Why I Use "Writing for Peace" by Ngugi Wa Thiong'o in All my Composition Classes

Writing for Peace (PDF file will open in new window) is a chapter from Barrel of a Pen: Resistance to Repression in Neo-Colonial Kenya by Ngugi Wa. Thiong’O.  In this brief essay, Ngugi describes the economic, political, and cultural imperialism that dominated Kenya 22 years ago (during the Ronald Reagan administration). 

Writing for Peace is as important today as it was when it was written, especially for high school and university students in third-world countries, politely referred to as "developing countries" as Ngugi says in his essay.

Writing for Peace is especially appropriate writing classes because different writers have different responsibilities according to Ngugi Wa Thiong'o.  For example, the writer from Europe has a "special responsibility" defined by Ngugi Wa Thiong'o as follows:

He must expose to his European audience the naked reality of the relationship between Europe and the third world.  He has to show to his European reader that, to paraphrase Bertolt Brecht, the water he drinks is often taken from the mouths of the thirsty in the third world, and the food he eats is snatched from the mouths of the hungry in Asia, Africa, and South America.

In addition, writers from developing countries have a responsibility to their own people according to Ngugi.  Of their responsibilities, Ngugi says, 

But the responsibility also belongs to the writer from the third world.  From Kenya to South Korea to South America the third world is ringed round by US nuclear and conventional military bases.  The United States supports the most repressive regimes in the third world.  Uncle Sam sits on the backs of millions in the third world and loudly calls for stability.  The third world writer must be on the side of the struggles of those sat upon.

Finally, all writers have a responsibility according to Ngugi:

Writing for peace should at the very least mean raising human consciousness to an uncompromising hatred of all exploitative parasitic relations between nations and between peoples within each nation.  In our world today, this would mean continued exposure and opposition to imperialism currently led by the US.  "Get off our back!" should be the unanimous cry of all the democratic forces of peace, for we must all struggle for a world in which one's cleanliness is not dependent on another's dirt, one's health on another's ill-health, and one's welfare on another's misery.

Ngugi Wa Thiong'o's essay, Writing for Peace, is just three pages, an essay written about the economic, political, and cultural imperialism that existed in Kenya 22 years ago during the Ronald Reagan administration.  Today's readers of Writing for Peace cannot help but notice the fact that not much has changed.

The book from which Writing for Peace is written is old and out of print, but the bibliographic information is below.  The essay, Writing for Peace, is available here with the permission of Ngugi Wa Thiong'o.

Thiong'O, Ngugi Wa.  "Writing for Peace." Barrel of a Pen:  Resistance to Repression in Neo-Colonial Kenya.  Trenton, Jew Jersey:  Africa World Press, 1983.  71-75.