Craft and Construction of the Post-Colonial Narrative

There is power in narratives to create, shape, and dictate culture, race relations, ethnic history, and literary representation. Over the generations, countless white-dominated narratives have shaped the cultures and beliefs of the colonized, placing them in submission to the white European colonizer. Reaching as far back as Daniel Dafoe's Robinson Crusoe to as recently as Alan Patton's Cry, the Beloved Country, white narratives, (even well intentioned ones), have historically placed people of race in either direct subjection to white narrative voices, or at the very least made them secondary to white authorities in more subtle ways. However, subtle or not, voices of color and race have still been placed there, nonetheless, beneath an assumed colonial authority.

Since the end of colonialism, post-colonial writers have striven to develop a narrative voice to call their own. Post-colonial literature has gone through numerous changes, developing in some cases as an expression of nationalism and protest of Empire, as an expression of opposition in form and language, or simply and expression of life and, hardship, with all its varied beauties and grotesqueries. Even after all this time, however, post-colonial literature still grapples with issues of language, displacement, and authenticity in search of a true cultural narrative.

In can be argued with little or no opposition that the narratives of Empire were faulty because no matter their intention or goal, they ultimately enforced white authority figures while placing people of color at their mercy. Even a novel such as Cry the Beloved Country by Alan Patton falls into this trap, because despite the author's clear sympathy for blacks suffering under apartheid, the novel continually positions blacks in subservient roles dependent on whites' authority. This narrative and narratives like it are faulty because they assume white superiority over race, they speak the language or "grammar" of the colonizer, and they construct narratives that reverberate this subservience socially. Though many other European writers expressed their unease with colonialism, (Joseph Conrad and Heart of Darkness; E.M. Forster and Passage to India),they never really rejected colonialism, because they were too much a part of the colonial machine to see their way clear of Empire.

These narratives aren't restricted to fictional works; in most early cases they existed predominantly in colonial historical narratives and accounts of those who witnessed colonization firsthand. The major problem with these accounts is their one-sided perspective: they've all been recorded and written by those within colonialism, and even in the case of well-intentioned missionaries, the narratives are flawed because of a colonizing mindset. In most cases, these historical narratives that have one purpose: to support white authority and keep people of color in subservience. Excellent examples of this are the modalities of the "fiction of reciprocity", the fiction of the "family romance", the fiction of the "African made colonial", and the fiction of the "African goddess".

The "fiction of reciprocity" was a "missionary method" used by the French on the "Caribs" in their colonizing efforts. They offered the salvation of Christianity to lift poor savages from their heathenism, making them pure, civilized, and worthy of assimilation. It was assumed the natives would be so thankful for this gift, they'd reciprocate and offer colonizers the fruits of their lands, harvests, resources, culture, even the secrets of their language to missionaries working to create dictionaries of the "Carib" language. In any case, a system was set up that exchanged the natives' "salvation" for the precious metals and crops extracted by the colonists (Garraway, 48).

The reverberations of this "fiction of reciprocity" are reflected in literature. In Dafoe's Robinson Crusoe, the savage adopted by Crusoe - "My Man" Friday - is so thankful for his newfound faith and salvation from cannibalism, he offers in exchange his fawning gratitude, servitude, the rest of his family, and several times proclaims his willingness to die for Crusoe's "gift". Even the paternal image of Crusoe "adopting" Friday is condescending, speaking of the assumptions of white superiority. In Conrad's Heart of Darkness, colonization was seen by the narrator Marlow as a horrible, hard-to-stomach but necessary mission of civilization, for the good of the natives and world at large - because these wild, threatening natives had to be contained and subjugated:

The conquest of the earth, which mostly means the taking away from those who have a different complexion or slightly flatter noses than ourselves, is not a pretty thing when you look at it too much. What redeems it is the idea only. An idea at the back of it; not a sentimental pretence but an idea; and an unselfish belief in the idea - something you can set up to, and bow down before, and offer sacrifice to... (Conrad, 9)

There's a grand colonial assumption in "the fiction of reciprocity": that natives were eager for salvation or improvement, that they'd accept this "gift" unequivocally, and would then see it as only right they reciprocate with their own gifts. It's a system of rationalization that flips invader, conqueror, plunderer, and colonizer to benefactor who is simply receiving fair compensation.

