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Something Torn and New: An African Renaissance
Over centuries of contact with the west, Africa has suffered the deprivations of slavery, colonialism, and globalization. An integral part of this tragic encounter has been Europhonism: the replacement of native names and language systems with European ones. Language is a communal memory bank. In losing its native languages, Africa would lose its social memory - its very identity. Acclaimed novelist and critic Ngugi wa Thiong'o traces the arc of Africa's fragmentation and restoration amidst the global history of colonialism and modernity. Seeking a revitalization of Africa, Ngugi argues that a renaissance of African languages is a necessary step in the restoration of African wholeness. Wide-ranging, erudite, and hopeful, this book is Ngugi's cri de coeur to save Africa's cultural identity in the modern world.
177 pages, Kindle Edition
First published February 23, 2009
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646 people want to read
About the author
Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o
122 books2,000 followersNgũgĩ wa Thiong'o was a Kenyan author and academic, who was described as East Africa's leading novelist.
He began writing in English before later switching to write primarily in Gikuyu, becoming a strong advocate for literature written in native African languages. His works include the celebrated novel The River Between, plays, short stories, and essays, ranging from literary and social criticism to children's literature. He was the founder and editor of the Gikuyu-language journal Mũtĩiri. His short story The Upright Revolution: Or Why Humans Walk Upright was translated into more than 100 languages.
In 1977, Ngũgĩ embarked upon a novel form of theatre in Kenya that sought to liberate the theatrical process from what he held to be "the general bourgeois education system", by encouraging spontaneity and audience participation in the performances. His project sought to "demystify" the theatrical process, and to avoid the "process of alienation [that] produces a gallery of active stars and an undifferentiated mass of grateful admirers" which, according to Ngũgĩ, encourages passivity in "ordinary people". Although his landmark play Ngaahika Ndeenda, co-written with Ngũgĩ wa Mirii, was a commercial success, it was shut down by the authoritarian Kenyan regime six weeks after its opening.
Ngũgĩ was subsequently imprisoned for more than a year. Adopted as an Amnesty International prisoner of conscience, he was released from prison and fled Kenya. He was appointed Distinguished Professor of Comparative Literature and English at the University of California, Irvine. He previously taught at Northwestern University, Yale University, and New York University. Ngũgĩ was frequently regarded as a likely candidate for the Nobel Prize in Literature. He won the 2001 International Nonino Prize in Italy, and the 2016 Park Kyong-ni Prize. Among his children are authors Mũkoma wa Ngũgĩ and Wanjiku wa Ngũgĩ.
He began writing in English before later switching to write primarily in Gikuyu, becoming a strong advocate for literature written in native African languages. His works include the celebrated novel The River Between, plays, short stories, and essays, ranging from literary and social criticism to children's literature. He was the founder and editor of the Gikuyu-language journal Mũtĩiri. His short story The Upright Revolution: Or Why Humans Walk Upright was translated into more than 100 languages.
In 1977, Ngũgĩ embarked upon a novel form of theatre in Kenya that sought to liberate the theatrical process from what he held to be "the general bourgeois education system", by encouraging spontaneity and audience participation in the performances. His project sought to "demystify" the theatrical process, and to avoid the "process of alienation [that] produces a gallery of active stars and an undifferentiated mass of grateful admirers" which, according to Ngũgĩ, encourages passivity in "ordinary people". Although his landmark play Ngaahika Ndeenda, co-written with Ngũgĩ wa Mirii, was a commercial success, it was shut down by the authoritarian Kenyan regime six weeks after its opening.
Ngũgĩ was subsequently imprisoned for more than a year. Adopted as an Amnesty International prisoner of conscience, he was released from prison and fled Kenya. He was appointed Distinguished Professor of Comparative Literature and English at the University of California, Irvine. He previously taught at Northwestern University, Yale University, and New York University. Ngũgĩ was frequently regarded as a likely candidate for the Nobel Prize in Literature. He won the 2001 International Nonino Prize in Italy, and the 2016 Park Kyong-ni Prize. Among his children are authors Mũkoma wa Ngũgĩ and Wanjiku wa Ngũgĩ.
