We Did Not Ask To Be Colonized: Legacies of Colonial Trauma in 21st Century African Fiction
Cox, Emily
2012
- The past two centuries have left a lasting mark on the continent of Africa. From the Horn to the Cape, the eras of conquest, colonialism, and post-colonialism were violent and unsettling for the millions of people who called the Continent home. The traumatic events in Africans_�_ lives are as unique as the Continent is vast, yet the universal circumstances of colonialism create similarities that ... read morespan circumstance and geography. Speak Rwanda by Julian R Pierce deals with the cataclysmic trauma of genocide, while Knots by Nuruddin Farah highlights the more insidious traumas of urban civil war. Purple Hibiscus by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichi, deals with the traumatic fallout from domestic abuse, a unique situation where the line between cataclysmic and insidious blurs. The stories and experiences of the characters may vary, but through all the narratives runs a thread that connects not only Africans but all oppressed, victimized, or colonized people. All three look to colonial legacies for explanations of the events in the more immediate past. These narratives not only struggle with the question of blame, but also with the question of what is to come in the future. All three novels indicate that healing, both from the distant and recent past, has begun, but the novels also acknowledge that the shadow of the colonial past still looms large in the 21st centuryread less
- ID:
- 5h73q6669
- Component ID:
- tufts:UA005.005.076.00001
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