Literary Research and Postcolonial Literatures in English Strategies and Sources

This book is a research guide to postcolonial literatures in English, specifically from former British colonies in Africa, the Caribbean, and South Asia. While Great Britain was certainly not the only European imperial power, literatures in English from Australia, Canada, Ireland, and New Zealand-also former British colonies-have already been addressed in previous volumes in the series. Postcolonial literatures can be defined as the body of creative work written by authors whose lands were formerly colonized.Although protests and uprisings against British colonial rule and literary works speaking out against imperialism predate colonialism's fall, this guide picks up its coverage in 1947, when both India and Pakistan gained their independence. They were followed by thirty-seven other nations, including Ghana (1957), Jamaica (1962), Swaziland (1968), Belize (1981), and Namibia (1990). The notable exception to the 1947 starting date is South Africa, which gained independence for whites only in 1931. Not until 1994 did South Africa throw off its apartheid practices and grant equal rights to all people regardless of race or ethnicity. The literatures created by writers from these nations represent the diverse experiences in and responses to the postcolonial condition and are the subject of this book.

Angela Courtney is head of the Arts and Humanities Department at the Indiana University-Bloomington Libraries, where she is also the librarian for English literature, film studies, theatre and drama, communication and culture, and comparative literature. Liorah Golomb is assistant professor and humanities librarian at the University of Oklahoma. Melissa S. Van Vuuren is associate professor and English librarian at James Madison University.