Postcolonial analysis of on being brought from Africa to America

By Phyllis Wheatley.

Post colonialism as a field of enquiry has instigated much to understand notions of identity and social relations within the larger tenet of colonial influences. Post colonial discourses have led to the re reading of texts (literary and otherwise) that were written even before colonialism metamorphisized into what we understand of it today .in such a rereading analysis of the notion of identity stands crucial

                          The poem on being brought from Africa to America written by 

Was written at a time when slavery was very dominant in America. It basically expresses the experience coming to America. The American’s whom the poet worked for encouraged her to write and also exposed her to English as a language. Her owner also helped in the publishing of her work.

A lot of postcolonial discourses can be employed in analyzing the poem within a postcolonial context. The poem expresses how the poet felt while being exposed to Christianity. This reflects the notion of the white mans burden where in the white man holds the responsibility of ‘civilizing’ the ‘the uncivilized’. The act of teaching English exposing her to Christianity all reflects the aforementioned white mans burden.

Colonialism and imperialist ideologies brought with it a hierarchy with set power play within it. Within this hierarchy the blacks occupy the lowest position while the white man occupies the highest. This hierarchy is based on the physical features, racial background. Based on such racial judgment’s the blacks the blacks are considered inferior to the white people and based on this theory the act of slavery was born.

Such social relationships of hierarchy are based on binary opposites. Therefore, what the white man is the black man isn’t. therefore, in the a need to civilize the Pagans, the white man introduces the notion of culture to the ‘uncultured’. In the process not only are the black people made to realize there inferior status but are also made to want to get ‘civilized’, as reflected in Frantz fanons “black skin white masks”. This idea is also manifested in the poem when the poet herself uses terms like “benighted soul” to describe herself.

Since the people whom the poet worked for were more or less kind to her as opposed to some other slave owners, the poet appears to be thankful.  Nonetheless the power play is still functioning and the sense of superiority and inferiority is still evident in the poem.

By Ronak giri

1214208-pseng.

Leopold Senghor's Night in Sine

Night in Sine

BY LÉOPOLD SÉDAR SENGHOR

TRANSLATED BY MELVIN DIXON

Woman, place your soothing hands upon my brow,

Your hands softer than fur.

Above us balance the palm trees, barely rustling

In the night breeze. Not even a lullaby.

Let the rhythmic silence cradle us.

Listen to its song. Hear the beat of our dark blood,

Hear the deep pulse of Africa in the mist of lost villages.

Now sets the weary moon upon its slack seabed

Now the bursts of laughter quiet down, and even the storyteller

Nods his head like a child on his mother’s back

The dancers’ feet grow heavy, and heavy, too,

Come the alternating voices of singers.

Now the stars appear and the Night dreams

Leaning on that hill of clouds, dressed in its long, milky pagne.

The roofs of the huts shine tenderly. What are they saying

So secretly to the stars? Inside, the fire dies out

In the closeness of sour and sweet smells.

Woman, light the clear-oil lamp. Let the Ancestors

Speak around us as parents do when the children are in bed.

Let us listen to the voices of the Elissa Elders. Exiled like us

They did not want to die, or lose the flow of their semen in the sands.

Let me hear, a gleam of friendly souls visits the smoke-filled hut,

My head upon your breast as warm as tasty dang streaming from the fire,

Let me breathe the odor of our Dead, let me gather

And speak with their living voices, let me learn to live

Before plunging deeper than the diver

Into the great depths of sleep.

Leopold Sedar Senghor was an African poet, who contributed much to the Negritude movement, started by the French-speaking black intellectuals that looked at accepting the fact that one was black and that the fact came with its own history, values and culture and sought to acquaint all people of African descent with freedom and dignity.

In the poem, “Night in Sine”, Senghor looks at the subtleties of his culture and embodies them in the image of womanhood, with soft hands, singing a song, not quite a lullaby. Throughout the poem, Senghor emphasizes on the darkness around, in blood, the night that caresses him, in the smoke-filled hut and in the great depths of sleep, but he speaks of these in honor of what his heritage is, that what is dark may also be good. He reveals affection for Africa in his articulation of the magnificence of Negritude.

            Senghor uses repetition as a powerful force to drive his imagery home. He continually looks at how important ‘listening’ is and how each one is cradled in a ‘rhythmic silence’ because that is how they have been conditioned in their subjugation – to not fight back, to accept, to go on within the circle of life. But Senghor sparks a ray of hope in his poetry by pointing to how though the attempts to crush their spirits have been many, yet, the beats of Africa still run in their ‘dark blood’, pulsing though much seems lost. He uses vivid imagery to entice the senses, right from the beginning of the poem to capture his audience and keep them engaged. The poem is never just a string of words, but one that is built to make you feel like you’re there within the experience of the speaker. The weary moon and its slack seabed, reinforce the pattern of behavior and its familiarity. The speaker talks of how even the storyteller, generally one to be found most enthusiastic or teeming with life, quietens with the mother’s touch.

