Poetic Justice: Literature on Colonialism

How have dreams of freedom been written in the 20th and 21st centuries? This course explores writing on unequal relations, relations of exploitation and duress, under the contemporary global and racial order. We will consider how writers address problems of reconciliation, reparation, and equality in a colonial and capitalist society, and how they prepare new revolutionary idioms for our time. Primary texts include a balance of prose and poetry (Jamaica Kincaid, J. M. Coetzee, NoViolet Bulawayo, Derek Walcott, Layli Long Soldier, Dionne Brand, Theresa Hak Kyung Cha), plus a graphic novel (Thi Bui) and a film (Saint Omer, dir. Alice Diop).