Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o Interview: Memories of Who We Are

“Memory is what makes us who we are,” says Kenyan Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o in this video about how colonizers sought to erase the memories of the natives by severing their linguistic connections.

The colonizers played the game of “power-politics” by tampering with the memories of the natives and instead planting new ones – those of the colonizer: “You literally erase the memory of who they are.” As an example of this, places were renamed in terms of the invasive presence, e.g. New York and New England...[more]