Literary and theoretical texts for all your Postcolonial Theory needs.
Primary Literary Texts
Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad (1899)
In Heart of Darkness, a European guy goes deep into the "'heart"' of Africa to save another European guy only to find out that his man has gone "'native"' and also mental. Is the whole journey fut...
"I wandered lonely as a Cloud" by William Wordsworth (1807)
A depressed guy sees daffodils and the world suddenly and poetically becomes—literally—all flowers and sunshine. What's this have to do with postcolonialism again? Here's another way to look at...
"Girl" by Jamaica Kincaid (1978)
You've got a mean mom who's really not into building her daughter's self-esteem, and you've got a daughter who's pretty silent. In fact, the prose poem "'Girl"' is all about how a Caribbean mother...
Oh, the Places You'll Go! by Dr. Seuss, (1960)
We love Dr. Seuss with the kind of devotion a kid has for his or her blankie, but that doesn't mean Dr. Seuss is untouchable. No sir-ee! Think of this text as a good way to stretch your newly-foun...
The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy (1997)
Fraternal boy/girl twins, Estha and Rahel, are living in a small village in India when their cousin Sophie Mol comes to visit. Sophie starts the book off with a bang (or a splash) by drowning in th...
Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie (1980)
How's this novel postcolonial? Do you really have to ask? First, you've got this narrator/protagonist Saleem Sinai, who just happens to be born at midnight on the eve of India's independence...
Primary Theoretical Texts
"An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad's Heart of Darkness" by Chinua Achebe (1961)
A Nigerian-born professor tears apart Joseph Conrad's revered, classic novella and accuses Conrad of being a "'thoroughgoing racist."' It's pretty rare for an academic to make such a blunt, even of...
The Wretched of the Earth by Frantz Fanon (1961)
This book is like the primer on anti-colonialism and decolonization. It covers the effects of colonialism on the mental health of the colonized, the use of language as a tool of oppression, and—m...
Orientalism by Edward Said (1978)
You know that picture movies paint of the Muslim as terrorist? Or as a rich oil producer? Or Persian ladies as harem-dwelling belly dancers? That's Orientalism in action! In his groundbreaking book...
"Can the Subaltern Speak?" by Gayatri Spivak (1988)
Imagine you're a well-intentioned liberal academic who speaks out on injustices to "'subalterns"' (the economically dispossessed, the lowest of the low), especially those in other countries. Do you...
The Empire Writes Back: Theory and Practice in Post-Colonial Literature by Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths, Helen Tiffin (1989)
Postcolonial theory isn't just for dispossessed people of color anymore (say these guys). It's for anyone who was once, or still is, a subject of some type of colonial power. That means you can be...
The Location of Culture by Homi Bhabha (1994)
This book is all about the "'hybrid"' or "'hybridity."' No, not the Prius and not some vegetable mixed from an apple and a toad. It's about the way people—especially colonized people—form a mix...