Postcolonialism Essays -- Literary Analysis

Postcompoundism is a critical show up in literary studies that deals with the experience of exclusion, denigration, and resistance under colonial look into (Waugh 340). It concerns itself with the reaction that is incited due to colonialism, which is the taking over and expansion of colonies by raft from a nonher colony. In essence, postcolonialism deals with the ways race, identity, culture, and ethnicity are represented after an firmament has been colonized. Postcolonialism pays particular attention to the response of the oppressed, which can be both bow and subtle. Claude McKay, a Jamaican-the Statesn poet, wrote America during the Harlem Renaissance, and although it was before the postcolonial movement, it exemplifies many postcolonial ideas.America deals heavily with the bivalent ideas of love and hate. In the first four lines of the poem, the narrator shows his extreme antipathy for America. But, while he hates her, he also is forced to depend on her as well. In the first line, the narrator states, Although she feeds me bread of bitterness, which tells the reader that he relies on America for food and sustenance. It also plays on the idea of America being the mother role feeding a child that depends on her to live. We are thus led to believe that the narrator acknowledges that America is memory him alive, even though she does so with bitterness. He goes on to write, And sinks into my throat her tigers tooth, / Stealing my breath of life, I will confess (Lines 2-3). Here, readers should bring out how the narrator feels America is stealing his life and draining his spirit. In a time where America was supposed to be providing freedom and equality to blacks, he is instead having his culture and his background robbed from h... ...lonial writers and critics find ways of answering the colonial oppressor back by exploiting the struggles over meaning which take place at heart the texts of empire themselves they ridicule and refute how they themselves hav e been represented. Moreover, crucially, in doing so they read their own subjectivity, their own perceptions of the world. In America, McKay has done just this. He openly and honestly writes of his struggles, of the struggles faced by most blacks during this time. He depicts the double spirit and in-between that he experiences being a hyphenated American. He is also not afraid to stand back, to use Americas strength to moot him the power to fight against this hate. Although the poem ends on a more distress note, with the future of America looking bleak, McKay shows that, even then, there is still a small hope for the future.