As stated, narratives make rules, establish "grammar", and set the stage. Colonial narratives often propagated a false unity between masters and their black slaves through an imagined "social exchange" that crossed ethnic borders. Colonial narratives of the French Caribbean portrayed slaves not as beasts of burden prone to revolt, but rather as providers of culture and diversity (Garraway, 246). In this way, Creolization - the creation of the Creole through intermarriage - became a way of representing a cohesive master/slave family unit. Instead of dominance, repression, and rape, sexual relations between white male slaveholders and women of race was a "merging of culture" that created new people.

Moreau de Saint-Mery claimed his historical narratives represented the total colonial experience, but he left out the daily horrors of slavery in order to present a colonial society united by culture (246). He did this through his imagined history of the plantation "family romance", which was the imagined relationship between slave masters and slave women. These narratives romanticized the sexual appeal of colored women, while portraying white men as poor souls who couldn't help themselves in the face of their "enthralling beauty" (246).

In the "family romance", the white plantation owner is positioned as a father figure; the virtual progenitor of the entire plantation population: white, black, creole, and mixed. As white masters had dalliances with slaves, producing mulatto, "not slave" but "not white" children, they viewed themselves as "fathers of the plantation" - literally and figuratively. These narratives went a step further by suggesting the "white father bestowed his "heritage" upon the plantation "family" by having sexual relations with the daughters he fathered, creating a climate of racial incest (Garraway, 277).

Whether this was calculated, incidental, or dismissed is unclear. Plantation owners often did not acknowledge their bastard offspring; because they didn't come from a publicly recognized union, therefore sex with them didn't count as incest. Thus, imagined histories and constructed narratives portrayed the white master as simply staying within his own gene pool, "strengthening" the Creoles with his "whiteness" by continually interbreeding with them.

This then led to the fantasy of "the African made colonial." In every established narrative of Empire, white is always placed as a paternal, benevolent figure offering something to the colonial natives that was "for their own good"....

Cambridge: "If treated with care, these children (slaves of color) are as loyal as any creatures under the sun......It would thus appear that the welcome process of Creolization is advanced and advancing apace. This being the case, we must be bold enough to take on the responsibility that comes with ownership, and learn to care with even greater dutiful application." (Phillips, 72)

Heart of Darkness: "And between whiles I had to look after the savage who was fireman. He was an improved specimen; (presumably by English instruction)...A few months of instruction had really done for that fine chap...He ought to have been clapping his hands and stamping his feet on the bank...he was useful because he had been instructed.." (Conrad, 60-61)

In the French Caribbean, sexual domination and possession was romanticized to give a sexual twist on the "fiction of reciprocity". The white man was not only intent on colonizing the land, but intent on colonizing pedigree, determining race, and producing off-spring bettered by white genes, for the improvement of black slaves in general. Hence the evolution of "Creolization", a process which lead to a "morally and physically superior standard of blackness" (Garraway, 251). According to these narratives, "Domesticity (of the slaves) beautified the species", (251), because Creoles were part white, raised by whites amongst whites, and inferior black genes were slowly being washed out: "the nose lengthens, the traits soften, the yellow tint of the eyes weakens, as the generations distance themselves from their primitive beginnings" (252).

Creolization and miscegenation, (interbreeding between members of different races), became a way for white colonizers to explain away numerous atrocities committed against people of race, most specifically female persons of race. According to these theories, white plantation owners, slavers, and masters weren't sexually abusing, assaulting, and dominating women of color, but they were either "enthralled by native, sable beauties", (Young, 150-151), or producing a superior race specially suited to the radical climates of colonial spaces; IE producing descendents with "European brains but resistance to local climate" (Young, quoting Brook, 143). This movement was highly controversial yet widely discussed; even Darwin proposed in his Descent of Man that a "cross with 'civilized races' makes an aboriginal race more fertile" (144). This spread throughout the colonial project, touching even the early American colonies; it was a widespread theory that gained many supporters, albeit many detractors as well.

