Olivia

To be colonized is to forget the sound of your own name. To this day, it becomes impossible  for the colonized to escape the haunting shame that still lingers, associated with their past and  borrowed histories. The cultural amnesia fogs the brain into rejecting heritage whenever the  native self tries to embrace it, followed by a sharp flaring embarrassment. Imagine feeling  uncomfortable when you are speaking your tongue, the inability to pronounce your own name  without sounding apologetic and, last but not the least, questioning where you belong.  

If we consider the past as an anchor to stabilize the present, then culture is never static, always  in motion. They shift and hybridize according to Homi K Bhabha creating a Third space of  exchange. However, memory and trauma remain essential in his theory that prevents distortions  of narratives without which they become incomplete and false.  

Through the character of Kurtz, Joseph Conrad had established the white man’s legacy was  built on nothing. A man who was supposed to represent civilization and enlightenment, instead  became hollow and monstrous, echoing the emptiness of the colonial project.  

Heart of Darkness critiqued the Euro Christian missionary zeal heavily and its violent  consequences on the Africans, revealing greed as the foundation to extract a continent dry.  However, many like the Nigerian novelist Chinua Achebe (who called the novella “racist”)  found Conrad’s treatment of Africa as the “dark continent” unfair including the blatant  dehumanization of the nameless African characters described only as shadows and savages.  

People who live in places once ruled by foreign powers explore identity, culture and power  through their creations, reclaiming their origins. Postcolonial literature paints resilience  through the tongues once silenced. Things Fall Apart by Achebe himself which delves into the  story of a powerful and wealthy farmer Okonkwo captures the African perspective in true light,  pre and post colonization. Okonkwo’s rise and fall with the changing tides of time at Umofia  mirrors the larger narrative of a crumbling society. His suicide in the end becomes a tragic  symbol of resistance against the new world order. Despite its internal conflicts and hierarchies,  African society is rich with customs and traditions, woven with folklore and proverbs, vibrant  yet grounded. No one else could have portrayed the nuances of Igbo culture better than Achebe,  thus showcasing the difference between a native colonized storyteller versus the colonizer  narrating the tale.  

But what happens when the oppressor becomes the oppressed?  

In White Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys, Antoinette Cosway, a white Creole woman in Jamaica,  becomes the victim of colonial patriarchy, doubly ostracized first being the outsider ‘other’ and  as we know the ‘Other’ is always the woman, a subaltern. Rhys reimagines Charlotte Bronte’s  “madwoman in the attic” Bertha from Jane Eyre, giving her a voice and a history. She faces  racism and social exclusion by the Jamaicans including a mob attack and burning of her own  house by the natives. Antoinette’s story unveils identity within a colonized space, where even  white individuals can be marginalized and exploited. She is a hopeful mother who goes mad  from trauma and neglect. 

We observe then throughout centuries bridges have been burned again and again with people  forever choosing hatred over reconciliation or making amends.  

Diasporic literature often explores the fragmented identities of those who have left their  homelands, carrying the ghosts of their ancestors.  

In Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Namesake, Gogol, Ganguly the protagonist, grapples with his  hyphenated identity, torn between the traditions of his parents and the allure of American  culture. His name itself, chosen by his father Ashoke after a Russian author, becomes a symbol  of this struggle, a constant reminder of his dual heritage. Like Antoinette, Gogol experiences a  sense of displacement, a feeling of not fully belonging in either world. It is one of my favourite  novels that also highlights the challenges of maintaining cultural ties in a foreign land, the  subtle pressures to conform, and the enduring power of familial bonds.  

In a nutshell, if we have to sum up postcolonial literature then imagine yourself in a quest to  search for your stolen identity but being handed English and Shakespeare instead of therapy.  

Postcolonial literature is not just historical but it is deeply personal. And of course we cannot  forget, colonialism was never about land but language, memory and identity. Now, at last, we  are telling our stories in our own terms, reclaiming the voices that were once silenced.