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Features of Post colonial literature
Features of Post colonial literature
Features of Post colonial literature
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The effects of colonization on the family of Caribbean people, as described by various twentieth century Caribbean woman writers, are as complicated as they are vast. These authors show that families continue to struggle with separation, poverty, and cultural identity issues that create extra ordinary difficulties for the families who live on these post-colonial islands. It can be argued that all families have struggles, both internal and external, and while this is undoubtedly true, the struggles that the families described in these novels endure have a direct connection to their colonized past and the influences of the colonizer, still felt by the countries colonized and their people. The abolition of slavery in these islands did not eliminate the special problems that the former slaves, now inhabitants, would inherit, nor did it eliminate the effects or consequences that these issues would create for the family. One of the most prevalent concerns for these families is that of separation, both literally and emotionally, due to differences in the family members interpretation and acceptance of their own cultural identity. We can see literal family separation in Jamaica Kincaid's “Annie John,” through both the emigration of Annie's mother, from the Dominican to Antigua, to Annie's eventual immigration to England. These literal separations of family are derived from economical and educational reasons. Annie John leaves Antigua, and her family, at the age of sixteen to pursue a continued education that she can not find in her own country. We can see the emotional toll this has on Annie as she describes her conflicted feelings on her departure: “My mother and my father... ... middle of paper ... ...mer colonizer. The authors of these novels show us a glimpse of what it was and is like growing up and living in a post-colonial country. Their mouths have been the mouth of misfortunes which have no mouth. Works Cited Cesaire, Aime. "Xcesaire." Instructional Web Server -. Web. 20 Nov. 2010. Danticat, Edwidge. Krik? Krak! New York: Vintage, 1996. Print. Edgell, Zee. Beka Lamb. London: Heinemann, 1982. Print. Estimates, By Some. "Haiti Earthquake Six Months Later: Where Do Things Stand? - ABC News." ABCNews.com - ABCNews.com: Breaking News, Vote 2010 Elections, Politics, World News,Good Morning America, Exclusive Interviews - ABC News. Web. 24 Nov. 2010. Kincaid, Jamaica. Annie John. New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1985. Print. Marshall, Paule. Praisesong for the Widow. New York: Plume, 1983. Print.
The Orphan Train is a compelling story about a young girl, Molly Ayer, and an older woman, Vivian Daly. These two live two completely different yet similar lives. This book goes back and forth between the point of views of Molly and Vivian. Molly is seventeen and lives with her foster parents, Ralph and Dina, in Spruce Harbor, Maine. Vivian is a ninety-one year old widow from Ireland who moved to the United States at a young age. Molly soon gets into trouble with the law and has to do community service. Molly’s boyfriend, Jack, gets his mom to get her some service to do. Jack’s mom allows her to help Vivian clean out her attic. While Molly is getting her hours completed, Vivian explains her past to her. Vivian tells her about all the good times and bad in her life. She tells her about how she had to take a train, the orphan train, all around the country after her family died in a fire. She told her about all the families she stayed with and all the friends she made along the way, especially about Dutchy. Dutchy is a boy she met on the orphan train and lost contact with for numerous years, but then found each other again and got married and pregnant. Sadly, Dutchy died when he was away in the army shortly after Vivian got pregnant. When Vivian had her child, she decided to give her up for adoption. Molly and Vivian grew very close throughout the time they spent together. Molly knows that Dina, her foster mother, is not very fond of her and tells her to leave. Having no place to go, Vivian let her stay at her house.
Annie [played by Aileen Quinn] is a story written by Martin Charnin about a little girl who was left for the doorstep of an orphanage when she was extremely little and goes on to live a miserable life of working at the orphanage. Until one day a person named Grace Farrel [played by Ann Reinking] came along and invited one orphan to stay with her and Oliver Warbucks [played by Albert Finney]. During Annie’s stay Mr. Warbucks realizes how much he likes Annie and wants her to stay. In a way to tell her he gives her a new locket. Without knowing, Annie doesn't accept the locket in result of her own was given to her by her parents before she had been given up. With this knowledge a search is sent out with a reward of $50,000. With
...her and daughter goes deeper than the surface, where mother daughter banter seems normal in this day and age. In actuality, during this oppressive state between Britain and the Caribbean, the mother favored British lifestyle and all that was affiliated with it, yet in opposition, the girl was anti- imperialism, therefore causing conflict among each other. In what seems to be a sort of monologue, “Girl” goes onto contain a theme involving political overtones less apparent and contrary to that of “A&P.”
