Trying to Fit in Someone Else's Shoes.

"If there is a need for a 'study of the historic continuity of a single culture,' why can't this be African? Why can't African literature be at the centre so that we can view other cultures in relationship to it?" (Ngugi, 2093). 

Reading Ngugi's On the Abolition of the English Department was an incredibly informative and enlightening experience for me. I went into the essay knowing a minor amount of information about this author, but enough to understand the point from which he was coming from. After reading the essay, I tried to take some time to imagine what it would be like for Americans to be in the situation that literature students in Africa are in today. Let's say, for instance, that instead if winning the Revolutionary War, early American lost this battle and thus became subjected to all the laws and influences of not England but solely France. Because of this, your entire life you are raised to speak completely in French. This means that when you write a paper, speak to your friends, or do anything pertaining to language, it is done in French, a language that come from a faraway country that has oppressed and hurt you and your family. Because of this French government all your father can do is farm, and half of his crops and money are taken away from him every year, leaving your family poor and hungry. However, despite this injustice, you are still told in school that you must worship and follow the words and linguistics of the French language. So there is a discrepancy between what you dislike and what you are told you must like and/or follow. Thus your own language and thoughts become slaves to another more powerful system's and you are left to wonder what life would have been like had you possessed the ability to retain your English-speaking roots from your fathers who came over from England, all the while continuing to feed into the French culture which has placed you in a position of poverty. ouch. that would not be fun at all. 

I think it is difficult for those on "our" side, the side that some claim is being attacked or rebelled against in literature, to even begin to understand the other side of the situation. For this reason I would like to encourage every student from class to take time to really contemplate what life would be like if the above situation did indeed take place. I know this contemplation does not even come close to the real thing, but it is a good starting point, for anybody who wants to understand Ngugi, to try to put themselves in a Kenyan English Student's shoes. For as these students press forward in their education, which is something needed to gain sustenance and success, they are being forced to lose their identity. As Kenyan students study, they are pushed further away from their roots. This is something Western World students could never even begin to fathom. It is not our fault that  countries like Kenya have been oppressed under Western education. However, it is our duty to make sure it does not continue to happen and that all cultures are given an equal opportunity for expression and opinion through literature in their own language.