Quote by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o: “Language carries culture, and culture carries the values which make a people.”

Language is not just a tool for communication — it encodes an entire way of seeing the world. When a language is suppressed or replaced, it doesn't just inconvenience people; it can sever them from their values, stories, and sense of who they are. This is why language is a site of power.

Ngũgĩ published Decolonising the Mind in 1987, a book in which he announced he would no longer write in English. The global debate about colonial languages in African literature was at a high point, with writers across the continent arguing over whether using European languages perpetuated intellectual subjugation.

Kenyan novelist, playwright, and cultural theorist who abandoned the English language in 1977 to write exclusively in Gĩkũyũ, his mother tongue, and Swahili. His 1986 work Decolonising the Mind is a landmark text on language and colonial power. He was imprisoned in 1977 by the Kenyan government for co-writing a play in Gĩkũyũ.