English 12 / Unit 6: Modern and Postcolonial Literature
6.6 Reading Postcolonial Texts
Notes
- Voice and perspective: ask who speaks and who is silent.
- Language: authors may mix English with local words or proverbs, or debate which language to write in. Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o chose to write in his first language, Gikuyu, as an act of resistance.
- Identity: characters may feel split between cultures.
- Example (original passage): "The teacher said our names were too hard for her to say. By Monday I was 'Mary' on her list, and my old name stayed home with my grandmother." This shows the loss of cultural identity through colonial schooling.
Practice
In the original passage "By Monday I was 'Mary' on her list, and my old name stayed home with my grandmother," what theme is most clear?
Replacing a name suggests erasing the child's heritage.
Why might a postcolonial author include words and proverbs from a local language in an English novel?
Mixing languages preserves a culture's voice.
When analyzing a colonial story, which question reflects a postcolonial reading?
Postcolonial reading examines whose voices the text omits.
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