Thus, a self-serving theory was established through a variety of narratives, pamphlets, lectures and speeches: white intelligence and sophistication should mix with stout, hardy African genes, creating a new "super race":

Whatever power and vitality there is in the American race is derived, not from its Anglo-Saxon progenitors, but from all the different nationalities which go to make up this people. All that is needed to make it the finest race on earth is to engraft upon our stock the negro element which Providence has placed by our side on this continent...We must become a yellow-skinned, black haired people - in fine we must become Miscgens - if we would attain the fullest results of civilization. (Young, 144)

We must also think of the process of Creolization and its divergent effects upon whites and blacks. In the novel Cambridge, white narrator and daughter of a wealthy plantation owner Emily succumbs to Creolization. She loses all sense of self and identity, wore down by the rigors of the tropical environment, plantation life, and anxiety produced by being surrounded by threatening hordes of slaves. She has entered into a "dark tropical unknown, breaking the last remaining link with a past that I understood" (Phillips, 22).

She expresses her loss of identity when she speaks to Mr. McDonald at the novel's end, "Does he not understand that people grow and change? Did he not understand that one day a discovery might be made that this country-garb is no longer the correct measure? And what then? (In other words, where do I go/what do I do now?)" (Phillips, 177). When asked by Mr. McDonald if she's an emancipationist, she further displays her loss of identity with the response, "You may take it that I'm not sure of what I am" (179).

This of course propitiates the idea that the tropics and exposure to blacks ultimately wears down white people, (although it's to be assumed Phillips is conscious of this construction and offers it for criticism, not as endorsement), and that the opposite is also supposed true: that exposure to and mingling with whites is supposed to "improve" black people. Though he ends up dead, Olumide, Thomas, Tom, David Henderson, finally Cambridge is "improved" from his aboriginal origins by his education and "salvation" (Chavinelle, 3), although Philips subverts this with Cambridge's death, symbolizing perhaps that education. sophistication, and religion still leads down an empty road for a slave in the colonial project (Chavanelle, 9).

Very closely connected to the process of Creolization and miscegenation is the fiction of the "wanton African goddess" who possessed such "enthralling beauty" that white men could hardly control themselves; in fact, could hardly be expected to control themselves, especially in such a unhinging environment as the tropics. Once again, a white narrative changes a lack of morality and abusive treatment colored women to a natural reaction that is, in part, due to the "African goddesses' " licentiousness and erotic power. Of course, at that colonial moment, those arguments and theories still needed to be framed with an appropriate air of racism, so thus born was a concept of sexual attraction and repulsion, or "repugnant sexuality" (Young, 150-151). Edward Long's History of Jamaica portrays this sexual contradiction best. In it, he bounces back and forth between his fear that English blood will be ruined by the constant intermingling with women of color, but that they exude such a powerful attraction, it is almost unavoidable.

This dichotomy between a threatening sexuality that's all too appealing emerges when Long discusses the relationships between white plantation owners and their slave women. According to his narrative, plantation owners are so overcome by black women, they refuse to marry white women:

...the Europeans...are too easily led aside to give loose to every kind of sensual delight: on this account some black or yellow quasheba is sought for, by whom a twaney breed (mulatto) is produced. Many are the men, of every rank, quality and degree here, who would much rather riot in these goatish embraces, than share the pure and lawful bliss derived from matrimonial, mutual love. (Young, 151)

Ergo, white men aren't raping, coercing, and dominating black women, they simply can't help themselves. Though this was mostly applied to men and their relations with black slave women beneath them, the sexual allure was applied to black male slaves, but flipped for a different purpose altogether. While white plantation owners where allowed sexual license with their black slave women to help "better the black species", "create super race", or simply because they were "enthralled", the opposite rhetoric was advanced concerning freeing male black slaves: such a freedom could only produce sexual anarchy between black men and white women, because white women simply couldn't resist the vibrant sexuality of the black man:

Nor are the Southern women indifferent to the strange magnetism of association with a tropical race. Far otherwise. The mothers and daughters of the aristocratic slaveholders are thrilled with a strange delight by daily contact with dusky male servitors...

And this is the secret of the strange infatuation of the Southern woman with the hideous barbarism of slavery. Freedom, she knows, would separate her forever from the coloured man, while slavery retains him by her side. It is idle for the Southern woman to deny it: she loves the black man, and the raiment she clothes herself with is to please him.

Yes, the Southern beauty, as she parades her bright dresses and inappropriate colours in our Northern cities and watering places, proclaims by every massive ornament in her shining hair, and by every yellow shade in the wavy folds of her dress, 'I love the black man'. (Young, 147)

From this perspective, such theories seem absurd, almost ludicrous, and during its time period, theories such as this one and others like it weren't without its critics, but still the fictional narrative is clearly displayed: white men can't help but ravish black women because of their enthralling beauty, black men are restrained with impunity by their white masters, because if let free white women won't be able to control themselves either; paradoxically, this is why white women subliminally approve of slavery, because it keeps black men closer to them.

