English 12 / Unit 6: Modern and Postcolonial Literature
6.5 Postcolonial Literature: Key Ideas
Notes
Colonialism is when one nation controls another's land and people. Postcolonial literature deals with the effects of empire and independence. Works from after 1928 are described, not quoted.
- Themes: cultural identity, loss of language, resistance, hybridity (mixing of cultures), and the question of who tells the story.
- Writers "write back" by telling the story from the colonized perspective.
- Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness (1899) criticizes colonial greed, but the Nigerian author Chinua Achebe argued the novel treats Africans as a backdrop and denies them voices.
- Achebe's Things Fall Apart (1958) portrays Igbo society in Nigeria before and during the arrival of missionaries and British officials, showing a complete culture that is disrupted.
- Jean Rhys's Wide Sargasso Sea (1966) gives a background and voice to the first wife in Jane Eyre.
Practice
What does "write back" mean in postcolonial literature?
Writers challenge dominant narratives by giving voice to the silenced.
What is the main reason Achebe's Things Fall Apart is considered important?
The novel presents Igbo life as complex and shows colonial disruption.
A novel retells Jane Eyre from the perspective of the woman locked in the attic, who is from the Caribbean. This is an example of:
Wide Sargasso Sea gives a voice to a character who had little voice in the original.
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