For example, he uses the term a knot in my heart to refer to having a serious problem. This is a role outside traditional English semantics for that idiom, but never explains what it means. Even when   does tell the reader what a term means, he is somewhat condescending and alienating, as his footnote describing the semantic range of heart. He says, "It must be remembered that in Gikuyu the word 'heart' means many things: soul, spirit, conscience, mind, inner man, essence and so on." Even though heart has a very similar semantic range to standard English, he intentionally localizes the novel again, and reminds Western readers that they are reading an African work.
	At times,   also makes his subversion of English more explicit. He chooses to italicize non-Gikuyu words that appear in the original Gikuyu novel. In most English novels that use non-English words, it is these non-English words that are italicized. In Devil on the Cross, however,   italicizes not only French and Swahili borrowings, but even English words that appeared in English in the original work. Thus he continually reminds us that this novel is a translation, even an unnatural translation. 
	Even more explicitly,   dedicates his novel "To all Kenyans struggling against the neo-colonial stage of imperialism." His painful irony is that in order to communicate his message to the outside world,   must communicate in the medium of the oppressors. However, instead of bowing to English conventions, he chooses to treat the language of the oppressor as a tool to be manipulated for his local, Kenyan, aims. As author, the manipulated thus becomes the manipulator.
	Reed Dasenbrock sums up the position of   and like-minded authors, saying "This African critical position insists therefore on African literature's being African first and universal only second, if at all."   seems to have translated his work into English not to make it intelligible to the Western world, but to show the Western world that there are cultural boundaries that even a common language cannot overcome. 
	The third type of literature is that which comes from the new English learners in non-native English countries. As the English-speaking population continues to grow in these cultures, this type of literature is becoming increasingly common. It generally finds its expression when an author from a non-native culture immigrates to a native English culture, like Afghan-American author Khaled Hosseini, or when the child of immigrants grows up in an English-speaking culture, but writes about the culture and experiences of her non-English background, like Maxine Hong Kingston. These non-colonial authors generally do not have the same sort of conflicting feelings toward English as post-colonial cultures. They have chosen to learn English voluntarily, and generally see it as a means of social and economic mobility more than as a tool of oppression. Where   intentionally makes his novel unintelligible to the English reader, these authors are eager to use English in order to introduce their culture to the Western world. 