In response to these various and pervasive imagined histories and white narratives, the intervening years has seen a cresting tide of post-colonial writers looking back on the colonial past, writing to shed light on injustices, disparities in power, and harsh realities that are often hard to consider. These novels adopt various perspectives as they try to re-imagine the colonial past and shape it into something that is more authentic, truthful, and untainted by colonial grammar.

Many novels have sought to do this in a variety of ways. Some tell tragic tales encouraging readers to condemn white colonialism's role in corrupting cultural narratives, while others shy away from epic stories and focus on minor folk who'd never normally show up on the colonial "map". Still others play with language itself, either constructing non-linear narratives in opposition to the "traditional novel", (ie. Shadow Lines, by Amitov Gnosh), while some writers tell hopeful stories suggesting that perhaps in the midst of terror there was still life; that maybe there's a way to put away the dark colonial past forever, such as Belgrave does in Ti Marie.

However, it's important to consider that the "authenticity" of the post-colonial novel is a slippery thing. Perhaps it doesn't even exist at all, because of the extreme difficulty in completely capturing a true colonial voice. This difficulty comes from problems posed both by distance from that moment in time, and distance from place. Post-colonial writers are now, influenced and led not only by an outsiders' knowledge of the Empire and its aims, objectives, motives, and methods, but also by a direct, constructed desire to write against Empire. Because of our temporal positioning, it's profitable to consider that even writers of culture themselves cannot avoid bias, simply because of where they are looking and writing from, and how this pushes their narratives in one direction or another.

That literature is used as a vehicle for revolutionary change is nothing new. Literature is the story of people's lives intersecting and crossing over others' lives. It's only natural that stories about something always subject to change - life - are used as vehicles of change. Also, if literature is about life, it must have something to say about how to improve life, it must have an aim, purpose, or meaning that the author is writing to convey. Given these assumptions, the language of writing has social meaning, the thought process of the writer has meaning, and readers are expected to draw meaning from these stories - sometimes they're expected to draw certain kinds of meaning in particular.

W.D. Ashcroft, a professor at the University of Papua New Guinea, calls written text a "social situation", remarking that fiction is something more than just marks on a page because it involves the participation of social beings - namely, readers and writers. This speaks to the idea expressed above that every story is essentially constructed with some sort of "meaning" in mind. Following Ashcroft's ideas, these readers and writers naturally look for "meaning" in texts, be it in the language of the text itself, from the writer's mind, or something they re-construct in their own reading experience. He calls this process of examination "Constitutive Graphonomy", a post-colonial theory concerned with analyzing the objective meanings of writing as social accomplishments of these participants (Ashcroft, 58).

To sum up, "Constitutive Graphonomy" deals with the creative spaces in which post-colonial stories are developed, how they're developed, from what sources they're developed, where they fit in, and how "ownership of meaning" develops between language, reader, and writer (58). It characterizes "meaning" as a social accomplishment defined by the participation of the reader and writer within the 'function' of telling a narrative, within the 'event' of the colonial or post-colonial moment (59). This is only one of many post-colonial literary theories dealing with the utilization of fiction to advance meaning and social change, however, there is certainly a common theoretical thread that writing - in this case, writing against Empire and the colonial project - is more than just entertainment, it's something that has meaning and can improve, change society.

However, as stated by writer and University of Edinburgh professor Eustace Palmer, though literature can impact society for the better, the impact is often unquantifiable, its impact cannot be calculated like money in the bank, or stocks and bonds on the market (Adams/Meyes - Palmer, pg. 37). It often improves lives in small, perhaps even invisible ways (Palmer, pg, 38).

These thoughts posses great significance when we think about meaning and impact in a post-colonial sense. Many post-colonial writings, especially those birthed from a moment of nationalism, are proscriptive in nature: they believe in a certain kind of authenticity, that post-colonial writing should achieve certain things. According to Palmer, this is foolish, perhaps even dangerous, because post-colonial literature should be part of a cultural awareness grown alongside the growth of nationalism, not necessarily a product of it. He questions whether or not every post-colonial writer should feel the imperative to push through the ideological and political transformation of their respective societies, as many writers in the protest school of thought are convinced is necessary (46).

