Ngaahika Ndeenda (I Will Marry When I Want)

Ngaahika Ndeenda ( I Will Marry When I Want (Performed in Kenya in 1977) at Kamiriithu Educational and Cultural Center, is a controversial play that covers post-colonial themes of class struggle, poverty, gender, culture, religion, modernity vs. tradition, and marriage and family.

The play was written by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o and Ngũgĩ wa Mirii in the Kikuyu language and later translated to English language.

Quotes

• Sorry!I shall marry when I want.Nobody will force me into it!
  • Gathoni Act One.

• What do you want to do with that title-deed? / Why do you always gaze at it / As if it was a title for a thousand ares.
  • Wangeci, page 3.

• Poverty has no heroes, / He who judges knows not how he will be judged.
  • Kĩgũũnda, Page 5.

• It’s all the modern children. / They have no manners at all.

Kĩgũũnda, Page 17.

• The difference between then and now is this! / We now have our independence!

Wangeci, Page 19.

• Aren't they the real bedbugs, / Local watchmen for the foreign robbers? / When they see a poor man’s property their mouths water, / When they get their own, their mouths dry up! / Don’t they have any lands / They can share with these foreigners / Whom they have invited back into the country / To desecrate the land?
  • Wangeci, Page 31

• Religion is the alcohol of the soul! / Religion is the poison of the mind!
  • Gĩcaamba, Page 61

• I’ll always help this organization, / With my strength and property, / I’ll help members of this organization, / So that if a bean falls to the ground / We split it among ourselves
  • Leader, Page 69.

• It’s better to sometimes cover up our eating habits,Rather than show the poor our mastications!
  • Ikkua wa Nditika, 76

• Go and fetch water from the drum outside, / You know the one near the pig-sty.
  • Jezebel, Page 81.

• The trumpet of the masses has been blown.
  • All, 116.

• I ran away from coldland only to find myself in frostland!
  • Kiguunda Act One.

External Links

https://www.bookrags.com/studyguide-i-will-marry-when-i-want/quotes.html#gsc.tab=0