Ngugi wa Thiong'o

The excerpt from Decolonization of the Mind was hard for me to get through. What I took from it was that you shouldn't talk about things you do not know. You should not form opinions without personally experiencing it yourself or having enough knowledge to prove your opinion. The British should respect people in the place that they live. The African language is not just something you can translate. Therefore, can the English carry the weight of their African experience? No, the language should be in the mother tongue. The star story that was read in class about the star bathing the fish's pond was helpful for understanding this. The star does not anything of the pond and the fish does not know anything of the sky. This is true for the British and the Africans. They both do not know enough about either cultures so why form opinions about it? It used to upset me when I would hear people from ivy-league schools talk about how UC isn't a good school. How can they form opinions about UC if they do not attend it? I know nothing of their university's culture and they know nothing of mine.

Wedding at the Cross was much more pleasing for me to read although frustrating. I was frustrated because the woman in this story puts up with so much from her husband. Wariuki was a poor man who was satisfied with just clowning around on a bicycle for money. He falls in love with Miriamu who is a good catholic from money. She loved how down to earth and carefree he was about money and life. However, when he met her father, everything changed. Wariuki was no longer content with just living in the woods with Miriamiu. Her father's comment about money and class hit Wariuki so hard that he drove himself mad trying to be successful. He transformed himself into Dodge W. Livingstone, an accomplished man in the church and society. He made amends with her father, Douglas Jones, and felt it was time to marry Miriamu. I was so relieved at the end when she rejected him at the altar. Douglas Jones colonized Wariuki and Miriamu became decolonized. This reminded me of my friend's parents in high school. They started off very in love but her dad became obsessed with social status and money where her mom had it all her life and wasn't fazed by it anymore. It's sad to see how colonizing the mind can change a person so much to the point that even their relationships don't even work anymore.

Minutes of Glory was very sad. This poor girl Wanjiru, also known as Beatrice because she is ashamed on her real name, was nothing more than a bar maid. However, she was a very ignored bar maid. She felt unattractive and invisible all the time. She envied other pretty girls and how they had so much confidence. At the end, when she returns all dolled up, she got her sweet revenge. She chose to ignore the suiters and prance around knowing that she looked good. She wasn't even fazed when the authorities took her away for stealing. I've seen this happen to many girls in my time. This was clear that colonialism teaches you to hate yourself. She changed who she was and conformed to the fact that men only think women are good for pleasing them. My best friend Libby is a really intelligent girl. She comes from a family of doctors and she herself is pre-med. She's had a perfect grade point average her whole life and school is effortless to her because of her natural intellect. However, when we go out, people think she is just another dumb party girl in a dress and acts less intelligent than she really is. She conforms to the idea of how men think a woman should be instead of just being herself. Colonization teaches women that they are only good for pleasing men with sex.