White teeth and post colonial literature
When I first heard “post colonial literature” I thought it was about
the era of colonization. Lacking knowledge about this field this
article in short gave me a compact view of what it is. It is about
understanding the perception of the Europeans, who colonized different
parts of the world, that their society and culture were the ideal ones
and superior to all other. Some wrote of it as a mere observation
comparing the colonized people to their European culture and declaring
them as “savages”, while some wrote of it as means of criticizing this
idea of superiority of the white Europeans.
An example of the after effect of colonization is found in the passage
by Millat. He is confused about his sense of belonging because he is
not fit for going and living in his own country and at the same time
he is marginalized by his race in UK. I happened to have known this
feeling among some of my friends in Australia who are third generation
Lebanese Australians. They were born it that country and their parents
were also born in that country and most of them have not even seen
Lebanon yet but still when they roam around in a white eastern suburb
of Sydney some people shout at them “go back to your country”. They
feel confused about where do they actually belong but some of these
white Australians tend to forget they are not the indigenous people of
Australia, they are immigrants as well. A famous quote in Australia,
which was first heard in a Lebanese Australian movie “The
Combination”, when a Lebanese school boy was fighting with an
Australian white boy, is “We came in planes, you’se came in chains”.
The meaning is that the first European white Australians were
convicts.
When I first heard “post colonial literature” I thought it was about
the era of colonization. Lacking knowledge about this field this
article in short gave me a compact view of what it is. It is about
understanding the perception of the Europeans, who colonized different
parts of the world, that their society and culture were the ideal ones
and superior to all other. Some wrote of it as a mere observation
comparing the colonized people to their European culture and declaring
them as “savages”, while some wrote of it as means of criticizing this
idea of superiority of the white Europeans.
An example of the after effect of colonization is found in the passage
by Millat. He is confused about his sense of belonging because he is
not fit for going and living in his own country and at the same time
he is marginalized by his race in UK. I happened to have known this
feeling among some of my friends in Australia who are third generation
Lebanese Australians. They were born it that country and their parents
were also born in that country and most of them have not even seen
Lebanon yet but still when they roam around in a white eastern suburb
of Sydney some people shout at them “go back to your country”. They
feel confused about where do they actually belong but some of these
white Australians tend to forget they are not the indigenous people of
Australia, they are immigrants as well. A famous quote in Australia,
which was first heard in a Lebanese Australian movie “The
Combination”, when a Lebanese school boy was fighting with an
Australian white boy, is “We came in planes, you’se came in chains”.
The meaning is that the first European white Australians were
convicts.
No comments:
Post a Comment