Kenyatta Gray

Post-Colonial Literature: Lessons Learned from Colonialism

            Upon registering for this course, I was unaware of post-colonial literature.  As a Cross-Cultural Studies student, I am encouraged to seek an understanding of why certain cultures have certain customs and ideas about politics, family, religion, and community.  This course has enhanced my learning through the introduction of post-colonial literature.  These literary works serve as a response to the ruins left by colonial rule, often resulting in acts of violence and mass migration to other countries for a better life.  Lately, the response has been violent as I talked about in my research paper proposal.  The terrorist attacks on the U.S. that occurred on September 11, 2001, was a response to the American presence and societal interference in the Middle East.  In the proposal, I sought to explain how bringing literature of the colonial and post-colonial into dialogue would explain the motives of the hijackers.

            Throughout the course, presentations were made to guide the learning of colonial and post-colonial studies.  I presented on the Post-Colonial Studies website of Emory University.  Many of the components of the program correspond to the objectives of this course.  For example, objective 3 (To account for Americans’ difficulties with colonial and postcolonial discourse-and learn from this perspective) relates to the program at Emory in that the course seeks to close the gap between notions concerning what is considered to be post-colonial.  However, deciding this is difficult, and paves the way for further investigating into the colonial past and transnational migratory future.

            Dawlat Yassin, a student who took this course in 2008, believed that Americans sense of individuality and independence did not leave much room for the struggles of an oppressed people.  I have to agree with Yassin as it answers objective 3.  The U.S. may have been colonized much later than the islands of the Caribbean and the countries of South America, but it gained independence before the nineteenth century, which is when the others had gained theirs.  After gaining independence, the U.S. quickly set to work in establishing its political system, cash economy, foreign relations, and society.  By the World Wars, the U.S. became a major force in the international arena, making major decisions concerning world politics such as the founding of Israel and the countries of the Axis powers.  Today, the U.S. is a force to be reckoned with as other countries look to the U.S. for political guidance and economic/military aid.  Its citizens enjoy many personal freedoms, such as the right to possess armed weapons for protection, expression of speech and religion, as well as vote for government leaders.  Since the U.S. did not struggle as badly as other post-colonial countries did after independence in establishing themselves, Americans tend to forget the fact that the U.S. was once a colony; and because the U.S. is world hegemony, it is also seen as an imperialist country, which Americans seem to ignore as well.

            The texts that we read for the course were extremely helpful in understanding the importance of what colonial and post-colonial studies tries to teach us about the history of colonialism and its effect on the present and the future of former colonies.  On my midterm, I focused on the dialogue between Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe and Jamaica Kincaid’s Lucy.  The former involves the shipwrecked Crusoe on a deserted island and the latter is about a young woman’s quest to find herself.  Crusoe is from the colonizing country of England and Lucy is from the colonized country of Jamaica.  During his journeys, Crusoe encounters the inhabitants of each place he visits and his notions of them reveal to the reader this idea of self and other.  This idea formed to establish the dominance of colonizers over the colonized; it entails that the self sees the other as different due to color, physical features, as well as certain habits and customs.  While Crusoe was stranded, he established a kingdom of his own and acquired survival skills he would not have in England.  We see his self mentality come through when he names the native, Friday, and assumes he is a cannibal.  Lucy goes to the U.S. to become a nurse so she could return home to help her brothers.  She stays with a white family and seems kind of distant from them.  This is evident as she does not like to hug Mariah and has sexual relations with different men without any intentions of being in a relationship with them.  I got the sense that because Lucy lived in Jamaica during colonialism, her experiences made her angry and indifferent to Mariah and her family.  The reader could tell she did not want to be like them, so she did everything she could to keep this from happening.  In a way, one could say her actions toward men and Mariah were her way of saying “You did it to me, now I am doing it to you.  How does it feel?”  There is much imagery in the book, like when Mariah’s husband left her for her best friend.  The English came to Jamaica to exploit its natural resources, and when they got their fill, they left the country vulnerable to many hardships.  Mariah did not know what to do with herself after her husband and Lucy left.

            This course introduced me to colonial and post-colonial studies that I did not know existed.  As I learned from the presentations, readings, and lectures, colonialism left a legacy that would forever stain the post-colonial world.  In order to have a better live, many former colonizers migrate to other parts of the world, often bringing their anger with them.  In the case of the hijackers, they were discontent with American policies and presence in land they considered to be sacred in Islam.  Furthermore, the U.S. support of Israel was viewed to be an expansionist program that threatens to westernize the Middle East as Israelis continue to settle on Palestinian territory.  I could not help but wonder, is there a way to get past the past?  How do we atone for colonialism so that the future would not look so grim?  According to the Post-Colonial Studies program at Emory University, this is what the further investigation of the colonial and post-colonial seeks to understand and answer.

            As I prepare to graduate, this course along with the other courses I have taken toward my Cross-Cultural Studies degree, has given me an awareness of world issues important to know when I work for the government some day.  I am still undecided about going into the military or become a Foreign Service Officer, but whatever path I choose, I am expected to know about world issues involving the history of each country and how this effects their present so that we could help them transition well into their future.  Objective 1a (To model and mediate the “culture wars” between the “old canon” of Western classics and the “new canon” of multicultural literature by studying them together rather than separately) has helped me to understand the goal of colonial and post-colonial studies.  By studying literature together rather than separate, a lot of light has been shined on issues I did not know existed, and now that I know, I can use this to my advantage in my career.