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Displaying 1 - 28 of 28 reviews
June 30, 2013
As a site of concentration of both domination and resistance, South Africa mirrored the worldwide struggles between capital and labor and between the colonizer and the colonized. For Africa, let's face it, South African history--from Vasco de Gama's landing at the Cape in 1498 to its liberation in 1994--frames all modern social struggles, and certainly black struggles. If the struggle, often fought with swords, between racialized capital and racialized labor was about wealth and power, it was also a battle over images often fought with words. When Biko asserted the right to "write what I like," he was asserting the right to draw the image of himself, unfettered--a position reflecting Robert Sobukwe's description of the African struggle as that for the right to call our souls or own.
-p. 107
-p. 107
November 12, 2013
The full Review is here:http://booksundertheneemtree.com/2013...
Technically, this is a set of lectures by Professor Thiong’o on African renaissance and languages. The author presents the case for writing in African languages and the pride of African names. Also, there is a great discussion on what is needed for an African Renaissance. You would expect this to be a tedious read, but quite the contrary. In fact, I read this book in approx. two days.
Whenever writing in African languages is mentioned, the first name that always came up is Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o. He used to write in English back in the 60s-70s. Until, he renounced English, Christianity, and the name James Ngugi as colonialist sometimes in the 1970s. He changed his name back to Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o and began to write in his native Gikuyu and Swahili.
Now it is important to know that he is not the first African author to do it. If you read this book, you will realized that some African authors have been doing it way back. At page 90, the authors states:
"There have been a tradition of unbroken writing in African languages that goes all the way back to Timbuktoo in the twelfth century (even earlier in Ethiopia and Egypt) and continues to the present day..."
"...The challenge is primarily for those on the continent to produce for Africa in African languages, because language is the basic remembering practice – through it is often missing in discussion about intellectual and literary movements from negritude to Afrocentrism.
"….and it would be just as ridiculous to describe “African Literature”, works written by African in non-African languages as to describe French literature works written in Yoruba by Frenchmen…
Now discussing this book all by myself is not that interesting. Simply, because this is the kind of work that need to be discussed in group. As I mentioned earlier, some of the chapters are university lectures.If you have already read or intent to read it, please I want to talk to you. I am really curious to know how people will react to this book. Personally, it inspires me and motivates me to try to read and write in Wolof. Luckily, there is an existing literature in Wolof that is trying to survive.
About Wolof
Wolof is a language of Senegal, the Gambia, and Mauritania, and the native language of the Wolof people. Unlike most other languages of Sub-Saharan Africa, Wolof is not a tonal language.
Wolof originated as the language of the Lebou people. It is the most widely spoken language in Senegal, spoken natively by the Wolof people (40% of the population) but also by most other Senegalese as a second language Wolof dialects vary geographically and between rural and urban areas. “Dakar-Wolof”, for instance, is an urban mixture of Wolof, French and English.
Senegal is mentioned several times in this book. Why is that? Two reasons: Cheikh Anta Diop and Leopold Sedar Senghor.
Just a word about these two emblematic figures:
About L.S Senghor
Léopold Sédar Senghor was a Senegalese poet, politician, and cultural theorist who for two decades served as the first president of Senegal. Senghor was the first African elected as a member of the Académie française. “The french academy “
About C.A.Diop
Cheikh Anta Diop was a historian, anthropologist, physicist, and politician who studied the human race’s origins and pre-colonial African culture. Cheikh Anta Diop University, in Dakar, Senegal, is named after him.
What do they have in common? Well, Senghor is accused to have cannibalized what African languages have produced so as to enrich French language. He has a famous statement which is :
…..Emotion was to Africa what logic was to greek….
Mr Thiong’o made a very powerful comparison P53 about Senghor and Arrow of God “Chinua Achebe”:
…seeking to imprison the African python in a French box…It is evident that Senghor one of the highest priest of Negritude, who always kept his french citizenship, even as the head of state of an African country ended up as a guardian of the sacred academy that oversees the growth of French…
Senghor’ s attitude toward African languages is essentially not different from that of the postcolonial African middle class. Even, when I was in high school in Senegal, speaking Wolof was not cool at all. The more you are assimilated, the higher you will be regarded by everyone.
In this book, there is a very interesting statement of Cheikh Anta Diop:
"When can we talk about an African Renaissance? …It is absolutely indispensable to destroy this attachment to the prestige of European languages in the greatest interest of Africa"
You can imagine why Senghor hated Diop and persecuted him.
