01 Introduction To write a “short guide” to the intersection of queer theory with postcolonial theory seems perhaps like a…
(Source: Wikimedia Commons) He got down to work, to the task of settling the fate Of millions. The maps at…
Edouard Glissant was born in Saint-Marie, Martinique in 1928 to a family of five children. His father was working as…
Biography Maria Mies is a Marxist feminist scholar who is renowned for her theory of capitalist-patriarchy, which recognizes third world…
Biography Albert Wendt is an acclaimed novelist, poet and short-story writer who was born in Western Samoa in 1939. At…
I who am poisoned with the blood of both Where shall I turn, divided to the vein? I who have…
Biography Verghese was born in 1955 to well-educated, South Indian Christian parents who migrated to Ethiopia (See Christianity in India,…
Biography Moyez G. Vassanji was born in Nairobi, Kenya in 1950 and raised in Tanzania. His family was part of a…
Which Yeats? There are many versions of William Butler Yeats (b 1865 d 1939), Ireland’s most famous poet, dramatist, critic,…
Background The practice of hijab among Muslim women is one based on religious doctrine, although the Quran does not mandate…
Defining the Term In sweeping strokes, we can understand “globalism” as closely related to the term “postcolonialism” itself. The two…
What geographical regions constitute the Third World? Who are Third World women? Who defines and writes about the terms “Third…
This article discusses contemporary performance and installation artists who address the objectification of the non-white bodies in Western culture: Coco Fusco…
The novel has been the aesthetic object of choice for a majority of postcolonial scholars. While postcolonial writers have by…
Edward Said’s evaluation and critique of the set of beliefs known as Orientalism forms an important background for postcolonial studies.…
Introduction Monday, May 10, 1998 marked a day that will not soon be forgotten. It was the day India began…
Alfred Nobel Alfred Nobel was born in Stockholm, Sweden, in 1833. In 1842, the Nobel family moved to Russia, where…
The methods of partitioning land have undergone tremendous change since the thirteenth century. During medieval and renaissance times, royal dynasties…
The Colonizer In his essay “Literature and Society,” Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o explores the mechanisms of imperialism. To ensure economic and political control the…
Daniel Defoe’s 1719 novel, Robinson Crusoe, is a rich text for understanding the mechanisms of European colonialism and the relation between…
Introduction Although implicit in many other types of fictional works, self-reflexivity often becomes the dominant subject of postmodern fiction. In…
A unique and multicultural group of people, the Jews of India add exciting flavor to India’s already diverse population. Centered…
Ethnomusicology Bruno Nettl, a music and anthropology professor at the University of Illinois, lists some of the various definitions for…
Let the Americans keep their sodomy, bestiality, stupid and foolish ways to themselves, out of Zimbabwe. – Zimbabwean President Robert…
“The identity of a Filipino today is of a person asking what is his identity.” – Nick Joaquin “This is then…
Introduction The Field Day Theatre Company began as an artistic collaboration between playwright Brian Friel and actor Stephen Rea. In 1980, the…
One of the central modes of representation is essentialism. Diana Fuss says that essentialism is most commonly understood as…
The colonial presence is always ambivalent, split between its appearance as original and authoritative and its articulation as repetition and…
What is Colonial Education? The process of colonization involves one nation or territory taking control of another nation or territory…
Chicana Defined “Chicana” refers to women of Mexican descent who are born and/or raised in the United States. Although the…
Introduction While she is best known as a postcolonial theorist, Gayatri Spivak describes herself as a “para-disciplinary, ethical philosopher”– though…
Introduction Born in Tunisia, a Jew in a predominately Muslim colony, Albert Memmi writes that he was “sort of a…
Intellectual History in a Transatlantic Frame While some critics annotate the social and cultural impact that time-space compression has on…
Biography Frantz Fanon’s relatively short life yielded two potent and influential statements of anti-colonial revolutionary thought, Black Skin, White Masks (1952) and The…
A critic of the way sinologists, Orientalists, and Western intellectuals have traditionally approached China and the “East,” Rey Chow refuses…
Biography Kuan-Hsing Chen grew up in Taiwan and completed his college education there before he went to the U.S. for…
Biography Peruvian novelist, essayist, journalist, literary critic, and recipient of the 2010 Nobel Prize in Literature, Mario Vargas Llosa was born…
“In writing of Indian culture, I am highly conscious of my own subjectivity; arguably, there is more than one Indian…
Biography Wole Soyinka, the Nigerian born writer of international renown, is an artist proficient in multiple genres. Soyinka has written…
Biography Zadie Smith grew up in Willesden Green, England. She was born into a mixed race family; her mother is from…
Biography Leslie Marmon Silko, an accomplished Native American writer, was born in Albuquerque, New Mexico in 1948. She has a…
