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.
NGUGI WA THIONG'OAny writer likes to be near the area which is the location of his work.
More Ngugi wa Thiong'o Quotes
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There is no way we can survive as a nation in the world without finding unity.
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A person who acquires English has access to all the things that that language makes possible.
NGUGI WA THIONG'O -
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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I’m more trying to connect; I’m more listening to people. Whatever I get is very meaningful to me.
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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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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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Life, struggle, even amidst pain and blood and poverty, seemed beautiful.
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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?
NGUGI WA THIONG'O -
I’m writing for those people in Kenya, but in Irvine and in New York.
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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?
NGUGI WA THIONG'O -
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.
NGUGI WA THIONG'O -
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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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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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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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.
NGUGI WA THIONG'O