A very interesting and philosophical book. If you are african, please read this book. I guarantee that you will be inspired. I have always believed that African languages should be included in the curriculum in high school. Instead of choosing European languages as second languages, we could very well choose African languages such as Peulh, Yoruba, Ga, fon, Dioula…. Why not? It will greatly help the cause of Pan-Africanism.
I recommend this short but very powerful read. I intend to read it gain in the future.
Technically, this is a set of lectures by Professor Thiong’o on African renaissance and languages. The author presents the case for writing in African languages and the pride of African names. Also, there is a great discussion on what is needed for an African Renaissance. You would expect this to be a tedious read, but quite the contrary. In fact, I read this book in approx. two days.
Whenever writing in African languages is mentioned, the first name that always came up is Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o. He used to write in English back in the 60s-70s. Until, he renounced English, Christianity, and the name James Ngugi as colonialist sometimes in the 1970s. He changed his name back to Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o and began to write in his native Gikuyu and Swahili.
Now it is important to know that he is not the first African author to do it. If you read this book, you will realized that some African authors have been doing it way back. At page 90, the authors states:
"There have been a tradition of unbroken writing in African languages that goes all the way back to Timbuktoo in the twelfth century (even earlier in Ethiopia and Egypt) and continues to the present day..."
"...The challenge is primarily for those on the continent to produce for Africa in African languages, because language is the basic remembering practice – through it is often missing in discussion about intellectual and literary movements from negritude to Afrocentrism.
"….and it would be just as ridiculous to describe “African Literature”, works written by African in non-African languages as to describe French literature works written in Yoruba by Frenchmen…
Now discussing this book all by myself is not that interesting. Simply, because this is the kind of work that need to be discussed in group. As I mentioned earlier, some of the chapters are university lectures.If you have already read or intent to read it, please I want to talk to you. I am really curious to know how people will react to this book. Personally, it inspires me and motivates me to try to read and write in Wolof. Luckily, there is an existing literature in Wolof that is trying to survive.
About Wolof
Wolof is a language of Senegal, the Gambia, and Mauritania, and the native language of the Wolof people. Unlike most other languages of Sub-Saharan Africa, Wolof is not a tonal language.
Wolof originated as the language of the Lebou people. It is the most widely spoken language in Senegal, spoken natively by the Wolof people (40% of the population) but also by most other Senegalese as a second language Wolof dialects vary geographically and between rural and urban areas. “Dakar-Wolof”, for instance, is an urban mixture of Wolof, French and English.
Senegal is mentioned several times in this book. Why is that? Two reasons: Cheikh Anta Diop and Leopold Sedar Senghor.
Just a word about these two emblematic figures:
About L.S Senghor
Léopold Sédar Senghor was a Senegalese poet, politician, and cultural theorist who for two decades served as the first president of Senegal. Senghor was the first African elected as a member of the Académie française. “The french academy “
About C.A.Diop
Cheikh Anta Diop was a historian, anthropologist, physicist, and politician who studied the human race’s origins and pre-colonial African culture. Cheikh Anta Diop University, in Dakar, Senegal, is named after him.
What do they have in common? Well, Senghor is accused to have cannibalized what African languages have produced so as to enrich French language. He has a famous statement which is :
…..Emotion was to Africa what logic was to greek….
Mr Thiong’o made a very powerful comparison P53 about Senghor and Arrow of God “Chinua Achebe”:
…seeking to imprison the African python in a French box…It is evident that Senghor one of the highest priest of Negritude, who always kept his french citizenship, even as the head of state of an African country ended up as a guardian of the sacred academy that oversees the growth of French…
Senghor’ s attitude toward African languages is essentially not different from that of the postcolonial African middle class. Even, when I was in high school in Senegal, speaking Wolof was not cool at all. The more you are assimilated, the higher you will be regarded by everyone.
In this book, there is a very interesting statement of Cheikh Anta Diop:
"When can we talk about an African Renaissance? …It is absolutely indispensable to destroy this attachment to the prestige of European languages in the greatest interest of Africa"
You can imagine why Senghor hated Diop and persecuted him.
A very interesting and philosophical book. If you are african, please read this book. I guarantee that you will be inspired. I have always believed that African languages should be included in the curriculum in high school. Instead of choosing European languages as second languages, we could very well choose African languages such as Peulh, Yoruba, Ga, fon, Dioula…. Why not? It will greatly help the cause of Pan-Africanism.
