(Source: Wikimedia Commons) He got down to work, to the task of settling the fate Of millions. The maps at…
The profound hypocrisy and inherent barbarism of bourgeois civilization lies unveiled before our eyes, turning from its home, where it…
“A moment comes, which comes but rarely in history, when we step out from the old to the new, when…
Introduction Monday, May 10, 1998 marked a day that will not soon be forgotten. It was the day India began…
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…
The tradition of exhibiting people of color in Western societies has existed since the earliest encounters between Europeans and indigenous…
Daniel Defoe’s 1719 novel, Robinson Crusoe, is a rich text for understanding the mechanisms of European colonialism and the relation between…
Introduction Maps as we know them today are the result of millennia of study and observation. Unlike modern maps, which…
A wealth of languages make their home on the Indian Subcontinent. Estimates for the number of languages spoken range from over…
“… make language stammer, or make it ‘wail,’ stretch tensors through all of language, even written language, and draw from…
Let the Americans keep their sodomy, bestiality, stupid and foolish ways to themselves, out of Zimbabwe. – Zimbabwean President Robert…
Introduction and Definition of Terms The Oxford Dictionary of the English Language defines geography as “the description of the earth’s…
The “Public” and “Private” Realms of Political Personhood Colonial powers brought with them daunting philosophical, theological, naval and mercantile traditions…
The knife cut down the guardian of the village today. Now he is dead and gone. Before the village was…
Introduction The game of cricket has had a long and complicated history in the West Indies. Originally imported to the…
Literature and the Communist Movement in India Having a general understanding of the communist movement in India is incredibly important…
What is Colonial Education? The process of colonization involves one nation or territory taking control of another nation or territory…
A Brief Introduction to the Apartheid In 1910, after years of conflict and warfare, the Afrikaner community (the descendants of…
Historical Background South Africa is a land of abundant natural resources, mild climate, and fertile lands. Resources range from diamond…
Introduction Born in 1853 in Hertfordshire, England, Cecil Rhodes was the fifth son of Reverend Francis William Rhodes. Although Rhodes…
Biography Ashis Nandy is a prolific political psychologist, sociologist, and cultural critic. Nandy has also coauthored a number of human…
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…
Biography “The work of the political activist inevitably involves a certain tension between the requirement that positions be taken on…
Biography Peruvian novelist, essayist, journalist, literary critic, and recipient of the 2010 Nobel Prize in Literature, Mario Vargas Llosa was born…
Biography Bapsi Sidhwa is Pakistan’s leading diasporic writer. She has produced four novels in English that reflect her personal experience…
As far as I am concerned, I no longer support notions of purity. Purity has become a thing of the…
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…
“Reading Portis is one of the great pure pleasures – both visceral and cerebral – available in modern American literature” (Rosenbaum…
Biography Michael Ondaatje was born on September 12, 1943 in Colombo, Ceylon (now Sri Lanka). The son of Mervyn Ondaatje,…
Biography Ngugi wa Thiong’o, a Kenyan writer of Gikuyu descent, began a very successful career writing in English before turning to…
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…
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 Ian McEwan was born in 1948 in Aldershot, England. His father was an officer in the British Army and McEwan…
Biography In 1929, Paule Marshall was born Valenza Pauline Burke in Brooklyn, New York. She visited Barbados, her parents’ birthplace,…
Family History Li-Young Lee was born in Jakarta, Indonesia in 1957, the son of exiled Chinese parents. His mother came from…
Take up the White Man’s burden– Send forth the best ye breed– Go, bind your sons to exile To serve…
Biography Much postcolonial fiction available to English-speaking readers is written by native historical witnesses; that is to say, the author…
Biography Keri Hulme, a New Zealand native, was born on March 9, 1947, in Christchurch, New Zealand. She is the…
“Love is so powerful, it’s like unseen flowers under your feet as you walk.” – Bessie Head, A Question of Power…
Biography Romesh Gunesekera was born in Sri Lanka in 1954, moving to London in 1972. He grew up speaking both…
Biography Amitav Ghosh was born in Calcutta in 1956. He grew up in Bangladesh (then East Pakistan), Sri Lanka, Iran…
Biography On July 21, 1944 in Yaba near Lagos, Nigeria, Buchi Emecheta was born to Jeremy Nwabudike and Alice Okwuekwu…
Biography Assia Djebar was born Fatima-Zohra Imalayen in Cherchell, Algeria on August 4, 1936. She published her first novel, La Soif, under…
Biography David Dabydeen was born on December 9, 1955 to Krishna Prasad and Vera Dabydeen, the parents of a peasant…
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…