The Global South Project
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Asia in My Life

Ngugi wa Thiong'o

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The links between Asia and Africa and South America have always been present but in our times they have been made invisible by the fact that Europe is still the central mediator of Afro-Asian-Latino discourse. We live under what Satya Mohanty in his interview in Frontline (April 2012), aptly calls the long intellectual shadow of the Age of European Empire.

In my case, I had always assumed that my intellectual and social formation was tied to England and Europe, with no meaningful connection to Asia and South America. There was a reason. I wrote in English. My literary heroes were English. Kenya being a British colony, I had learnt the geography and history of England as the central reference in my widening view of the world. Even our anti-colonial resistance assumed Europe as the point of contest; it was we, Africa, against them, Europe. I graduated from Makerere College in Uganda in 1964, with a degree in English; then went to the University of Leeds, England, for further studies, in English. Leeds was a meeting point of students from the Commonwealth: India, Pakistan, Australia, and the Caribbean. We saw each other through our experience of England. Our relationship to England, in admiration, resentment or both, was what established a shared space.

After I wrote my memoir of childhood, Dreams in a Time of War, published in 2006, I looked back and saw how much India had been an equally important thread in my life. I had not planned to bring out the Indian theme in my life: but there it was, staring at me right from the pages of my narrative. The thread starts from home, through school, college and after.

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Essays in this Forum


Rethinking the Global South
by Mukoma Wa Ngugi

From Indian Literature to World Literature: A Conversation with Satya P. Mohanty
by Rashmi Dube Bhatnagar and Rajender Kaur

Asia in My Life
by Ngugi wa Thiong'o

The Global South and Cultural Struggles: On the Afro-Asian People’s Solidarity Organization
by Duncan Mceachern Yoon

The Fault Lines of Hindi and Urdu
by Sanjay Kumar

Reframing Colonialism and Modernity: An Endeavour through Sociology and Literature
by Gurminder K. Bhambra

Varieties of Cultural Chauvinism and the Relevance of Comparative Studies
by Tilottoma Misra

Literature to Combat Cultural Chauvinism: A Response
by Shivani Jha

Is There an Indian Way of Thinking about Comparative Literature?
by E. V. Ramakrishnan

Modernity and Public Sphere in Vernacular

by Purushottam Agrawal

West Indian Writers and Cultural Chauvinism

by Jerome Teelucksingh

Oral Knowledge in Berber Women’s Expressions of the Sacred

by Fatima Sadiki
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  • Home
  • About
  • Forums & Essays
    • Forum: Chauvinism, Indian Literature, World Literature
    • Forum: World Literature and Globalectics: Theory and the Politics of Knowing
  • Contributors
  • Guidelines
  • Participating Journals
  • Contact