I recommend this short but very powerful read. I intend to read it gain in the future.
March 19, 2024
very short, great reminder of how language holds memory and history
December 12, 2022
This is the fifth essay [collection] I am reading from Ngugi. I have enjoyed all of them to varying degrees- but the more I read the more they all blend into each other. There are some new elements in each but it’s broadly the same themes of trauma of slavery and colonialism, the role of the African intellectual, the post and neo colonial African middle class…
The main through line across all the books is the role of language, what is now Ngugi’s best known intellectual product and literary ethos. He discusses language as a medium of a people’s memory. Slavery and colonialism could not succeed in economic domination, without political and cultural domination. According to Ngugi, cultural domination requires a dis-membering of memory and re-membering it in the memory of the colonizer. It is why for instance slaves were denied their own names and had to adopt the names of their masters or why the colonisers renamed, marked with hot iron- and even “discovered”, our bodies, sites and resources. Namlolwe became Lake Victoria, Egoli became Johannesburg, Kirungii became Westlands…Ngugi became James.
The intellectual, the writer, the artist, the worker are keepers of a people’s memory. Ngugi’s body of nonfiction work appears to wrestle with the question of what happens when the memory keeper wants to keep the memories in the coloniser’s granary. The vast majority of African literature is written in not just foreign languages but the languages of the colonisers, languages that the majority of Africans cannot access and that do not- and cannot- have the words to express the struggles of the colonised. African literature, then, becomes a site of alienation between people and their memories and a threat to their own mediums of memory.
In Secure the Base: Making Africa Visible in the Globe, Ngugi posited that a lot of the work African intellectuals do is anthropologise Africa. The researcher goes to the field, gathers knowledge from people in their native languages and translates that to English or whichever colonial language for foreign archives, a language that the producers of the knowledge cannot access. It’s predation.
Ngugi repeats his call for African writers to write in their own African languages first and to utilise translation to bring the literature to wider African audiences. The African renaissance, similar to the European renaissance of the centuries past, requires the corpses (the African languages presumed dead), to rise up and talk back.
As usual, I enjoyed this book. I found it ever so slightly more academic in framing than the other four I have read, but very accessible still. Ngugi is no doubt one of the greatest public intellectuals Africa has produced.
Also highly recommend:
Decolonising the Mind: The Politics of Language in African Literature
Writers in Politics
Secure the Base: Making Africa Visible in the Globe
The main through line across all the books is the role of language, what is now Ngugi’s best known intellectual product and literary ethos. He discusses language as a medium of a people’s memory. Slavery and colonialism could not succeed in economic domination, without political and cultural domination. According to Ngugi, cultural domination requires a dis-membering of memory and re-membering it in the memory of the colonizer. It is why for instance slaves were denied their own names and had to adopt the names of their masters or why the colonisers renamed, marked with hot iron- and even “discovered”, our bodies, sites and resources. Namlolwe became Lake Victoria, Egoli became Johannesburg, Kirungii became Westlands…Ngugi became James.
The intellectual, the writer, the artist, the worker are keepers of a people’s memory. Ngugi’s body of nonfiction work appears to wrestle with the question of what happens when the memory keeper wants to keep the memories in the coloniser’s granary. The vast majority of African literature is written in not just foreign languages but the languages of the colonisers, languages that the majority of Africans cannot access and that do not- and cannot- have the words to express the struggles of the colonised. African literature, then, becomes a site of alienation between people and their memories and a threat to their own mediums of memory.
In Secure the Base: Making Africa Visible in the Globe, Ngugi posited that a lot of the work African intellectuals do is anthropologise Africa. The researcher goes to the field, gathers knowledge from people in their native languages and translates that to English or whichever colonial language for foreign archives, a language that the producers of the knowledge cannot access. It’s predation.
Ngugi repeats his call for African writers to write in their own African languages first and to utilise translation to bring the literature to wider African audiences. The African renaissance, similar to the European renaissance of the centuries past, requires the corpses (the African languages presumed dead), to rise up and talk back.
As usual, I enjoyed this book. I found it ever so slightly more academic in framing than the other four I have read, but very accessible still. Ngugi is no doubt one of the greatest public intellectuals Africa has produced.
