BOOK REVIEW: DECOLONISING THE MIND BY NGUGI WA THIONGO' O

Reviewed by
Matthew Ujah Peter

Wa Thiongo'o writes of two mutually opposed forces in Africa today: an imperialist tradition on one hand, and a resistance tradition on the other. Decolonizing the Mind is an interesting book that address significant issues, and Ngugi's presentation is consistently engaging. Though aspects are already dated, it can still serve as the basis for fruitful discussion of a subject that continues to be of interest. According to him imperialism continues after the colonial period.Ngugi maintain that it is important to reach an audience in the language of its heritage, but one of the difficulties with that is that it is financially difficult to publish in local languages in Africa. The state of publishing is deplorable through much of the continent, and writers are drawn to English and French also because the audiences they want to reach are often Western ones. It is terribly disappointing how difficult it is to find any books by African authors originally written in an African language. There are a few, but they are very few. Ngugi is to be lauded for his efforts in this book and for his willingness to stand up for what he believes. Would that more followed his example.

Clearly there is a need to create a literature that conveyed the true African experience -- from the perspective of the local, not the visitor or outsider. The local language is an integral part of conveying that experience, often because much of local tradition has been preserved in that language -- for example, in the songs and stories that have been passed down through oral tradition. 

 In the second chapter of this book, The Language of African Theatre, Ngugi describes his experiences at the Kamiriithu Community Education and Culture Centre, and the efforts to stage drama there in Gikuyu. Ngugi convincingly shows the benefits of working in the local language, and within local traditions, as the entire community works together to create and shape a play. Ngugi's basic arguments are largely convincing, and his personal experiences, related to explain how he learned and changed his views, make the entire book an interesting read. 

Ngugi rightly complains that an educational efforts that embraced essentially only foreign works (not only foreign in language, but also in culture) was destructive "Thus language and literature were taking us further and further from ourselves to other selves, from our world to other worlds" he opined. Ngugi argues that colonization was not simply a process of physical force. Rather, "the bullet was the means of physical subjugation. Language was the means of the spiritual subjugation." In Kenya, colonization propagated English as the language of education and as a result, orature in Kenyan indigenous languages withered away. This was devastating to African literature because, as Ngugi writes, "language carries culture and culture carries (particularly through orature and literature) the entire body of values by which we perceive ourselves and our place in the world." Therefore, how can the African experience be expressed properly in another language?

BOOKS: A Collection of Quote About Books

These are not books, lumps of lifeless paper, 
but minds alive on the shelves. From each of
them goes out its own voice... and just as the 
touch of a button on our set will fill the room 
with music, so by taking down one of these 
volumes and opening it, one can call into range 
the voice of a man far distant in time and space,
and hear him speaking to us, mind to mind, 
heart to heart. ~Gilbert Highet

That place that does contain
My books, the best companions, is to me
A glorious court, where hourly I converse
With the old sages and philosophers;
And sometimes, for variety, I confer
With kings and emperors, and weigh their counsels;
Calling their victories, if unjustly got,
Unto a strict account, and, in my fancy,
Deface their ill-placed statues.
~Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher