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‘Decolonising the Mind’ by Ngugi wa Thiong’o

Ngugi wa Thiong’o successfully wrote in English but eventually turned to writing in Gikuyu, his mother tongue. He wants other writers to follow his example. ‘Decolonising the Mind’ is both an explanation of how he eventually decided to write in Gikuyu, as well as an encouragement for African writers to write in their native languages.
Ngugi stresses an important insight: Africans relate to their mother tongues in a very different way than they would use these foreign imposed languages. Speaking and writing in the language of colonizers make Africans think foreign. Only in their native tongues will a truly African experience in communication transpire.
Ngugi feels that there is a dire need to create and popularize a body of literature that speaks of the true African reality. This should be from the perspective of Africa, and not some colonizer’s interpretation of the African experience. With and for this endeavor, a true local language plays a crucial role in synthesizing the African experience. This is for the single most logical reason that local experience, as told through oral tradition, has been handed down through the generations, and preserved in their original form, through the existence of a local language. The songs, stories, rituals, and mores of Africa that are mostly oral in nature exist in the local languages.
‘Decolonising the Mind’ is a political treatise with its many rants against colonialism and imperialism. For the author, the reverting back to local language use is the best way to rectify the evils and ills of adverse colonial influence. To say that Ngugi’s book is rife with ideology is an understatement. For him, Africa today is caught between two opposing forces: the colonial and the traditionalist.
Here lies the crux of Ngugi’s thesis. Since African literature is mostly oral in the form of stories, riddles, proverbs, fables, etc., Ngugi stresses the importance of oral literature. For him, it is through the oral transfer of these thoughts and ideas that a truly indigenous African culture can be preserved. African literature is inescapably the sum total of all those oral traditions handed down from one generation to another, bequeathing the truly African lessons and thoughts. African literature in its pristine and unadulterated form is African culture.
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Via Assata Shakur Forums