Skip to content
ContemporaryBeginnerPrimary text

Decolonising the Mind

Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o

Postcolonial culture / language

It is a defining postcolonial argument about language, culture, and mental decolonization.

Purchase the book, opens Amazon in a new tabSearch onlineSearch library

Synopsis

A set of essays arguing that language is central to colonial domination and that African writers should reclaim their native tongues.

Core passage idea

Paraphrase · Modern copyrighted work

Colonialism's deepest control worked through language, making the colonized see themselves through the colonizer's tongue, so liberation requires writing in African languages.

It identifies language as a primary battleground of cultural domination and self-recovery after empire.

To avoid a bubble

Pair with Edward Said, Orientalism.

Reading note

Read it as personal manifesto and argument together, weighing its case for abandoning the colonizer's language.

Best paired with

Edward Said, Orientalism