An Introduction to African Postcolonial work.

The post-colonial era in Africa started in the general period between the 1960 and 1970 after the African nations gained cultural and political independence from the Colonial Masters. The literati of this time period were, in a sense, political activists along with being writers. Their literature essentially centered on the colonial experience and the brutality of Colonization. This was not limited to Africa alone, but to all the colonies around the world, although at different time periods. In Africa, however, as each of the nations gained independence from the colonial masters, an increasing number of writers started to write about the experience of freedom. As time passed, some writers began writing works that reflected the brutality of the colonial experience and the oppression that the natives faced during colonization and after decolonization.

The major focus of concern in African writing was the language it was written in. There were a lot of writers like Chinua Achebe, Wole Soyinka and others who wrote in English; these authors stood as a contrast to other writers like Ngugi who was completely against the idea of writing African literature in English or any of the other European languages (Senghor and Cesaire wrote about Negritude in French).