Something Torn and New : An African Renaissance

Something Torn and New : An African Renaissance ( Published in 2009) is a book written by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o .

=Quotes

• This contact is characterized by dismemberment. An act of absolute social engineering…
  • Page 5.

• African Renaissance harbors “the central idea of rebirth and the spring of a new vision of being
  • Page 88.

• Europe has turned the continent’s linguistic communities into “graveyards over which now lie European linguistic plantations”
  • Page 19.

• Literature written by Africans in European languages… can only be termed Afro-European literature; that is, the literature written by Africans in European languages” **Decolonising, 27

• Wherever they went, in their voyages of land, sea, and mind, Europeans planted their own memories on whatever they contacted.
  • Page 8

• Give me a map; then let me see how much Is left for me to conquer all the world, . . .
  • Page 8

• That from thenceforth each one should take unto him- self a several surname, either of his trade or faculty of some quality of his body or his mind, or of the place where he dwelt, so as every one should be distinguished from the other or from the most part; whereby they shall not only not depend upon the head of their sept as now they do, but also shall in short time learn quite to forget his Irish nation. And therewithal would I also wish all the Oes and the Macs which the heads of the septs have taken to their names to be utterly forbidden and extinguished.1
  • Page 12

• Linguicide is the linguistic equivalent of genocide. Genocide involves con- scious acts of physical massacre; linguicide, conscious acts of language liquidation.

Page 30

To starve or kill a language is to starve and kill a people’s memory bank.

• Page 20.

• They wept such ceaseless tears into my stream That it has thus far overflowed his shore.
  • Page 24.

• . A black character in my novel, Wizard of the Crow, suffers from white- ache, which can be cured only by his becoming white. Name and language loss are the necessary steps toward the loss of his previous identity and his renewal in the new identity.
  • Page 26

• In war, all strategies and tactics revolve around the shield and the spear.
  • Page 28.