Things Fall Apart: The Poetics of Decolonization
Political unrest, corruption, censorship, and violence are at the core of countries like Honduras, where freedom of expression is often non-existent. Migrating north seemed like a way to escape these constraints, particularly in pursuing an education unavailable to me in Central America. Initially, journalism appeared to offer a path to challenge these restrictions, but over time, its limitations became apparent. The formality and boundaries of journalistic and academic writing felt confining, leading to the discovery of poetry as an alternative mode of expression. Poetry offered the space to confront the weight of colonial legacies, censorship, language, and identity in ways that traditional prose could not. Censorship has been an enduring feature of both politics and media, influencing how stories are told and how histories are shaped. Soon after arriving in the U.S. and later during semesters abroad in France and Australia, the question of identity, language, belonging, and visibility troubled me– questions that all stemmed from understanding one’s place in society and a postcolonial world.
As a framework, postcolonialism helped to unravel these dynamics, exploring not just the lingering impacts of colonial rule but also the ways in which language itself becomes a battleground for change. Works that might not immediately seem political often harbor rich postcolonial critiques. Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, for example, weaves sharp commentary on Victorian society, political oppression, and the constructed nature of gender roles beneath its fantastical surface. Similarly, Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, while satirical, critiques British imperialism and the mindset that fueled colonial rule and expansion. Though subtle, these works introduced themes of otherness and identity, laying the groundwork for more explicit postcolonial conversations in modern literature.
More blatantly tackling these questions, Frantz Fanon’s Black Skin, White Masks speaks directly to the psychological toll of colonialism, where colonized/ marginalized individuals feel compelled to wear the "masks" of colonial culture to survive, whether that be assimilation or complete otherness, a feeling that is everpresent in postcolonial literature and life. This theme of identity fragmentation echoes in postcolonial poetry, particularly in Derek Walcott’s Omeros, where the epic form is used to explore the fractured identity of the Caribbean in the wake of colonial rule. Brian Friel’s Translations similarly highlight language as a powerful tool of colonial domination, dramatizing the erasure of Irish culture through the imposition of English. To many authors, including myself, the cultural tie between language and self is one that proves to be monumental in understanding one's own identity and place in the world. I took an interest in the moment in which writers become aware of the way colonization has tainted one’s self-perception, especially in the use of language. Take by example the work of Ngugi wa Thiong’o whose return to his native language and rejection of his anglicized name, marks a significant move in the repatriating and reclaiming of his Kenyan identity from British colonial rule.
The struggle for linguistic and cultural survival that Friel, Walcott, and Thiong’o depict mirrors the broader colonial experience: language becomes not just a means of communication but a form of resistance and reclamation. Gloria Anzaldúa’s Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza offers another layer to this conversation, illustrating the complexities of living in a "borderland" where languages, cultures, and identities intersect and clash. Anzaldúa’s concept of the “mestiza consciousness”—a hybrid identity that transcends borders—parallels the experience of many postcolonial poets, who write from the intersections of fractured histories and blurred cultural lines. This borderland is both a physical and metaphysical space, embodying the duality of identity experienced by colonized and displaced people. In poetry, the political becomes personal, and the fragmented self can be remembered and reclaimed.
In Audre Lorde’s famous essay “Poetry Is Not a Luxury,” she emphasizes poetry's necessity, particularly for those who have been historically marginalized and silenced. For them, poetry is not merely a form of expression but a mode of survival—a way to reclaim voice and visibility. It serves as a stage for those who have been rendered invisible, offering a space to navigate and transcend the constraints imposed by colonial narratives. For postcolonial poets like Aimé Césaire (one of the founders of the Negritude movement in 1930s Paris), poetry not only articulates the wounds of colonialism but also functions as a tool to envision a liberated future, one free from its oppressions. In Césaire’s Notebook of a Return to the Native Land, and his reimagining of Shakespeare’s The Tempest– modernist ways are employed to reflect the alienation wrought by colonialism, while simultaneously reclaiming African identity and history and rewriting colonial narratives. These poets push beyond the boundaries of language, challenging inherited structures to reimagine identity, place, and belonging. When engaging with poetry in academic discussions, my peers and I often grapple with the tension between obscurity and transparency in postcolonial literature. We debated whether the complexity of poetic language serves to deepen our understanding of postcolonial experiences or whether it risks further alienating those already marginalized. Yet, it is precisely within this complexity that the power of postcolonial poetry lies, as it refuses easy consumption, instead demanding that readers confront the layered histories and emotions embedded in the text. It is a way of saying “Here I am, only to those willing to work to understand me or us.” It is also important to think of who the poet is trying to address, oftentimes the targeted audience is the colonizer or people outside those marginalized communities, all in the hopes of directly critiquing a particular society’s ideas and actions.
