Olayinka Oyegbile's review / birds eye view of Ojogbon's Milestones in African Literature, whets the appetite to probe the contents further, and if it's true, as Rousseau the Romantic put it , that "man is born free and everywhere he is in chains" then, understandably, given his free will and wherewithal in that his garden of Eden in Kenya, "Ngugi has since broken away from the shackles of writing in a colonial language by writing first in Gikuyu and translating later to English."; although in Ngugi's case his previously being "shackled" ( a very strong word indeed) - shackled to Her Majesty's Distinguished English as "a colonial language" just as his periods of exile from the promised land must have been either voluntary or involuntary - in either case probably due to circumstances beyond his control.
Nonetheless, many of the great ones including Joseph Conrad have written in that language in the past and hopefully many others will continue to do so.
We have heard all the so-called Language "decolonisation" arguments. It's probably the same reason for the Hebrew Prophets prophesying to their countrymen and women in the Holy Land , and, of course, in The Holy Tongue.
Another of course: Of course, people should feel free to write what they will, for whom they would like to write , keep their diaries in the language of their choice - which in the case of Anaïs Nin was English, and in the case of Birgitta Trotzig was her mother tongue, Swedish
The Child psychologists say that parents should speak / communicate with their children in the language of their emotions/ their emotional language, their poetic language, their mother tongues.
I did not notice and any hysterical reaction to the latest fake moment - the big blip in current time happening in Senegal, one of the cradles of the Negritude Movement of Francophone Africa and Diaspora when this improbable story broke, that "Senegal has replaced French by Arabic as the Official Language"
Anyway, more than four decades ago, Wole Soyinka did propose that if Africa was to have a single continental language, it should be Swahili -and he was ot only talking about Africa, South-East of the Sahara.
More food for thought: Chimanda Ngozi Adichie : "I am a Nigerian because a white man created Nigeria and gave me that identity. I am black because the white man constructed black to be as different as possible from his white. But I was Igbo before the white man came. My point is that the only authentic identity for the African is the tribe".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chimamanda_Ngozi_Adichie
Falola's 'Milestones in African Literature' By Olayinka Oyegbile
https://ntm.ng/2024/09/09/falolas-milestones-in-african-literature/
Adebayo Ajadi (ND Business Administration )Assistant Brand Manager,Toyin Falola Network- Pan-African University Press- The Toyin Falola Interviews- Toyin Falola Center for the Study of Africa- Toyin Falola Annual Conference on Africa and the African Diaspora (TOFAC) +234-810-7262-267 | +1 (512) 689-6067 | https://toyinfalolanetwork.org Facebook | Twitter | YouTube | Linkedin
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