Postcolonial Literature:  a Brief Introduction

Many novelist, poets, and dramatists since the 1980s have been called postcolonial writers. But what is this literary movement really all about?  

In a nutshell, postcolonial literature is by people from formerly colonized countries, typically tackling the problems and consequences of the decolonization of a nation, particularly questions around political and cultural independence.  Colonialism left very serious, lasting consequences to these nations, such as from pillaging the people’s land, resources and minerals, labor, and even culture. 

By the mid-20th century, one colony after another started to fall.  India gained its independence from Britain in 1947, while Ghana followed suit in 1957.  Liberation came to French colonies such as Senegal and Algeria, while British colonies such as Kenya and Saint Lucia and Portuguese colonies like Angola also came tumbling down. 

Decolonization occurred not just because of freedom fighters and political figures.  Writers also played a crucial role in this phenomenon. Postcolonial literature surfaces at the time when many colonies were fighting hard to be independent, with many classic postcolonial texts published from the 1950s to the 1990s.  The novel mainly defines this movement, although drama and poetry are also important. 

In 1961, Frantz Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth was published in French, stemming from the Algerian struggle from independence.  By 1979, Edward Said had produced Orientalism, which examines the link between those in the West and the “Other” in the East. Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart (1958), Tayeb Salih’s Season of Migration to the North (1966), and Nadine Gordimer’s novels are some of the important works that define this movement. 

John Eilermann is a comparative literature student from St. Louis, Missouri.  It is his goal to develop an understanding of literary compositions regardless of boundaries such as language, culture, and tradition.  Learn more about literature and history on this  website.