Contemporary poets like Natalie Diaz and Franny Choi extend the postcolonial tradition by engaging with personal and collective narratives of displacement, survival, and identity. While studying abroad in Sydney, Australia, I developed a deep interest in postcolonial works by Aboriginal and Indigenous poets. I was particularly struck by Oodgeroo Noonuccal, a trailblazer in Australian postcolonial poetry, whose collection titled We Are Going remains as powerful today as it was when first published. The collection titled after a powerful poem, is a statement that stands true from the moment the first fleet arrived at Sydney Cove until today, especially in light of ongoing issues such as the dismissal and erasure of "The Voice"—a movement aimed at amplifying Aboriginal perspectives within Australian Parliament. Similarly and more contemporarily Natalie Diaz’s poetry is deeply rooted in her Mojave heritage and grapples with the ongoing violence and erasure faced by Indigenous communities in the Americas. Her work reflects the complex intersection of colonization, identity, and language, exploring how colonial history affects the personal and cultural landscapes of Native peoples. In her collection, Postcolonial Love Poem, Diaz transforms the traditional love poem into a space where colonial violence is confronted and Indigenous bodies are reclaimed. Her language becomes an act of resistance, a way of speaking back to the history of dispossession.
The theoretical frameworks provided by postcolonial thinkers are not just abstract concepts; they are lived realities reflected in the works of postcolonial poets. Within this genre, diasporic writing and poetry have gained prominence today, largely because many contemporary poets navigate the complexities of displacement and identity. As globalization intensifies, the realities of migration and exile have become central to the experiences of numerous individuals, prompting a literary response that seeks to articulate the paradoxes existing in these realities. Ocean Vuong, arguably the modern face of this genre, exemplifies the power of diasporic poetry to address themes of displacement, trauma, and identity. In his acclaimed collection Night Sky with Exit Wounds, Vuong explores the intricacies of his duality as a Vietnamese-American, using language to weave together personal and collective histories. His poem “Someday I’ll Love Ocean Vuong” written after Frank O’Hara and Roger Reeves, illustrates the common experience that is the fragmented sense of self and belonging, also showcasing how literature continues to modernly be reimagined to question still those ideas that were once challenged with a new contemporary tone. The paradoxes surrounding conversations about labels such as “diasporic poetry,” “commonwealth literature”, and “francophone literature” particularly interest me as their purpose in shining light on these voices/experiences can too further alienate these writers by limiting their writing to solely narratives of lament, further imposing colonial ideals of marginalized peoples.
“We Are Going” (1964) by Oodgeroo Nonuccal
“Only a remnant now remain,/ and the heart dies in you./ The white man claimed your hunting grounds/and you could not remain,...”
“But oh, so long the wait has been,/ so slow the justice due,/ Courage decays for want of hope,/ and the heart dies in you…”
“With Mouths and Mushrooms, the Earth Will Accept Our Apology” (2022) by Franny Choi
“made of the anti-modern, of hell-wreck, made of symbiotic/ destruction, of parasite and pericapitalism, made of slave trade,/ of wretched, made of reek and reason, made of ex-flesh, of cells/ stampeding through the lungs of miners, made of morals, of mortals,/ of everything went with perfection, made of infants in horse stalls…
“Identity Card” (1964) by Mahmoud Darwish
“Put it on record./ I am an Arab/ And the number of my card is fifty thousand/ I have eight children/ And the ninth is due after summer./ What's there to be angry about?/ Put it on record./ I am an Arab…”
“Amazon History of a Former Nail Salon Worker” (2022) by Ocean Vuong
“Mar./ Advil (ibuprofen), 4 pack/ Sally Hansen Pink Nail Polish, 6-pack
Clorox Bleach, industrial size/ Diane hair pins, 4 pack/ Seafoam handheld mirror/ “I Love New York” T-shirt, white, small…”
“Apr./ Chemo-Glam cotton scarf, flower garden print/ “Warrior Mom” Breast Cancer awareness T-shirt, pink and white/ May./ Mueller 255 Lumbar Support Back Brace/Jun. Birthday Card—“Son, We Will Always Be Together,” Snoopy design…”
“The Second Coming” (1920) by W.B. Yeats
“The falcon cannot hear the falconer;/ Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;/ Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,...”
