¶ … English literature texts Both Rohinton Mistry's "Squatter" and Ngugi Wa Thiong'o's "Decolonizing the Mind" utilize literature to challenge the idea of a uniform national and cultural identity, primarily through the means of depicting situations in which there are clashes of culture. Both are cautionary tales that warn against the forsaking of one's initial, primary heritage in exchange for a Westernized adaptation. The primary difference between the two works lies in the perspectives of both the authors and the events which affect the characters in the stories: Mistry's does so from the perspective of assimilation, while Thiong'o's does so from the perspective of suppression.

That Mistry's short story, definitely farcical in nature, is a warning to those who risk abandoning their culture in favor of willfully assimilating to another, is evident from the subject matter: that of a triumphant Parsi young man settling into Canada to become a fully integrated Westerner. Mistry has the principle character Sarosh recite the moral of his tale -- which is told in the third person by an uncle figure to a group of aspiring youths -- to levy a warning about assimilation, as the following quotation denotes. "Tell them,' said Sarosh, 'that the world can be a bewildering place, and dreams and ambitions are often paths to the most pernicious of traps' (p.343)." The fact that the story's main character is offering this insight to posterity (in the forms of the youths who will hear of his story, referred to by the pronoun "them") after his failed attempts to assimilate to

The author employs a series of poignant rhetorical questions to illustrate this motif, as the following quotation indicates. "What was the colonial system doing to us Kenyan children? What were the consequences of…this systematic suppression of our languages and the literature they carried, and…the elevation of English and the literature it carried (p. 550)?" The author is referring to the discouraged use of his native tongue and the usage of English as the basis for promotion in his colonial schooling. The unspoken answer to both queries is cultural suppression.
Interestingly enough, both authors make use of the oral tradition of storytelling to impart their specific stances of a dearth of uniform cultural identity. Mistry's chronicle of Sarosh is told by another character to a group of children fully immersed in their South Asia neighborhood -- and culture. The interposing of several native language references and concepts directly juxtaposes Sarosh's tale of assimilation, as the following quote, in which Sarosh's mother makes him promise to return to his native land if he is not fully Canadian in 10 years, demonstrates. "Kassum kha' -- on the Avesta. One last thing for your mother (p.330)." By having Sarosh swear an oath on a…