Decolonizing Language and Other Revolutionary Ideas.
Ngugi wa Thiong’o.
New York and London: The New Press. 209 p., $25.99.
Books are weird containers now because, formerly/formally, they were a way to combine things that would probably never be found on their own because they existed only in memory or microfilm/fiche; with the new century a quarter old, books are still necessary so people can listen to one container, at their own speed, instead of setting up a 10-hour #YouTube playlist. This mini-reader, kind of a ” #NgugiwaThiongo 101″ that would be perfect for an undergraduate class, is highly readable and approachable, with only a few notes at the end. It’s a compilation of some of the artistic activist’s presentations, essays, speeches, lectures and panel presentations, organized thematically. The shocking fact that there’s no introduction, no attempt to summarize such an amazing life of ideas and risk for them, makes sense when the reader realizes that wa Thiong’o, a literary legend still alive and thriving, is 87 and has been writing novels and his multi-volume memoir series from childhood up to his famous 1977 arrest, convicted of essentially strong playwrighting in his native Kenya. The first half of the essay collection summarizes his beliefs about how European colonial languages are incredibly effective in setting up an intellectual and psycho-social hierarchy so dominant that some African nations argue, or worse, don’t argue, about English being their official language. The second is his scattered memories of many of his continental artistic and activist contemporaries, written in essays so short and plain that it seemed he wanted to make sure to get them down as fast as possible. But when you are wa Thiong’o, even phoning it in is to walk boldly as an African through the 20th- and 21st-centuries, constantly measuring the meanings and contradictions of neo-colonialism and other difficult, incomplete freedoms.
