What do you understand by a "decolonization of mind?"

The
phrase "decolonizing the mind" was popularized (if not coined) by Ngugi wa Thiongo, a
Kenyan novelist, in a book by that title published in 1986. He summed up what it meant to him in
the introduction of the book, which he assured his readers would be the last he published in
English: from here on out, it would be "Kenyan all the way." Thiongo lamented the fact
that many writers in former colonial countries wrote exclusively in English or French, which he
viewed as the languages of the oppressors. He argued that even if political imperialism was
over, cultural and economic imperialism was very much alive, and to accept European culture and
language as normative was to accept their hegemony over African and other formerly colonized
peoples. For Thiongo, writing in English was (and is) an acceptance of the alleged inferiority
of African and other indigenous cultures that served as a justification for imperialism in the
first place. In order to become fully free, formerly subaltern...