A Introduction of Decolonization
Meeting Ngũgĩ and His Philosophy By: Vivian Phillips Before this class, I had never heard of Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o. After a long self-reflection, much to my shame, the only African writers I had read before were Chinua Achebe and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. I grew up in a very Afro-centric household, go to a very Afro-centric church and prided myself into thinking that I had a very Afro-centric mindset overall. While I am aware that I was (and still am) conditioned to have a very colonial mindset due to being raised in America, I believed that it was a blind spot in my psyche that I, at least, had a firm grasp on. Then why was this the first time I've heard of Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o at the grown age of twenty-three? Ngũgĩ answered my question in the first chapter of his book Decolonizing the Mind, he wants to write his book in his local language, not English. On the surface level, I understood that language is a colonizer's tool. As a descendan...