Postcolonial Literature Texts
Primary and Secondary Resources for all your Postcolonial Literature Needs
Primary Resources
![](https://media1.shmoop.com/media/common/off-site01.gif)
A story about heroic Indian villagers fighting the British in pre-Independence India. It's considered to be the first major Indian novel in English. Good stuff.
![](https://media1.shmoop.com/media/common/off-site01.gif)
A classic text (it's a poem) of the Négritude movement, which took pride in black culture and identity, written by the Martinican poet Césaire.
![](https://media1.shmoop.com/media/common/off-site01.gif)
The story of Okonkwo's fight against the British in Nigeria. This novel is a foundational text of postcolonial literature, so don't miss it.
![](https://media1.shmoop.com/media/common/off-site01.gif)
Things keep falling apart after independence for a young Nigerian man in Achebe's second novel.
![](https://media1.shmoop.com/media/common/off-site01.gif)
The events of this novel are set a few decades after the events of Things Fall Apart. And guess what? Things are still falling apart in Igbo land.
![](https://media1.shmoop.com/media/common/off-site01.gif)
The prequel to Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre. It takes place (mostly) in Jamaica, and it tells us things from the perspective of a colonized woman who later becomes the madwoman in the attic in Brontë's novel.
![](https://media1.shmoop.com/media/common/off-site01.gif)
This is the big novel of South American literature, and it tells us all about the postcolonial condition there... with lots of magic thrown in.
![](https://media1.shmoop.com/media/common/off-site01.gif)
This is all about one trippy dream... oh yeah, and Caribbean identity.
![](https://media1.shmoop.com/media/common/off-site01.gif)
A play about the clash between British colonial values and indigenous Yoruba values in Nigeria.
![](https://media1.shmoop.com/media/common/off-site01.gif)
Kenyan colonial and postcolonial history make us this massive novel by Ngũgĩ. It's sad stuff (can't you tell by the title?), but it's eye-opening.
![](https://media1.shmoop.com/media/common/off-site01.gif)
Indian history with crazy twists and turns? Look no further than the novel that made Salman Rushdie a star.
![](https://media1.shmoop.com/media/common/off-site01.gif)
A gripping novel about a colonial official in an unnamed country who's implicated in the torture of natives.
![](https://media1.shmoop.com/media/common/off-site01.gif)
Love multigenerational family sagas? Check out this one about a family from Chile.
![](https://media1.shmoop.com/media/common/off-site01.gif)
Rushdie's novel is all about how and why things go wrong in Pakistan after partition from India.
![](https://media1.shmoop.com/media/common/off-site01.gif)
Short stories. We get a panorama of Caribbean life and culture, with lots of gender issues thrown in.
![](https://media1.shmoop.com/media/common/off-site01.gif)
Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe retold from the perspective of a woman.
![](https://media1.shmoop.com/media/common/off-site01.gif)
Walcott's epic poem immortalizes the tiny Caribbean island nation of St. Lucia.
![](https://media1.shmoop.com/media/common/off-site01.gif)
An autobiographical novel about of a young woman from the Caribbean who comes to the U.S. to work as a nanny.
![](https://media1.shmoop.com/media/common/off-site01.gif)
A dying woman in South Africa becomes aware of the violence of apartheid.
![](https://media1.shmoop.com/media/common/off-site01.gif)
A short but gripping book about the destructiveness of colonial education.
![](https://media1.shmoop.com/media/common/off-site01.gif)
It's a novel about caste, family and nation. It deals with a love affair between an Indian woman and a man from a Dalit (untouchable) caste.
![](https://media1.shmoop.com/media/common/off-site01.gif)
In this novel, follow Ned Kelly's adventures as a bandit fighting British authorities in Australia.
![](https://media1.shmoop.com/media/common/off-site01.gif)
This novel tells us all about the colonial relationship between two Small Islands: Great Britain and Jamaica. That's right: Great Britain as a small island.
![](https://media1.shmoop.com/media/common/off-site01.gif)
The story of Lilith, a slave girl growing up on a Jamaican slave plantation. It's a whole novel told in Jamaican dialect.
Secondary Resources
![](https://media1.shmoop.com/media/common/off-site01.gif)
This is the book that got the whole field of postcolonial literary theory going. Said shows how colonial authors justified colonialism through their literature and writing.
![](https://media1.shmoop.com/media/common/off-site01.gif)
You'll need to roll up your sleeves for this one, because the essays in this book are deep and difficult. They deal with culture, colonialism, and politics.
![](https://media1.shmoop.com/media/common/off-site01.gif)
Want a good introduction to postcolonial literature? Look no further.
![](https://media1.shmoop.com/media/common/off-site01.gif)
We'll be real with you here: this is a really jargony book of essays on colonialism and culture. Like, if there were an impenetrable jargon prize, this might win (we award Spivak the runner-up prize). But Homi Bhabha's a totally important postcolonial literary theorist, though, so don't give up.
![](https://media1.shmoop.com/media/common/off-site01.gif)
Because Said is that important in the field of postcolonial theory, here's a second book by him. The title sums it up: it's all about culture and imperialism.