Eustace speaks in particular to the "protest school" movement within post-colonial and post-apartheid African literature. This movement believes that not only should their works point out all the flaws and deficiencies of the "system", (in this case, the system of apartheid), but also rallying points behind which the South African people can mobilize to implement change in that system. They see the system and its 'bourgeoisie' as the sole source of Africa's problems. Development to them means the overthrow of this system and replacement by the power of the people, and literature should therefore be used to bring about this revolution (47).

Just as most colonial narratives are flawed because of their assumption of Empire's superiority, it's apparent that protest literature can be flawed as well because of a narrow-mindedness towards a goal that its proponents assume is the same as all other post-colonial writers, or at the very least assume is the only path to authenticity. In other words, writers and creators from this category hold the belief that all post-colonial literature should do is throw down oppressors and speak out against Empire; that all other creative efforts are nonessential and wasted, because there is neither the time nor the luxury for them (47). They assume their perspective of contemporary post-colonial culture is inherently correct, and that post-colonial writers need only address certain, important issues (47).

In looking at African protest literature closer, writer and poet Ngugi wa Thiong'o has an interesting perspective, claiming that pioneering African protest writers diagnosed the problems of pre-independence Africa wrong; instead of attacking the species of colonialism - simple political domination by one race of another - they should have attacked neo-imperialism, the oppression of the poor by economic means (48). Because they were wrong in their diagnosis, the literature written to attack it became ineffective, and thus a system of oppression still existed after independence, with a new black bourgeois taking the place of their former white oppressors. Though criticizing their attempts at satire and literary ridicule to bring about change, Thiong'o clearly places himself in the protest school by stating that once African writers switch strategies and begin attacking neo-imperialism, they will find their writing to be more effective, and change will come much more quickly than by their old methods (48).

Out of this has developed a shift in the literary school of protest writing towards a greater emphasis on class and economic stratification in South Africa, rather than focusing on race as the sole agent of oppression in the apartheid system (Barber/Horn, pg. 77). Because of this, the pathways of African writers and playwrights have become blurred and decentralized, their works are not easily categorized, because just knowing the creator's political affiliation is no longer enough to deconstruct their works for meaning (77).

However, the vast being of post-colonial literature is not so easily stamped with a label of authenticity as to what it "should be or do", nor should it be. In many ways, the South/West African experience and protest school of writing is unique in comparison to other modes and schools of post-colonial literature, especially in comparison to the post-colonial literature of the Caribbean, which is a post-colonial space on the opposite side of the spectrum. More so than perhaps any other post-colonial space, the Caribbean suffers from the greatest displacement and disinheritance of voice because of its violent colonial history.

Every post-colonial space, it seems, struggles with issues of authenticity that's unique to its region and colonial experience. South and West Africa has struggled with issues of political and social relevance, while India has struggled greatly with the British's arbitrary re-mapping of the entire country, one that has caused great conflict, confusion, and violence among Hindus and Muslims (as portrayed so poignantly in Shadow Lines). In the Caribbean, however, perhaps more so than any other place, post-colonial writers struggle with the issue of what is imported and European, versus what is indigenous and native (Ashcroft, 145).

The Caribbean saw the worst aspects of colonialism concentrated in one place, which is perhaps what has caused its fragmented narrative voice. This region saw the destruction and consumption of their indigenous peoples, the Caribs and Arawaks, (145), and to make matters worse, colonial narratives of the time do not paint a clear picture, because indigenous Caribbeans were often given arbitrary ethnic labels based on their levels of cooperation with colonizers. If they cooperated with and accepted colonization, they were labeled Arawaks; if they proved resistant and hostile, they were called Caribs (Garraway, 61-63). Hostilities between colonizers and those who resisted colonization where thus enacted for the good of the "welcoming" indigenous population (61-63).

Issues also arose because of the plundering and internal feuding of European pirates (Ashcoft, 146). This muddles the narrative voice and picture even further with the creation of the "white noble savage", an image Garraway says was constructed to deal with the intermingling of French pirates and wanderers who roamed throughout the Caribbean and tried to claim this colonial space for their own, in defiance of France's Old Regime and its ways (92). This created a new social class that brought forth its own segment of interbred, mixed heritage descendents.

