Post Colonial Essay
PostColonial Literature Essay
3. With reference of at least two short stories from the course, consider in what ways either Desai, Munro, Galgut and Rushdie’s stories are Postcolonial texts. You may consider issues such as home and homelessness, absences in the text, place, positionality or anything you feel is relevant to your attempt at decoding postcolonial identities.
Post-colonial literature can be considered as a body of literary writings that reacts to the discourse of colonization. Post-colonial writers focus on issues such as de-colonization and the political and cultural independence of people formerly subjugated to colonial rule.
However post-colonial literature cannot be described only by the definition above, many other issues have to be considered in order to fully understand post-colonial texts.
In order to understand post-colonial texts, one has to focus on two post-colonial writers: Anita Desai and Damon Galgut.
To begin with, Anita Desai is an Indian novelist and short story writer, especially noted for her sensitive portrayal of the inner life of her female characters. Desai prefers the concerns of Westernized, middle-class characters rather than those facing the majority of India. Desai has comments on her work “My novels are no reflection of Indian society, politics or character. They are my private attempt to seize upon the raw material of life.”
“Diamond Dust”(2000), a second Desai’s short story collection, features a selection of tales set in North America and India, Indian characters and concerns figure in all of them, illuminating Desai’s thematic preoccupation with the psychological effects on multiculturalism.
A short story called “Five Hours to Simla or Faisla” was written by Desai. Shubha Tiwari in “Critical responses to Anita Desai” argues that “Five Hours to Simla Or Faisla is one of the most successful stories in this collection because of the clarity of the motives in it. It is a humorous story about the adamant
3. With reference of at least two short stories from the course, consider in what ways either Desai, Munro, Galgut and Rushdie’s stories are Postcolonial texts. You may consider issues such as home and homelessness, absences in the text, place, positionality or anything you feel is relevant to your attempt at decoding postcolonial identities.
Post-colonial literature can be considered as a body of literary writings that reacts to the discourse of colonization. Post-colonial writers focus on issues such as de-colonization and the political and cultural independence of people formerly subjugated to colonial rule.
However post-colonial literature cannot be described only by the definition above, many other issues have to be considered in order to fully understand post-colonial texts.
In order to understand post-colonial texts, one has to focus on two post-colonial writers: Anita Desai and Damon Galgut.
To begin with, Anita Desai is an Indian novelist and short story writer, especially noted for her sensitive portrayal of the inner life of her female characters. Desai prefers the concerns of Westernized, middle-class characters rather than those facing the majority of India. Desai has comments on her work “My novels are no reflection of Indian society, politics or character. They are my private attempt to seize upon the raw material of life.”
“Diamond Dust”(2000), a second Desai’s short story collection, features a selection of tales set in North America and India, Indian characters and concerns figure in all of them, illuminating Desai’s thematic preoccupation with the psychological effects on multiculturalism.
A short story called “Five Hours to Simla or Faisla” was written by Desai. Shubha Tiwari in “Critical responses to Anita Desai” argues that “Five Hours to Simla Or Faisla is one of the most successful stories in this collection because of the clarity of the motives in it. It is a humorous story about the adamant
References: Anita Desai (2000). Diamond Dust, “Five Hours to Simla or Faisla”. Damon Galgut (2010). In a Strange Room, “The Lover”. Hart, Jonathan; Goldie Terrie (1993). “Post Colonial theory”. In: http://books.google.com/books?id=CTJCiLG9AeoC&pg=PA155#v=onepage&q&f=false Word count: 1,967.