Also highly recommend:
Decolonising the Mind: The Politics of Language in African Literature
Writers in Politics
Secure the Base: Making Africa Visible in the Globe
Read
June 29, 2023It was a jarring feeling to be reading a book in originally written in English about the destruction of African language as a weapon on colonialism. I only came to terms with it as he argued at the end that the works of the African diaspora should be translated into African languages and claimed as a form of re-membering.
I had to work hard as he referenced works that I haven't read in over a decade. Be ready to need to remember the central tenets of Fanon, Dubois, Garvey, Hegel, Marx, and Heidegger.
I had to work hard as he referenced works that I haven't read in over a decade. Be ready to need to remember the central tenets of Fanon, Dubois, Garvey, Hegel, Marx, and Heidegger.
November 11, 2021
Something Torn and New discusses the process of Africa’s dismemberment. Dismemberment defines the separation of African people from their culture, language and memory due to the imposition of European rule. This book is a call to action, to reclaim what has been lost. Ngugi implores readers to use sites of oppression, as sites for liberation. The reclamation of one’s memory and consciousness will require learning Africa’s language. Language will facilitate a sense of personhood which is invested in a place of origin, not in a place of captivity. Through language, memory can be communicated in the continent and the diaspora.
January 13, 2017
This is one of those books I do not finish reading. After a few pages, I was hooked; but then the narration kept going on and on about one thing, tautology at its worst. The rhetoric is good, but then on page 63 there is ... 'forced into a crypt, the African in the diaspora tries to break out of the crypt, and grasps whatever African memory he can reach, to invent a new reality ...' and I stopped reading, completely, trashed it.
Apart from feeling like enthroning Pan-Africanism on himself in the book (and I don't doubt his Pan-Africanism), Ngugi wa Thiong'o here just failed the test. You can't talk of how diasporic life is won daily by grasping at the straws of Africanism to invent a new reality when you ran away from your home, that Africa you are grasping at while in America.
The goons/assassins who wanted to kill Ngugi wa Thiong'o failed the mission long ago, and their Mafia boss killed them for failing to deliver. A new regime came, called upon you to come back home ... what the heck are you doing out there (and we know you will be buried here). This sounds hypocritical, that's why I stopped reading it (a rather good book in the beginning).
Apart from feeling like enthroning Pan-Africanism on himself in the book (and I don't doubt his Pan-Africanism), Ngugi wa Thiong'o here just failed the test. You can't talk of how diasporic life is won daily by grasping at the straws of Africanism to invent a new reality when you ran away from your home, that Africa you are grasping at while in America.
The goons/assassins who wanted to kill Ngugi wa Thiong'o failed the mission long ago, and their Mafia boss killed them for failing to deliver. A new regime came, called upon you to come back home ... what the heck are you doing out there (and we know you will be buried here). This sounds hypocritical, that's why I stopped reading it (a rather good book in the beginning).
July 23, 2009
wa Thiongo continues the discussion of the use of language to decolonize the mind and re-member the past with the present. The African renaissance can be assisted by reclamation and use of African languages and translation of literature from European languages to African languages.
I became sensitized to my own reactions to reading English coming from a Black ethnic culture, understood my conflicted resentment of a language that connects black with so much negativity while simultaneously loving what is my mother tongue for its fluidity, diversity, and malleability.
Decolonization of the American Black mind is made extremely difficult because of this conflict.
I became sensitized to my own reactions to reading English coming from a Black ethnic culture, understood my conflicted resentment of a language that connects black with so much negativity while simultaneously loving what is my mother tongue for its fluidity, diversity, and malleability.
Decolonization of the American Black mind is made extremely difficult because of this conflict.
October 7, 2018
Beautiful, compelling argument for African literature in African languages. Also a brilliant reading of European conquest, beginning with the subjugation of Ireland.
Read
February 23, 2020A radical, pan-Africanist political manifesto. Hard (for me) to rate, but quite interesting
December 28, 2024
This book is a revolution on its own. To preface, I read it for my Honors Humanities class, so I went in with a learners lens to begin with. I find that many academics turned authors struggle to incorporate storytelling with the passing of knowledge. Thiong'o, however, does this flawlessly. It is an easy read that is constantly dumping content and perspective. Each of the 4 sections is only about 30 pages and they weave together seamlessly. My only comment is that while the content of this book provides a wealth of knowledge and perspective to the why behind social dynamics in the African diaspora and interactions with its European counterpart, little is done to provide solution. While I did not feel this way, I could see some readers finishing this book with more anxiety than they had coming in due to the fact that they had all of this new information and awareness, with little instruction on how to "fix" anything. Despite this, I would recommend this book to anyone looking to learn in any of the humanities due to the range of topics (history, psychology, linguistics, sociology, politics, etc.) covered.
