Decolonising the Mind

A short book of four essays, partly developed from lectures, by the Kenyan novelist, subtitled The Politics of Language in African Literature. It opens with a statement announcing that he is saying farewell to English as a language for his own writing, and will write in Gĩkũyũ. Ngũgĩ argues that imperialism works not only through guns and money but through what he calls a cultural bomb, which makes people doubt their names, languages and history. He recalls a colonial school where children were punished for speaking Gĩkũyũ, and argues that language carries culture and memory, so that forcing children to learn and think in English separates them from their own world. He criticises the 1962 Makerere conference of African writers of English expression for assuming that African literature meant literature in European languages. The later essays discuss theatre, including the Kamĩrĩĩthũ community theatre that led to his detention, the novel, and the teaching of literature in Kenya.

It is the classic argument that language is at the heart of decolonisation, and it still frames debates about which languages schools, writers and universities should use.