Decolonising The Mind Summary

Because of a wide series of colonizations and migrations, the United States has become a melting pot of cultures and, thus, languages spanning the world. This blend of world cultures began as far back as the American Revolution. In that time, the culture of Native Americans and that of the Europeans melded together. Through this newfound combination, traditions like Thanksgiving and storytelling became staples of the American existence. Furthermore, with the passage of time came more cultures to contribute to the American melting pot - bringing in hosts of other languages such as Polish, Arabic, Spanish, and Italian. Each language created a niche in American culture, an exclusive club with membership extended only to those who knew and appreciated
It enables multilingual people to become more adaptive to the obstacles that life might throw at them. For example, the actions of a multilingual person are not taken solely on the basis of one culture or another, but instead are influenced and determined by every culture that person is connected to through language, contributing to the larger perspective. James Currey describes this idea in his piece Decolonising The Mind:

Language as culture is the collective memory bank of a people’s experience in history. Culture is almost indistinguishable from the language that makes possible its genesis, growth, banking, articulation and indeed its transmission from one generation to the next
For one, they are unable to find a place to ally themselves with and to call their true home. When they experience turmoil they have no fellow countrymen to turn to for they toe the line between one nationality and another. Gloria Anzaldina illustrates this idea in her poem To Live in the Borderlands: “To live in the borderlands means knowing...that denying the Anglo inside you is as bad as having denied the Indian or Black”. Here she speaks of the inherent difficulty of living in the proverbial borderlands between nationalities, and dishonoring one by choosing another. Secondly, although it is often not understood as such, language is a core component of a person’s identity. If lost, it tears a hole in the psyche of that who it left. Marjorie Agosin characterizes this inner pain in her piece The