The slave trade and system of indentured servitude also creates problems for authenticity of voice, because not only were Africans kidnapped, separated, and transported far away to a Caribbean that was foreign to them, but also natives of India and China were displaced as well (Ashcroft, 146). This is dealt with in The Pagoda, by Patricia Powell, whose main character, (a Chinese woman who masquerades as a man), flees an arranged marriage by stowing away on boat filled with indentured servants bound for Jamaica. Lowe/Ay-lin becomes "enslaved" by the white slave trader Cedric, and loses all sense of self and her voice after years of disguising herself as a man, for fear of being pressed into forced prostitution.

In simplistic terms, the heart of the problem in ascribing authenticity to Caribbean post-colonial writing - and perhaps all post-colonial writing - is language itself, especially considering the fragmentation of its narrative voice during the colonial period. Because post-colonial writers look back to a time when native narratives were repressed and codified in the language of the repressor, they struggle to connect with the language of their own respective native narratives because in many cases, such a language doesn't exist. In the case of the Caribbean, the imported slaves and indentured servants where jumbled, mixed, isolated from their fellow brethren, and forced to speak the language of their oppressors. This effectively destroyed their identity, and by extension, their ability to reach for their own narrative voice.

At first, the problem of language wasn't considered very important in many post-colonial circles, especially in the rush of nationalistic writing as regions gained their independence. It was often dismissed as a minor irritation, even though there was an air of "unreality" in trying to tell a cultural narrative with a colonial language, IE. English (Ashcroft, 30). However, over the years, as writers traveled further and further from the nationalistic moment, the issue of language in the construction of a truly cultural narrative became an increasingly important one, especially concerning style and translation.

The problem? Should cultural narratives be told in English, set along the "traditional form" of an English novel? The issue: in doing so, is a post-colonial writer now complicit to the colonial project, because European English and the traditional form of the novel is European, and is given greater weight and has much greater appeal to mass audiences (66). Of course, the problem then comes back to effecting change - how best to do that? By writing in forms that protest the traditional modes and tropes of literature, or by utilizing traditional modes that will have a greater mass appeal?

Even amongst this climate of fragmented voices, there are common threads of a colonial narrative of sorts, found in different kinds of repeated motifs and themes. One of these motifs, according to Dennis Lee and Canadian novelist Margaret Atwood, is the narrative of the victim - characters continually and repeatedly victimized by colonial powers (141).

In Cambridge, by Caryl Phillips, though the main character is the daughter of a wealthy English plantation owner, Miss Emily, the short segment where the narrative shifts to the slave named Cambridge is rife with victimization, and is almost an encapsulated microcosm of the tortured, victimized slave destined to suffer because of his blackness. In a familiar story by now, Cambridge is ripped from his native homeland in Africa and swallowed by the colonial machine of slave trade. He is robbed of his identity, as his name changed arbitrarily at the whims of white authority figures, symbolic of his loss of voice and self (Chavanelle, 3). After years of hard treatment, he is granted his freedom by a white person, accepts salvation as a Christian, and enjoys the providence of a white well-to-do European lady as his benefactor.

Cambridge experiences a small bit of happiness and freedom when he's briefly emancipated, "born again", and married - to a white servant woman. He becomes educated, literate, and grows into a staunch promoter of abolitionism throughout London, as he travels around, lecturing on the saving faith of his Christianity, fighting for the freedom of slaves everywhere.

However, as a person of color, he's ultimately fated to suffer. His wife becomes sick and dies, and on a sea passage to his next missionary project, Cambridge is kidnapped and sold back into slavery, his named changed one last time. He's eventually hung after "attacking" Mr. Brown on Miss Emily's father's plantation, thus he comes right back to the same place he started, his struggles futile and vain.

In The Pagoda, by Patricia Powell, the main character fills the victim's shoes throughout the novel. There is some progression and development of Lowe's character, (or Ay-Lin, as she's been masquerading as a man for years) by the end of the novel when she at least tries to reconnect with her daughter, but for the most part, Lowe/Ay-Lin is repeatedly victimized by multiple forces throughout: her father, Cecil, those who burned down his/her shop, Miss Sophie, the Jamaicans who detest him/her for the connection to a white oppressor, Omar - among others. Every scheme Lowe/Ay-Lin hatches fails miserably, most notably the planned "pagoda" or center for displaced Chinese. Not only is Lowe/Ay-Lin victimized by actions, but also by loss - the loss of his/her bond with father, loss of heritage and loss of a connection to his/her daughter. Therefore, victimization and loss are key motifs in the telling of this story.

