At age 87, Kenyan author Ng~ug~i wa Thiong’o remains impassioned…

"I am fine (with speaking English). After all, I am a distinguished professor of English and comparative literature at the University of California, in Irvine. So it's not that I mind English, but I don't want it to be my primary language, OK? This is how I put it: For me, and for everybody, if you know all the languages of the world, and you don't know your mother tongue, that's enslavement, mental enslavement. But if you know your mother tongue, and add other languages, that is empowerment." His U.S.publisher, The New Press, has just released "Decolonizing Language," which the…