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Periodical article Periodical article Leiden University catalogue Leiden University catalogue WorldCat catalogue WorldCat
Title:Decolonizing the word: language, culture, and self in the works of Ngugi wa Thiong'o and Gabriel Okara
Author:Williams, Katherine
Year:1991
Periodical:Research in African Literatures
Volume:22
Issue:4
Pages:53-61
Language:English
Geographic terms:Nigeria
Kenya
Subject:literature
About persons:Ngugi wa Thiong'o (1938-)ISNI
Gabriel Okara (1921-2019)ISNI
External link:https://www.jstor.org/stable/3820357
Abstract:In this essay, the author examines particular issues of language in several works by the Kenyan novelist Ngugi wa Thiong'o and in the controversial novel 'The voice' (1970) by the Nigerian novelist and poet Gabriel Okara. More specifically, she explores the interrelations of language and culture in the development of authorial and national identity in their works. The primary theoretical issue for postcolonial writers like Ngugi and Okara is the relation of linguistic displacement to cultural displacement. Both writers attempt to fight their way out of psychological and political alienation by examining the nature of language and by raising the question of whether language constructs culture or is constructed by it. Okara does so implicitly in his experimental novel: he translated Ijo idiom literally into English. Ngugi does it explicitly: he wrote his recent novels in Gikuyu, his native language. Bibliogr., notes.
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