This week the reading by Thiong’o really struck me. It also made me feel sort of helpless when I thought about the way that we as academics approach the subject. I am sure I will never know or experience the hardship he went through at school; of being forced to speak the language of the colonisers and then being treated differently according to the level of mastery of the language. I am sure none of my 101 students would enjoy it if I placed every one of them in a hierarchy according to their French! I am pretty sure there would be some serious uproar as well. Yet this is what children have been subjected to in Africa where imperialism continues to control.
My feelings of helplessness arise because in reading the various texts for the week I became aware that the only way that I will ever know or be made familiar with the struggles of the writers who have decided to speak out and seize back their culture and history is by sitting at my kitchen table with a cup of tea only imagining how bad it could have been for them. I have to say that I do feel a sense of guilt and shame in this approach. I guess it’s like a sort of boiled-down version of chapter two of Thiong’o’s text where they sat around at the conference discussing what African literature was or could be. There’s lots of hypothesizing and discussion, but where is the action and involvement?
I admire the way Thiong’o writes and agree with him when he talks about language as culture, in that it is the product of a particular history, he states that “culture is a product of the history which it in turn reflects” (1134). In connection with this I also enjoyed the way he wrote about hearing stories in his mother tongue and how they “learnt the music of [their] language” (1131), this really emphasized the pleasure and enjoyment he derived from his mother tongue Gikiyu, and made it all the more heartbreaking to hear that “the language of my education was no longer the language of my culture” (1131). I think the points he brings up about how cultural invasion is related to language are very important, and while it was tough to read it was also insightful for me to consider the things he writes about, albeit from a distance.
Hi, Sinead:
As you, I was thinking how traumatic it must be to be forced to change the own language and, in consequence, the culture. It should be very difficult to recover from this trauma.
Unfortunately, it not only occurs when a country is colonized by other, but also within a country. In Perú, for instance, nowadays people of the Andes are forced to speak Spanish, renounce to Quechua or other native language and, in consequence, renounce to their culture. And it is politic of the State! The same State that must respect the differences of the habitants.
It is incredible how language is capable to change cultures, lives, when it is imposed.
Hi Sinead,
Yes, I too felt the same way while reading Thion’o’s text. Plus, I am taking a class focusing on Human Rights in French/Francophonie literature and believe me I have seen worse; we have read texts from holocaust victims, text from those in Rwanda, text from the Algerian revolution which no one talks about, and so much more. It is just downright sad to read some of these things but I think it is also necessary. I feel like sometimes we live in a bubble and don’t realize the things going on around us. I take heart in what I do and am grateful everyday for the life i live. Bruno talked about Peru and the same can be said about many countries from around the world.