June 10, 2017
Habla de lo que fue ese desmembramiento para Africa que trajo la colonización: La creación de la diáspora a través de la trata de esclavos, y la Balkanisation de Africa a través de la conferencia de Berlin 1884-85 En el acto de re-membering, algo así como un 'decolonial task', pone énfasis a su caballito de batalla que es el lenguage, como lo hace también en "Decolonising the mind the politics of language in African literature". Su comparación entre el surgimiento de renacimiento en Europa y el renacimiento en Africa puede ser suceptible a críticas, creo desde el punto de vista de 'seguir a Europa', aunque como análisis histórico es válido. Otor punto interesante, no como principal de libro pero rescatable, es su análisis sobre el capitalismo global, no nacido bajo el movimiento de enclosures en Europa, sino precisamante en ese sistema mundo creado a partir de 1492.
August 13, 2023
Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o's exploration of the African Renaissance in his book is not only illuminating but also stirs a profound urge within me to contribute knowledge back to my community in our indigenous dialect. This thought-provoking work prompts me to critically question the prevailing status quo, particularly in terms of europhonism: the gradual displacement of our rich linguistic heritage by European languages. Ngũgĩ's analytical depth delves into these matters with thoroughness, highlighting the complexities and implications of this linguistic shift.
After absorbing the insights from his book, I find myself embracing a newfound sense of pride in my African heritage.
September 12, 2020
Ngugi's ideas in this book are best represented by the fact that on September 3, 2020, he was awarded the Premi Internacional Catalunya (31st Catalonia International Prize), where he gave his acceptance speech in Kikuyu.
Ngugi also mentions in the book that soon enough, in the midst of the emerging African Renaissance "it would be just as ridiculous to describe as “African literature” works written by Africans in
non-African languages as to describe as “French literature”
works written in Yoruba by Frenchmen."
Ngugi also mentions in the book that soon enough, in the midst of the emerging African Renaissance "it would be just as ridiculous to describe as “African literature” works written by Africans in
non-African languages as to describe as “French literature”
works written in Yoruba by Frenchmen."
February 3, 2025
his best critical theory so far. interesting to see wa Thiong'o's intellectual development over time cuz his Decolonising the Mind in the 80s had some missed. final chapter about south african blakc consciousness, renaissance humanism, and the search for a post-renaissance afro-modernity kind of humanism was epic. i kinda wanted him to go further, be more decolonial. he doesn't go far enough in unlinking coloniality with modernity -- seems to aspire to an African modernity rather than analyse and deconstruct the coloniality inherent in modernity
January 28, 2020
This book really makes you think about the advancements of literary Africa, and it dives into the history of African language and the need for keeping them alive. Beautiful text and extremely informational. Quick read as well (finished in less than a week)!
June 14, 2024
Speak with fork tongue
This is a great book explaining how Indigenous people and those stolen souls
from the Diaspora, can we regain their voices, their authentic tongue
attached it to the brain and speak through the ancestors' truth to power.
This is a great book explaining how Indigenous people and those stolen souls
from the Diaspora, can we regain their voices, their authentic tongue
attached it to the brain and speak through the ancestors' truth to power.
February 4, 2018
Beautiful, fascinating, and deeply important. A straightforward read with really important things to say.
February 5, 2020
Easily one of the best books I’ve ever read. This book is fundamental for anyone interested in Pan-African theory for the 21st century. Absolutely crucial.
June 27, 2020
Outstanding argument, great themes. But incredibly repetitive. This book did not need to be 130 pages even, it honestly could have easily been 30 pages.
October 17, 2023
Another great writing by Ngugi wa Thiogo. This time he writes about re-membering what colonialism dismembered. As Africa re--members, this is a standard fare.
November 1, 2023
The impact of colonization never dies down; it infiltrates into anyone's life as much as the influence of globalization...
August 23, 2013
In Something Torn and New, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o looks back at the loss of African language and culture caused by European colonisation and compares the dominance of the English, French and Portuguese languages in African schools and African literature with the use of Latin in Europe during the Dark Ages. Language is linked to memory and to identity, Ngũgĩ argues, and the loss of African languages sends the rich cultural history of past African civilisations to oblivion, planting European memory in African minds instead.
