CONCISE COMPANION TO POSTCOLONIAL LITERATURE

Writers native to countries once colonized by Western powers have been speaking back, often in the language of the oppressor, for over a century. In the sixty years since most of these countries became independent, postcolonial literature has flooded the West and forced readers and literary critics to reevaluate many of their assumptions about non-Western literature. In this volume Chew (postcolonial literature, University of Leeds, emerita) and Richards (English and postcolonial studies, University of Stirling) have selected essays that address the ways in which postcolonial authors have been influenced by Western literature and how they have transformed it. The ways in which other disciplines have been affected by postcolonial work are also explored. Cartography is shown as a tool of empires; the control of map making redefines the place, both literally and symbolically. A redefining of anthropology has also taken place in the light of postcolonial criticism. The writing of women is seen as a response to Western feminism, focusing instead on the needs and lives of women in developing countries. The authors discuss various points in the history of the literature and give readers a wide variety of authors to discover. Annotation c2011 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Shirley Chew is Emeritus Professor of Commonwealth and Postcolonial Literatures at the University of Leeds. She has published widely in the field of Postcolonial literatures including the co-edited Unbecoming Daughters of the Empire (1993), Translating Life: Studies in Transpositional Aesthetics (1999) and Reconstructing the Book: Literary Texts in Transmission (2001). From 1992-1996 she co-edited The Journal of Commonwealth Literature. She is the founding editor Moving Worlds: A Journal of Transcultural Writing (2001-present).

David Richards is Professor of English Studies and Director of the Centre of Postcolonial Studies at the University of Stirling having previously held posts at the universities of Leeds and Birmingham and at the Open University, where he was the founding Director of the Ferguson Research Centre. His published works include Masks of Difference: Cultural Representations in Literature, Anthropology and Art (1995) and Urban Generations: Post-colonial Cities (Co-edited with Taieb Balghazi and Taoufik Agoumy, 2005).