Biography A small, wiry soap opera enthusiast with well-defined features and a ready smile, Vikram Seth was born in Calcutta…
“The magic of fiction seems to be the more specific you are, the more universal you end up becoming.” –…
Biography Salman Rushdie was born in Bombay in 1947, just months before the Partition of British India. His father, Ahmed,…
The information provided on this site for Arundhati Roy is spread across multiple entries. Please click on the following entries for…
Biography A. K. Ramanujan, born in Mysore, India in 1929, came to the U.S. in 1959, where he remained until…
Nigerian Literature – Cries of Protest Nigerian literature often expresses the struggles of a nation that has survived the exploitation of colonialism…
Biography Ngugi wa Thiong’o, a Kenyan writer of Gikuyu descent, began a very successful career writing in English before turning to…
Sonnet XVII (100 Love Sonnets, 1960) I don’t love you as if you were the salt-rose, topaz or arrow of…
Introduction “She is either the bravest or most foolish person I’ve ever met,” a friend of Nasrin’s is quoted as…
Biography The highly acclaimed director and producer from India, Mira Nair leapt into the world’s spotlight with her film Salaam, Bombay!…
Biography Bharati Mukherjee was born on July 27, 1940 to wealthy parents, Sudhir Lal and Bina Mukherjee in Kolkata (formerly…
“Cultural bastards, Janet, cultural bastards. Dat is what we is.” Out on Main Street Biography Shani Mootoo was born in Ireland…
Biography Canadian-based filmmaker Deepa Mehta was born in Amritsar, India in 1949. She received a bachelors and masters degree in…
“I know being a woman for me for a long time was being less, being excluded, being somehow cheap, being…
Biography In 1929, Paule Marshall was born Valenza Pauline Burke in Brooklyn, New York. She visited Barbados, her parents’ birthplace,…
Biography J. Nozipo Maraire was born in Harare, Zimbabwe in 1966 during the transition of the country from colonial Rhodesia…
Coal I is the total black, being spoken from the earth’s inside. There are many kinds of open how a…
When I review these relationships they seem so odd. I have always been here on this side and the other…
Biography Growing up in America under the supervision of a mother who wanted to raise her children to be Indian,…
“From the start I tried to deny my Pakistani self . . . it was a curse and I wanted to…
Biography Jamaica Kincaid was born in 1949 as Elaine Potter Richardson on the island of Antigua. She lived with her…
Biography “This was our Pakistani life; this is how we existed outside Salford. A life none of my friends knew…
Biography Raj Kamal Jha was born in 1966 in Calcutta, India. He grew up with his father and mother; his…
Biography Keri Hulme, a New Zealand native, was born on March 9, 1947, in Christchurch, New Zealand. She is the…
Biography Vicente García Huidobro Fernández was born to a distinguished aristocrat family in Santiago, Chile in 1893. In his teenage and…
Biography Merle Hodge was born in 1944, in Curepe, Trinidad, the daughter of an immigration officer. She received both her elementary and…
Biography A Guyanese of Amerindian, African, European, and possibly Asian descent (Harris 1999: 237), Wilson Harris was born in New…
Biography Romesh Gunesekera was born in Sri Lanka in 1954, moving to London in 1972. He grew up speaking both…
Biography Novelist, poet, and critic Yasmine Gooneratne, a graduate of Bishop’s College, went on to graduate from the University of…
Biography Amitav Ghosh was born in Calcutta in 1956. He grew up in Bangladesh (then East Pakistan), Sri Lanka, Iran…
Biography Born 9 January 1929, Catholic, in Omagh, County Tyrone in Northern Ireland, Brian Friel is one of Ireland’s most…
Biography Assia Djebar was born Fatima-Zohra Imalayen in Cherchell, Algeria on August 4, 1936. She published her first novel, La Soif, under…
Biography Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni is an award-winning author and poet. Her work is widely known, as she has been published…
Biography Mahasweta Devi was born in 1926 in the city of Dacca (now Dhaka) in East Bengal (modern-day Bangladesh). As…
Biography Recognized as one of India’s foremost poets, Kamala Das was born Kamala Madhavikutty on March 31, 1934 in Malabar in…
Biography Edwidge Danticat was born in Port-au-Prince, Haiti in 1969. Her father immigrated to the United States just 2 years later…
Biography Léon-Gontran Damas was born in Cayenne, French Guiana in 1912 to a middle-class family. His father was of European and African…
Biography David Dabydeen was born on December 9, 1955 to Krishna Prasad and Vera Dabydeen, the parents of a peasant…
Biography John Maxwell Coetzee, better known as J.M. Coetzee, was born in South Africa to Afrikaner parents on February 9th,…
Biography Michelle Cliff was born in Jamaica and grew up there and in the United States. She was educated in…
Biography Aimé Césaire was born in 1913 in Martinique in the French Caribbean. He left for Paris in 1931 at the…
Biography Born in Fez, Morocco to a shopkeeper and his wife in December of 1944, Tahar Ben Jelloun is one of North Africa’s most…
Basquiat and Postcoloniality On Basquiat, art critic Robert Farris Thompson writes, “What identifies Jean-Michel Basquiat as a major artist is…
Biography Although Julia Alvarez was born in New York City on March 27, 1950, her family moved to the Dominican…
Biography Mary Elizabeth Alexander was born in Allahabad, India, on February 17, 1951. She passed away on November 21, 2018…