May 23, 2026

The bullet was meant to kill me permanently." — Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o, Decolonising the Mind

Ngũgĩ wrote Decolonising the Mind in 1986, just years after being detained without trial in Kenya for writing a play in the Gĩkũyũ language. The Kenyan state wanted to silence him by making him abandon his mother tongue and the community it connected him to. He kept writing anyway, in Gĩkũyũ, because he understood that integrity is not just a personal virtue but a political act. Choosing to stay true to your own voice, even when powerful people want you to change it, is exactly the kind of courage this book is asking readers to reckon with.