“When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi/ Troubles my sight:/ somewhere in sands of the desert/ A shape with lion body and the head of a man,”
Oodgeroo Noonuccal’s “We Are Going” exemplifies the deep grief of Indigenous erasure, with her repeated refrain, “the heart dies in you,” expressing the existential devastation attached to the loss of land and culture. This theme of loss continues in Mahmoud Darwish’s “Identity Card,” where his direct, unadorned language and declarative stance underscore his right to self-identify against colonial control, illustrating how language itself becomes a form of agency, especially at the time in which they are writing. Franny Choi’s “With Mouths and Mushrooms, the Earth Will Accept Our Apology” expands the postcolonial scope by confronting modern issues related to the environmental degradation and socioeconomic wounds left by capitalist imperialism, using complex, metaphoric even apocalyptic imagery to convey the chaotic aftereffects of exploitation on both people and land. Ocean Vuong’s “Amazon History of a Former Nail Salon Worker” famously and uniquely captures these neocolonial impacts, transforming everyday consumer items into symbols of survival and diaspora, showing how postcolonial poetics continue to evolve through unconventional forms.
Finally, W.B. Yeats’ “The Second Coming,” although predating the postcolonial movement, encapsulates the beginnings of a collective recognition of apocalyptic fragmentation and upheaval—an atmosphere that postcolonial poets have powerfully recontextualized in narratives of decolonization. I chose to title my thesis after the line “Things fall apart” for several reasons. When Yeats wrote this poem, in the turbulent interwar period, it was as if he were standing at the threshold of understanding the world's inherent chaos, a prophetic vision of society’s descent. This verse’s weight truly resonated with me during a reading at The Paulson Center on our New York campus, on a course on decolonization, as chants of Pro-Palestine protests echoed through the building simultaneously. In that moment, I had my own revelation: the center indeed cannot hold, his message remains as urgent today as it was in Yeats’ time, which is the relevance of postcolonial poetry.
In this context, poetry becomes not only a space for personal exploration but a political act, the mirror of the transformational and shapeshifting nature of our world. It offers an alternative to the constraints of prose, journalism, and other genres by allowing for a more fluid engagement with the legacies of colonialism. Through metaphor, imagery, and form, postcolonial poets continue to challenge the narratives of dominance and reshape how history, identity, and survival are understood. In poetry, all becomes intertwined, offering a multifaceted response to the enduring question of what it means to live in a postcolonial world.
List of Works:
Four works from the Humanities:
Black Skin, White Masks, Frantz Fanon (1952). [HIS]
Translations, Brian Friel, (1980).
Borderlands La Frontera: The New Mestiza, Gloria Anzaldúa (1987).
Omeros, Derek Walcott (1990).
Four works from the Natural/Social Sciences:
Discourse on Colonialism, Aimé Césaire (1950) [CPC]
Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, Benedict Anderson (1983). [HIS]/[CPC]
Culture, language, and personality: Selected essays, Edward Sapir (1985).[CPC]
Decolonizing The Mind, Ngugi wa Thiong'o (1986). [CPC]
Seven works from the Premodern and Early Modern periods:
The Odyssey, Homer (8th Century BC). [HIS]
Republic, Plato (375 BC). [HIS]
Utopia, Thomas More (1516).
The Tempest, William Shakespeare (1611).
The Complete Fairytales, Charles Perrault (1697).
Gulliver’s Travels, Jonathan Swift (1726).
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll (1865).
Concentration Specific Texts:
We Are Going, Oodgeroo Nonnuccal (1964).
Return to The Native Land, Aimé Césaire (1968).
A Tempest, Aimé Cesaire (1969).
Poetry Is Not A Luxury, Audre Lorde (1985).
In the Presence of Absence, Mahmoud Darwish (2006).
Citizen: An American Lyric, Claudia Rankine (2014).
Night Sky with Exit Wounds, Ocean Vuong (2016).
Postcolonial Love Poem, Natalie Diaz (2020).
The World Keeps Ending, and The World Goes On, Franny Choi (2022).
Additional Texts:
Commonwealth Literature Does Not Exist, Imaginary Homelands, Salman Rushdie (1991)
Remembering Babylon, David Malouf (1993)
Reflections on Exile, Edward Said (2000)
Ignorance, Milan Kundera (2000)
Imperialism and Textuality, Elleke Boehmer (2005)
In the Country of Others, Leila Slimani (2020)