Ngũgĩ sees the European Renaissance as the movement through which the literary languages of the various European peoples finally shook off Latin, and calls for the support for an African Renaissance and a revival of African languages as the vehicle for the recovery of African culture and heritage.
I found it strange that Ngũgĩ speaks of the African continent as a whole and entirely ignores the Arabic language. With the spread of Arabic, written language was introduced to much of northern Africa, and while this may have wiped out local languages, it may also have contributed to the preservation of history and memory*, much like the use of Latin writing by the clergy in Europe contributed to the preservation of information that would otherwise never have been written down.
Apart from this, I thought his arguments are sound and valid for much of Sub-Saharan Africa, and I hope African writers will heed this call for the preservation and recovery of African language and culture.
*I am thinking of for example the accounts of Al-Hasan Ibn Muhammed (Leo Africanus) in 1526 and the Tarikh al-Fettash, a history of Western Sudan by Mahmud al-Kati in 1519.
Ngũgĩ sees the European Renaissance as the movement through which the literary languages of the various European peoples finally shook off Latin, and calls for the support for an African Renaissance and a revival of African languages as the vehicle for the recovery of African culture and heritage.
I found it strange that Ngũgĩ speaks of the African continent as a whole and entirely ignores the Arabic language. With the spread of Arabic, written language was introduced to much of northern Africa, and while this may have wiped out local languages, it may also have contributed to the preservation of history and memory*, much like the use of Latin writing by the clergy in Europe contributed to the preservation of information that would otherwise never have been written down.
Apart from this, I thought his arguments are sound and valid for much of Sub-Saharan Africa, and I hope African writers will heed this call for the preservation and recovery of African language and culture.
*I am thinking of for example the accounts of Al-Hasan Ibn Muhammed (Leo Africanus) in 1526 and the Tarikh al-Fettash, a history of Western Sudan by Mahmud al-Kati in 1519.
July 21, 2016
A smart and engaging discussion. I give it a 3.75. I'd rate it higher if Ngugi had recognized the overwhelming presence/influence of Toni Morrison on his thinking. His ideas about re-membering, the role of the ancestors, the haunting of colonial peoples by Africa's past, and the ways in which African and African Americans "haunt" Anglo texts were discussed in full in Morrison's _Beloved_, _Playing in the Dark_, and "Rootedness: The Ancestor as Foundation." It has to be a deliberate choice as Ngugi is incredibly well read. Why exclude and fail to recognize the ways in which Morrison is "haunting" his work and theory?
But, a good addition to her work. Definitely worth reading to see how this is a diasporic concern.
But, a good addition to her work. Definitely worth reading to see how this is a diasporic concern.
June 3, 2012
Ngũgĩ places language in the centre of a renaissance that he thinks is necessary- a re-membering of Africa- a restoration of the continent's memory driven by its keepers of memory: writers, musicians, artists, etc.; given impetus through both writing and translating; and enabled by enlightened governments. He shows how the English language and education were primary means of the erasure of Irish memory; and how the European renaissance came about with the development of European vernacular languages, positing this as a path that the African renaissance can take/be aided by.
'Let the caged bird sing, but let it sing in its own language.'
(65)
'Let the caged bird sing, but let it sing in its own language.'
(65)
January 10, 2025
pretty cool book, however I believe that he did not properly respect African American English, it was birthed on plantations with combinations of bantu languages and of course English. I dont believe that we are the romanticizing European languages like Sengor and that other Irish dude (Yeats), because other than the fact that AAE is spoken in English, the linguistic rules of are drastically different that standard English. But, wa Thiong'o did a great job breaking down the importance of language, memory, and coons; Irish coons, Scottish coons, Kenyan coons, etc......
October 4, 2010
This is his book on why African authors should write in their native languages. He links language to memory and talks about "re-membering" as the opposite of "dismemberment" -- ie. that which happened to Afridan cultures under colonialism. One really interesting thing is the way that he compares the colonization of the Irish and their language with that of African countries and languages. Many very beautiful ideas. Wonderfully written.
March 27, 2016
Awesome book, lots of good metaphors and way to look at language, some of his theory and ways of framing issues are a bit odd but still good
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