Our Literature teacher, Daniela, asked us to explain in more details the post-colonialism themes.

1. IDENTITY: who a person is, or the qualities of a person or group that makes them different from others

– in post-colonial literature, the protagonist usually struggles with questions of identity, usually caused by experiencing the psychological conflicts inherent to cultural assimilation to living between the old, native world and the dominant hegemony* of the invasive social and cultural institutions of the colonial imperialism of Mother Country.

2. *HEGEMONY: the position of being the strongest and most powerful and therefore able to control others.

3. DISCOURSE: communication in speech or writing.

– post-colonial literary criticism re-examines colonial literature, especially concentrating upon the social discourse, between the colonizer and the colonized, that shaped and produced the literature.

4. OTHERNESS: being or feeling different in appearance or character from what is familiar/expected/accepted.

– post-colonial literature has made questions such as: do self and other translate inevitably into ‘us’ and ‘them’? can the other know/speak itself?

5. DIFFERENCE: the way in which two or more things which you are comparing are not the same.