Choosing Your Language

>>I think what may have struck me the hardest is that he got his university to change the "English" department to the "Literature" department.<<

That caught my eye too, although I looked at it in a different way. That is, I was thinking that "English" made sense in English-speaking countries, and that elsewhere it might be "French Department" or "Spanish Department" or whatever. Because literature is made of language. If we're getting "English" departments in countries where English isn't the native language, though, that's a colonialism problem. And that's where it becomes important that someone is writing in his own vernacular, Gikuyu in this case.

>>As a holder of an English/Education degree, this has resonance with me. I may put a sign on my door at school, re-labeling my room "Literature and Writing."<<

Go for it. We each of us get one vote in how a language is to be used -- but some of us speak in ways that we are heard widely. Ngugi wa Thiongo to Nnedi Okorafor to me to you to your students, passing ideas along and thinking about what they mean, what we want them to mean, what kind of world we want to live in. Because sometimes, the world is created by the act of describing it.

Vote with your words. They have wings.