Decolonising the Mind by Ngugi Wa Thiong'o

Decolonising the Mind by Ngugi Wa Thiong'o is brutally honest example of how colonization is both good and bad for both sides of the issues of culture and language. Thiong'o describes his history of growing up in Kenya, during the time it was colonized, and how he was forced to learn English and abandon certain aspects of his culture, which is very sad. The violence he experienced inside and outside school for not speaking English and wanting to speak in his original language Ginknyu is horrible to read. He should have been able to embrace his ancestry and the new studies of English.

Thiong'o believes in order to communicate with the societies outside of our own, we have to have "co-operation" from the locals in order to make great achievements. He believes the locals, the people, literature, and language of Kenya were "suppressed" by the "colonial system," through his experiences and I don't blame him. What the visitors did in order to make him like them was inhumane and unethical. It reminds me of when I hear people in this country getting mad they have to press one on their phones to listen to English, when there is no official language of this country. Instead we should be learning Spanish and trying to communicate with immigrants to become a more peaceful society. Without communication, ignorance is not going to solve anything. Thiong'o believes without cooperation from the natives or the outsiders, the visitors will face serious consequences and we as invaders shouldn't force our way of life onto the locals.

Language is one of the most important factors of life because it provides us with a way to communicate with others and is a "carrier of culture." We use language by using "language of real life," "speech," and "written signs," to communicate visually and orally, and define ourselves as human beings. Thiong'o believes the studying of English literature and language as a child took him and "further and further from" his own culture and his identity. He also believes that language carries our own values of what we know and what we believe.

Thiong'o defines cultural language as a "collective memory bank of people's experiences in history" and "an image forming agent in the mind of a child." I believe this is true, because we are taught at a young age to speak and to read in order to learn the survival skills for school and the rest of our lives. If we didn't have some sort of sense of culture and language, we would have no identity of our own and would be lost in this hectic world. Our language and how we use it to keep our traditions alive is very important. While there is room in our brains to learn more languages, it is hard to learn because we are so used to one way of doing things and it doesn't belong in our paradigm. I have taken all four of my required Spanish credits and if I had to speak it frequently instead of English, I wouldn't succeed because it is extremely difficult to think in another language.

Thiong'o believes one the purposes of colonizing is to "control the people's wealth," which I think he means the Western world wants to take other countries' natural resources and land to make a profit. He also believe colonizing is to "control a people's culture," to make everyone in the world follow the civilized society's ways of living, rules, and customs. Thiong'o warns us, "to control a people's culture is to control their tools of self-definition in relationship to others." I believe we colonize by dividing land, controlling the people, and enforcing our standards on the locals. The ways we colonize are harsh, even if we do it for good reasons and resources.