Bruised Hibiscus, by Elizabeth Nunez, also portrays victimization and loss. In this novel, we see a loss of childhood innocence in both Rosa and Zuela; Zuela in her forced marriage and ensuing years of rape by the Chinaman, and Rosa in seeing a white man rape a child behind a hibiscus bush, and her loss of innocence in seeing something at so young an age. Most telling is the double meaning of Zuela's loss; it's a loss of physical innocence in the act of the Chinaman's rape, but also when she jovially pronounces to Rosa after seeing the brutal scene behind the hibiscus bush, "That is nothing. Chinaman do that to me already" with a swaying of the hips, she and the reader fully realizes her loss of a normal childhood, as well.

As the novel progresses, Rosa becomes a victim of her husband's paranoid obsession when he believes she's been unfaithful, she suffers the loss of desire when her repressed memories of what happened behind the hibiscus bush ruins her allusions of sexual power over Cedric, and this too is a loss: the loss of her imagined sexual authority over Cedric. Rosa eventually becomes the ultimate victim when she's gang raped and then murdered, her body thrown into the sea in an eerie reflection of the dead body discovered at the novel's beginning.

Though Zuela eventually finds freedom from the Chinaman and a measure of her own solidarity, she still continues to experience loss when the Chinaman extends his touch towards her children, not only exposing her son Alan to opium, but eventually raping her daughter. In this, even embedded in her freedom from Chinaman, Zuela is a victim in that she fails to protect her children from her abuser, and her mother's advice about men like Chinaman being an iguana, dangerous appearing, but easily enough appeased, also fails. Chinaman turns out to be a snake, not an iguana, making Zuela a victim despite her eventual freedom.

Song of the Water Saints, by Nelly Rosario, is completely framed by themes of loss and victimization, and in this case it's largely generational, aimed specifically at women. Down through family lines, transferred from mother to daughter, each succeeding female figure is victimized in various different ways, with the exception of perhaps Mercedes; even though she is the victim of a dismissive mother who essentially abandons her for months at a time.

Both Graciela and Silvio are victims of sexual exploitation in the very beginning pages, Graciela is a victim not only to her father's harsh whippings but also her own wanderlust, which in turn leads her to more victimization; at the hands of European brothel-owner Eli, her succeeding master Humberto, and finally the sexually transmitted disease she catches from Eli. The novel culminates with the victimization of Leila, (Mercedes' daughter), at the hands of Miguel when she's brutally raped and then threatened with death. In this case, not even a move to the States can save them; they are victims regardless, wherever they go.

According to Canadian writer Dennis Lee, this thread of victimization may very well stem from the language problem, because language, communication, a means of expressing oneself is one of the ultimate victims of colonization. When the colonizer moves in, natives are forced to use the language of oppressor, forced to adopt their ways, their spaces, their culture. Quoted from Lee, in regards to this and the work of Canadian novelist Margaret Atwood:

The colonial writer does not have words of his own. Is it not possible that he projects his own condition of voicelessness into whatever he creates? that he articulates his own powerlessness, in the face of alien words, by seeking out fresh tales of victims? Over and above Atwood's account of it, perhaps the colonial imagination is driven to recreate, again and again, the experience of writing in colonial space....the language was drenched in our non-belonging....words had become our enemy.... (Ashcroft, 142)

Lee goes on to say that many post-colonial writers have tried over the years to "come home" with their narratives, seeking to reclaim what was lost and speak with some sort of cultural voice or authenticity (142). The problem with that, he says, is:

...the words of home are silent. Try to speak the words of your home and you will discover - if you're colonial - that you do not know them. To speak unrelfectingly in a colony, then, is to use words that speak only alien space. To reflect is to fall silent, discovering your authentic space does not have words..... (Ashcroft, 142)

A possible solution, Lee proposes, may be the reason why so many post-colonial novels speak the language of the victimized:

But perhaps - and here was the breakthrough - perhaps our job was not to fake a space of our own and write it up, but rather to find words for our space-lessness...Instead of pushing against the grain of an external, uncharged language, perhaps we should start writing with that grain. (Ashcroft, 141 -142)

What are we left with, then? Generations of writers expressing themes of victimization as a means of coming to grips with their displacement and loss of self and voice? Is this the story post-colonial writers want to tell the world; stories of victimization, loss, and displacement?

