The English language is violence, I hotwired it
I got a hold of the master’s tools and got dialed in
billy woods - Jumpscare (GOLLIWOG)
Ngugi wa Thiong’o is a Kenyan writer who spent decades asking one question: what does it mean to write in the language of your oppressor?
He started his career writing in English. He was good at it. Novels, plays, essays. Then he realized something that should have been obvious: if you write in English, you are writing for an English-speaking audience. You are participating in the literary market of the people who colonized you. Even your criticism of colonialism is packaged for colonial consumption (that’s some mother fucking bars).
So he switched to Gikuyu(also knowns as Kikuyu). His native language. He wrote Matigari in Gikuyu while in prison (detained without trial by the Kenyan government, because that is what happens to writers who tell the truth). The book became a legend. People read it aloud in marketplaces. The government tried to suppress it. They could not. You cannot suppress a book written in a language the people actually fucking speak.
His magnum opus is that language is not a neutral tool. It is a carrier of culture. When a people lose their language, they lose their way of seeing the world. Decolonization must include linguistic decolonization, or it is not real.
Starter book: Decolonising the Mind (1986). Part memoir, part manifesto. The most convincing argument you will ever read for why you should learn your grandmother’s language before it is gone.
