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If poverty was to be sold three cents today, i can’t buy it.
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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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Life, struggle, even amidst pain and blood and poverty, seemed beautiful.
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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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People went to war as a result of it and even today, every Sunday.
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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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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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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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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