Ngugi and the colonization of the mind

In The Language of African Literature, Ngugi brings to light a few interesting points about African Literature as a whole.  One of his most interesting points was that those that are responsible for the literature that is created in Africa, and write in any African language, are completely discredited as legitimate African insight, or literature.  The idea that something that is written in a native tongue would be considered non legitimate is ridiculous.  Even Ngugi thinks the same.  As he stated in this excerpt, he qualified for the conference, while many of the great African writers, who wrote in African languages, were not invited to this conference.  To me, this is a great insult to those writers, and really to the entire continent of Africa.  It is as if they are saying that Africa's history is not important unless it is written in a language that the "elite" can comprehend.  To me, this is like if there was a conference being held on American literature, but they refused to allow anyone who wrote in English to this conference.  The only people that were allowed to attend were those writers that encapsulated the essence of America in Russian. This is absurd.  Plain and simple, this makes no sense.  The language which we use for our ideas is the most powerful one we possess.  Therefore, sharing literature that has no cultural significance to those being told about makes little to no sense.  If the people that the stories are written about cannot even understand what the writer has written, then what good does it really do? Also, how much does it actually show about the culture?  To me, it does little good for the people reading it, and shows how little the author cares about making an accurate portrayal of what these experiences described are like.

"Wedding at the Cross" brings to light the idea of synchretism.  I had never heard a lot about this idea before, and I think that it is fascinating.  I think that this idea must come from a mix of the forced colonization of the minds of the natural citizens, and their contrasting belief systems which existed long before the colonization of their lands.  But rather than keep the two distant from one another, over time, they have melded together in sort of a melting pot of spirituality.  I can venture to say, that is America were colonized today, something very similar would most likely occur.  Today, in class when we were talking about the royal wedding on Friday, and I brought up the point about why anyone in America, who this has no actual significance to, be in any way excited or entertained.  To which you had a rather clever response, the colonization of our minds, as we are originally a British colony.  Although Americans are very aware that we have no royalty in our political system, we continue to hold on to the idea of royalty being something of elegance and beauty.  My own daughter's grandmother is waking up at four in the morning just to watch this silly wedding.  I mean, really?  Why does she care?  But, now I know.  Her mind is colonized!

"Minutes of Glory" is a fantastic story once done with and in the process of discussing it.  After reading this story, I was fairly baffled at what to make of this one.  I can usually come up with some themes that we may discuss in class, however, this one just confused me.  But once we actually started breaking it down, I was interested and fascinated with Ngugi's criticisms of colonization.  I thought that the end of the story sort of sums up everything that Ngugi's relays to the reader in one short finale.  As Nyaguthu wept, Ngugi expresses her resentment for colonization for the effects it has on your mind.  Nyaguthu had resisted the natural urge to change her ways, but she found it so utterly reprehensible that Beatrice had let her mind be colonized.  Wanjiru, had long since been dead.  It was a tragedy  that this was the case, but it was the truth.  When our minds our colonized, and we change our way of thinking, the people that we once were die.  And that is a tragedy unlike any other.  It is as though colonization creates a country full of zombies hardly resembling anything they once were.