(Download) "Speaking in Tongues: Ngugi's Gift to Workers and Peasants Through Murogi Wa Kagogo." by Journal of Literary Studies # eBook PDF Kindle ePub Free
eBook details
- Title: Speaking in Tongues: Ngugi's Gift to Workers and Peasants Through Murogi Wa Kagogo.
- Author : Journal of Literary Studies
- Release Date : January 01, 2011
- Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines,Books,Professional & Technical,Education,
- Pages : * pages
- Size : 223 KB
Description
Summary In his article "On Writing in Gikuyu", Ngugi says that "[a]n African writer should write in a language that will allow him to communicate effectively with peasants and workers in Africa--in other words, be should write in an African language" (1985: 151; my italics). This article is a deconstructive reading and assessment of Ngugi's performance in his latest anal largest novel Murogi wa Kagogo (Wizard of the Crow) which is in three volumes in its Kikuyu version. The reading is premised on the Derridian idea that texts and their discourse propositions contain within themselves seeds of their own deconstruction or undoing. I argue that Murogi wa Kagogo contains within it seeds of destruction of the very ideological values that Ngugi seeks to validate. In a newspaper article, Kamoche (2005) raised a fundamental question regarding this novel: "[C]an Ngugi ape and hope to promote the vernacular?" His conclusion was that Ngugi "inadvertently ends up perpetuating a hybrid language that is only part Gikuyu". "He is preaching Gikuyu while practicing Pidgin English", he "sneaks in a disproportionate volume of 'Englisms' through the backdoor. Kamoche's newspaper article, which was limited to the novel's preface, dedication, acknowledgements and the synopsis, did not touch on Ngugi's stated objective: to communicate with peasants anal workers. This article seeks to answer the question how far Ngugi manages to reach his targeted audience of workers and peasants in his novel Murogi wa Kagogo (2004, 2006a). (1)