Annie Oakley was one of six children. Both her mother and her father were quakers and they did not have very much money. Her father passed away when she was just six years old. At the age of eight or nine, Annie went to live with the superintendent’s family in the Darke County Infirmary. The infirmary housed elderly, orphaned, and the mentally ill. Annie received
She started her book with tourism and ended it with it too. The tourists were the most important things that happen to their island. There were tourists in the island from the start. They had a big effect on the people of the island and their country. A lot of money came from them and a lot of places belonged to them. The tone of the author when she talked about tourists was filled with hates. She hated them and didn’t want them in their island. She hated them because it was her home, but she was the one that feels like a slave and unwelcome. Those people weren’t just tourists, some of them became the residents. People who stayed there and turned it to their home and acted like the island belong to them and not the original residents. They built their own buildings and then didn’t let the Antiguans to enter. They treated them unwelcome. “We Antiguans thought that the people in the Mill Reef Club had such bad manners, like pigs: they were behaving in a bad way. Like pigs. There they were, strangers in someone else’s home, and they refused to talk to their hosts or have anything human, anything intimate, to do with them” (Kincaid 27). They welcomed the tourists. They gave them a place to live and a food to eat, but they didn’t pay them back with kindness and that’s another reason that she hated
In order for the reader to understand how colonization affected Ocean Island, the reader needs to understand the history of the Island. In Pearl Binder’s book, Treasure Islands: The Trials of the Banabans, she tells of what Ocean Island first looked like. Ocean Island, or Banaba, is one of the many islands in the Pacific. It is situated almost exactly on the equator. The whole island is three miles long and two and a half miles wide. The highest point of Banaba is 270 feet. The island was rocky but had quite a bit of land for growing crops. After living peacefully by themselves for a long time, the Banabans allowed travelers to enter their land, which changed their lives forever. Blackbirders, who are labor recruiters, came to Banaba in 1862 as a result of the Civil War happening in the U.S. (Binder). The need for cotton was in high demand so they needed workers to harvest it all. The blackbirders came and kidnapped strong young men from the villages to use them for working in Fiji, Honolulu, South America, and Queensland where enterprising planters had started cotton plantations. While slavery was ending in the U.S., it was just starting in the Pacific (Binder). At the end of the nineteenth century...
She would get a job away from her current home during the summer and then come back to finish her schooling. After graduating high school, Annie has decided to go to college instead of staying at home like everyone expects her to. She winds up getting a scholarship at Natchez College in Mississippi. This is the beginning of a long journey for her. Before working with SNCC and NAACP, the protests she puts on are small but still make a difference. For example, the protest caused by maggots in the grits at her school. The fiery attitude she obtained as a child is still present throughout her college
within a family tear it apart. Every member of the family is to a degree
The mother-daughter relationship is a common topic throughout many of Jamaica Kincaid's novels. It is particularly prominent in Annie John, Lucy, and Autobiography of my Mother. This essay however will explore the mother-daughter relationship in Lucy. Lucy tells the story of a young woman who escapes a West Indian island to North America to work as an au pair for Mariah and Lewis, a young couple, and their four girls. As in her other books—especially Annie John—Kincaid uses the mother-daughter relationship as a means to expose some of her underlying themes.
Each one of these writers is a reflection naturally of their times but what causes their work to continue to resonate is the absolutely honest way the hardships of womanhood and colonial life inform our national demeanor. All three in their writing are trying to cope with the conditions in front of them, the perils of being a woman of their times. The heartbreak of watching their children and grandchildren die in front of them, starvation, the loss of livelihood and the ever evolving definition of having a homeland. For all three women death was a constant companion, as was God and a sense of duty to their ventures in their new lands, mostly though I see a deep kind of resilient love in their bodies of work. It is that resilient love and optimism that makes American writing, American writing.
...a woman trying to find an identity through her heritage. All of these stories give us examples and show us what life in this period would be like for the characters. They give details that show the readers the world around them.
As the Hispanic Caribbean has evolved it has managed to grow and thrive beyond belief, whether one is discussing art, music or just the culture alone the Hispanic Caribbean is truly reaping the benefits of allowing themselves to be influenced by many other cultures. While the Hispanic Caribbean is thriving they are still facing the many new found struggles that come along with the territory of becoming more affluent as well as more accepting to other cultures and their beliefs. Often with the growth of large proportions comes many problems, problems also can come about when incorporating of different cultures as a whole as well as just bringing in their beliefs and mannerisms. None the less it can be argued that the struggles being faced in
Every human being, in addition to having their own personal identity, has a sense of who they are in relation to the larger community--the nation. Postcolonial studies is the attempt to strip away conventional perspective and examine what that national identity might be for a postcolonial subject. To read literature from the perspective of postcolonial studies is to seek out--to listen for, that indigenous, representative voice which can inform the world of the essence of existence as a colonial subject, or as a postcolonial citizen. Postcolonial authors use their literature and poetry to solidify, through criticism and celebration, an emerging national identity, which they have taken on the responsibility of representing. Surely, the reevaluation of national identity is an eventual and essential result of a country gaining independence from a colonial power, or a country emerging from a fledgling settler colony. However, to claim to be representative of that entire identity is a huge undertaking for an author trying to convey a postcolonial message. Each nation, province, island, state, neighborhood and individual is its own unique amalgamation of history, culture, language and tradition. Only by understanding and embracing the idea of cultural hybridity when attempting to explore the concept of national identity can any one individual, or nation, truly hope to understand or communicate the lasting effects of the colonial process.
The emergence of black women writers on the American literary scene was not a sudden or a fortuitous event.Their bursting on to the scene was a result of the new found consciousness of black American women.They were increasingly becoming conscious of the racist and patriarchal oppression that they were being subjected to in America.By the 1970's the black women had the knowledge that both-The Civil Rights Movement and The Feminist Movement were neglecting the issues relating to black women.Despite being active participants in both the move...
Two weeks after her father’s funeral, our protagonist Annie sees his ghost in her bathroom. Knowing he is dead, they small talk about her boyfriend, their farm, their deceased family etc. until he suddenly vanishes. Her father makes occasional appearances after that. They keep talking about everyday life until one night at the Opera House, where she not only sees her father, but her brother and mother as well. Knowing where to find them, she takes her goodbye with her dead family.