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Book Cover for: Decolonising the Mind: The Politics of Language in African Literature, Ngugi Wa Thiong'o

Decolonising the Mind: The Politics of Language in African Literature

Ngugi Wa Thiong'o

Paperback
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Ngugi describes this book as 'a summary of some of the issues in which I have been passionately involved for the last twenty years of my practice in fiction, theatre, criticism and in teaching of literature. North America: Heinemann; Kenya: EAEP

Book Details

  • Publisher: James Currey
  • Publish Date: Jun 26th, 1986
  • Pages: 128
  • Language: English
  • Edition: undefined - undefined
  • Dimensions: 8.40in - 5.50in - 0.40in - 0.35lb
  • EAN: 9780852555019
  • Categories: • African• African• Colonialism & Post-Colonialism

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What people are saying

Mentioner image for: Alex Zucker
Alex Zucker
@alexjzucker
2 years

I decided to follow it up with Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o's Decolonising the Mind: The Politics of Language in African Literature, which has been on my list forEVER, and I'm in the midst of that now, so having a fruitful period in my "extracurricular" reading these days. 🤓

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Mentioner image for: Gayatri Sethi (Desi Book Aunty)
Gayatri Sethi (Desi Book Aunty)
@gayatrisethi
2 years

#DesiBookAunty, PhD, Educator, cultural & community worker (she/her) #desikidlitcommunity & curator & author of Unbelonging (Young Adult nonfiction)

Wa Thiong'o coined the term "decolonising the mind" #decolonize 🔥 “Imperialism and its comprador alliances in Africa can never develop the continent.” - Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, Decolonising the Mind: The Politics of Language in African Literature

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Mentioner image for: UTAFITI
UTAFITI
@Utafiti
2 years

Mtafiti wa Stadi za Afrika - Researcher in African Studies

Re:"Central to this debate on the politics of language in African literature are two canonical essays by Africa’s foremost novelist, Chinua Achebe (“The African Writer and the English Language”) and Ngugi wa Thiong’o (“The Language of African Literature”)"-https://t.co/JqT2n9TCuI https://t.co/nmMfawO6IR

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Praise for this book

Many of the ideas are familiar from Ngugi's earlier critical books, and earlier lectures, elsewhere. But the material here has a new context and the ideas a new focus. This leading African writer presents the arguments for using African language and forms after successfully using an African language himself. ---Anne Walmsley "THE GUARDIAN"
... after 25 years of independence, there is beginning to emerge a generation of writers for whom colonialism is a matter of history and not of direct personal experience. In retrospect that literature characterised by Ngugi as Afro-European - the literature written by Africans in European languages - will come to be seen as part and parcel of the uneasy period between colonialism and full independence, a period equally reflected in the continent's political instability as it attempts to find its feet. Ngugi's importance - and that of this book - lies in the courage with which he has confronted this most urgent of issues. ---Adewale Maja-Pearce "THE NEW STATESMAN"
Ngũgĩ's is a many splendored book. It is the personal testimony of an author who has fought a long battle of his own to undo the colonization of his mind. At the same time the book presents a historical analysis of subversion of personal identities and cultures of the colonized peoples in the process of colonization. It is also a book on the historical development of orature and literature in Africa. Finally, it is an essay in literary theory and criticism on the role of the artist in society. Ngũgĩ writes about Africa, his analysis applies to all of the Third World.--African Studies Review

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