Perhaps we can look back to Phillips Cambridge for, if not an answer, than at least a framework by which to guide future analysis. First of all, consider the novel's parallel though disparate narratives. Emily, the white overseer's daughter, is given far more time in the novel, perhaps symbolic that as a white person in the colonial moment, her story would be given greater weight; while Cambridge, a black slave, is relegated to several small chapters at the end of the novel, indicative of colonialism's intent on pushing cultural narratives to "the margin", or to a place where they wouldn't trouble the Empire at large. Philips subverts this disparity, however, in that Emily spends most of her narrative fidgeting uneasily at the sight of every black person, looking down her nose at slaves while pretending to be an emancipationist. Conversely, in his small snippet, his "marginal narrative, Cambridge survives, perseveres, grows intellectually and spiritually, and even experiences a time of joy and productivity, if only brief.

Emily is never able to adapt to the daily contradictions she sees between what she's been schooled to believe and the reality of slavery, as well as the reality of her own prejudice. Unlike Marlow in Heart of Darkness, she doesn't come to a place of passive acceptance in regards to slavery, but unlike Barry in Ti Marie, she doesn't become passionately moved to reject slavery. She becomes stuck, and she simply dies. She is neither a colonial or post-colonial figure, she is merely rooted in entropy and chaos, perhaps Phillips' word on the ultimate end of colonialism and slavery.

Cambridge, on the other hand, for all his perseverance, bravery, education and goodness, is marginalized at the novel's end with his death for "attacking" Mr. Brown, unlike Fist from Ti Marie, who is saved by both Barry and Andre and goes on to enjoy a successful boxing career in London. Unlike Fist, he never enacts any kind of revenge against those who have wronged him, and this is no "Barry" or "Andre" to save him. However, even though his death portrays the grim reality that one man of courage, goodness, and intellect indeed is not enough to combat racism and ignorance, his death lacks the hopelessness of The Pagoda and the horrific brutality of Song of the Water Saints and Brusied Hibiscus (which is not to say that depicting such brutality and violence isn't historically accurate).

It is possible that like Emily and Cambridge, post-colonial writers and literature as a whole will always struggle with authenticity and voice, and perhaps the grim reality is they will never completely escape the long-reaching grasp the repressive, violent system of colonialism that displaced them, robbing them of their cultural histories and narrative.

Why write then at all? Why labor to capture a narrative voice, if in some aspects it can never completely be done? Perhaps the reason can be found in the words of Patricia Powell, author of The Pagoda, expressed in a recent interview when asked, "Why do you write?"

I write because I have so many questions and there are no reasonable answers in sight. Writing becomes a way of investigating. I'm concerned about the way we live in the world, the injustices we heap onto other people because of difference--race, class, gender, sexual identity, cultural identity, etc. I should not have to be Chinese to write about the plight of the Chinese back in the 1800s or even today. I should not have to be gay or a gay man with AIDS to be concerned about the ways in which homophobia kills all of us, gay and straight alike. I care about people and their suffering and the ways they try to move out of their suffering, or build defenses around it, perhaps even bury themselves even more deeply inside it, because they can't imagine any other possibility. (MIT, 1)

Works Cited:

1. Ashcroft, Bill, Gareth Griffiths, and Helen Tiffen. The Empire Writes Back. 2nd ed. London and New York: Routledge, 1991.

2. Chavanelle, Sylvie. "Caryl Phillp's Cambridge: Ironical (Dis)empowerment." TheInternational Fiction Review Vol. 251-10. 12/6/2007 .

3. Belgrave, Valerie. Ti Marie. 1st ed. London: Heinemann International, 1988.

4. Garraway, Dorris. The Libertine Colony. 1st ed. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2005.

5. "Art Talk: Patricia Powell, Author." News Office. September 17, 2003. Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 13 Dec 2007 .

6 Nunez, Elizabeth. Bruised Hibiscus. 1st ed. New York : Ballantine Books, 2000.

7. Powell, Patricia. The Pagoda. 1st ed. New York : Alfred A. Knopf, 1998.

8. Phillips, Carly. Cambridge. 1st ed. New York : Vintage International, 1993.

9. Rosario, Nelly. Song of the Water Saints. 1st ed. New York : Pantheon Books, 2002.

10. Young, Robert. Colonial Desire: Hybridity In Theory, Culture, and Race. 5th edition. London and New York: Routledge, 2002.