Response to Decolonizing the Mind

In Decolonising the Mind Ngugi Wa Thiongo makes the gossip to African writers to begin writing lit in their own languages, and to make sure that literature is attached to their peoples revolutionary struggles for independence from their colonial regimes. He begins with the historical meeting he was invited to with his curse word African writers in Kampala, Uganda. In this conference, writers who wrote their stories in African languages were automatically neglected.He also continues to point out active how English and other European languages argon assumed, until today, to be the natural languages and unifying forces in both literature and political views among African people. For instance, to explain his point, Ngugi uptakes Chinua Achebe, angiotensin-converting enzyme of the major African writers, who embraces the habituate of an English Language in his works. Ngugi quotes For me (Achebe) there is no other choice, I have been given the language and I intend to mathematical f unction it (Achebe, 62).Finally, Ngugi concludes that writing in African languages is a necessary step toward cultural identity and liberation from centuries of European exploitation. Firstly, I support Ngungis claim that an breedingal system that focuses and embraces only foreign works, such as language and farming is destructive Thus language and literature were taking us push and further from ourselves to other selves, from our world to other worlds(266). Obviously, there is a adopt to create a literature that embraces the really African experience starting from the perspective of the topical anesthetics, not the intruders.The local language is an integral part of conveyance that experience, this is simply because much of the local tradition is preserved in that language. For example, Ngugi insists that stories and songs are effectively passed down from one generation to the next by oral (story-telling), and the fact that both the story teller and the listener are interes ted and involved in the conversation. Therefore, the benefits of embracing and operative in the local language and within the local traditions bring the entire community together.Secondly, I support Ngugis view that colonialism has deemed African languages unworthy of use both by the colonizers and the colonized. He explains how a cultural bomb was dropped on Africa so the minds and consequently the resources of Africans were controlled. In my view, not only colonizers understand that it is not enough to take over Africa with guns alone, but they also need to take over the mind of its people through language and the fine education they offer through that language.This is seen in the schools where European languages are idolized, in the streets where African languages become synonymous with the language of the peasantry, and at the prison house cells were those African writers who choose to stay true to their mother tongue are held. I strongly flout about Ngugis choice to write on ly in Gikuyu rather than English language I believe that my writing in the Gikuyu language, a Kenyan language, an African language, is part and parcel of the anti-imperialist struggles of Kenyan and African peoples (267).He reminds me my native country, Kenya, and Kamba is my mother tongue, so if I choose to write in Kamba as Ngugi did, I leave not be doing something abnormal. It true that imperialism has turned African peoples minds upside down African people view abnormal as normal and normal as abnormal. For example, Europe and America became well-situated and continue to get rich from using both Africas natural and human resources, but African people are made to believe that they cannot become poverty free without European and American intervention.Therefore, Ngugis decision to abandon English completely in his writings and embrace Gikuyu in attempt to ordain himself with the people (Gikuyu-speaking population) is one step toward cultural identity and independence from Europe an exploitation. I also consort with Ngugi that colonization is not simply a process of physical force rather the bullet is the content of physical subjugation, and Language is the means of the spiritual subjugation(265).In Kenya, colonization propagated English as the language of education as a result, oral literature in Kenyan indigenous languages gradually faded away. This is destroy to African literature because, as Ngugi writes, language carries culture and culture carries, particularly through orature and literature, the entire frame of values by which we perceive ourselves and our place in the world(267).This means that Language as culture, it expresses and carries the culture of people therefore, it becomes the storehouse of its images, ideas, wisdom, experience and history. It ties me to my people and becomes part of who I am. And finally, language as culture, it shapes how I ask at the world and myself. Lastly but not least, I think Decolonising the Mind is an integra l to ground an anti-colonialist struggles. Europe and America view colonialism in terms of the most visible aspects of a nation, namely its leadership.People break up to see and recognize the long-term effects of colonialism, such as the widespread poverty. Decolonizing the Mind reminds me of another aftereffect, specifically, the mastery of language by the Western World. In a sense, the language barrier enables kind apartheid where legal dissolution is considered anachronistic. By dominating African languages, and asserting the superiority of European ones over them, Western nations, including some African nations, do perpetuate a system where educated whites rise to the highest.As a result, native Africans resign to the working classes and peasantry. This domination of language effectively prevents any native African from rising into intellectual ranks because, as Ngugi puts it, the use of European languages splits African soul in two, forcing him to give up his roots if he wi shes to climb the social ladder. Work Cited Currey, James. The Language of African Literature Decolonising the Mind The politics ofLanguage in African Literature. London 1981. 263-267