            He paints a magnificent picture of the roofs having conversations with the stars as they reflect light tenderly, pointing to the Negritude of his culture and how all can take pride in it. The speaker wishes to go back to the voices of the ancestors, heeding their wisdom and not wanting their lineage to fall short of glory. It becomes a give and take relationship between what is now and what had been before, where the former chooses to become the sustenance for the latter, and the latter becomes the basis on which what is may build and claim value in.

            Throughout this piece, we see a celebration of African culture and ancestry, and an anger towards all that colonized its beauty. A violence towards the violation and exploitation, a metaphorical death of Africanness. He ends the piece with the speaker asking to be allowed to learn to live, to discover what it truly is before it was contaminated.

I GIVE YOU THANKS MY GOD

I give you thanks my God for having created me black

For having made of me

The total of all sorrows,

and set upon my head

5 the World.

I wear the livery of the Centaur

And I carry the World since the first morning.

White is a colour improvised for an occasion

Black, the colour of all days

10 And I carry the World since the first night.

I am happy

with the shape of my head

fashioned to carry the World,

satisfied with the shape of my nose,

15 Which should breathe all the air of the World,

happy

with the form of my legs

prepared to run through all the stages of the World.

I give you thanks my God, for having created me black,

20 for having made of me

the total of all sorrows.

Thirty-six swords have pierced my heart.

Thirty-six brands have burned my body,

And my blood on all the cavalries has reddened the snow

25 And my blood from all the east has reddened nature.

And yet I am

Happy to carry the World,

Content with my short arms,

with my long legs,

30 with the thickness of my lips.

I give you thanks my God, for having created me black,

White is a colour for an occasion,

Black the colour of all days

And I carry the World since the morning of time.

35 And my laughter in the night brought forth day over

the World.

I give you thanks my God for having created me black.

                                                                                          Bernard Dadie

Bernard Dadie was born an Ivorian in 1916. He had his education both in his native country as well as in Senegal owing to which he had a very intense experience of his Africanness from two different perspectives. This poem is translated from his publication La Ronde des Jours (1956). He has written several plays and chronicled many dramatic pieces on African tradition and legend including the more Francophone-popular Monsieur Thogô-Gnini which satirizes the social anomalies of post-colonial society.

The poem “I Give You Thanks My God” plays with historic and biblical allusions as it brings its story through. There is a tone of satire almost throughout the entire poem. The poet instead of being ashamed of his “blackness” as propagated by the white man, proudly proclaims his colour and thanks God for creating him so. Language plays a very important role throughout this poem and depicts how the colonized have appropriated the language of the colonizer and yet managed to force this structure to adopt their ideas and views. The poet then goes ahead and says that he has been carrying the weight of the world and all its burdens right from the first day which refers to the day of creation, a biblical allusion. He satirically refers to Jesus Christ here by saying, just as Christ bore the brunt of all the sins of mankind in the white man’s religion, here the black man is made to bear all the troubles and problems that come along with being black. He refers to the colour white as a colour for a specific occasion, a celebration and black as a colour for every other normal day.

Throughout the poem, it is visible that the poet is celebrating his racial identity and wears it proudly. This poem can also be seen as an example of Negritude, a movement that celebrated blackness or the dark skin colour and encouraged Africans or Negroes world over to be proud of their colour rather than treat it as inferior or something lesser to being white or fair. From lines 11 through 18, we can see that the poet thanks God for his features such as the shape of his head and nose as well as the form of his legs. Further, in lines 27 through 30 he thanks God again for his features like his thick lips and the like. By doing so, the poet challenges many of the stereotypes and binaries put in place by the colonizers with everything European viewed as beautiful and desirable while placing everything African on the opposite side of this binary depicting them as not being desirable, and even viewed as ugly. The other binaries that the poet tries to break apart include one where the white man is seen as superior in every sense of the term and the black man the exact opposite, seen as inferior and backward. He attempts to do so by constantly drawing biblical allusions and comparing the burdens that Christ bore to the burdens and troubles that the black people face by virtue of being black. A third binary the poet attempts to invert is the binary of the colours white and black, the colours symbolizing white as being pure and clean whereas black was seen as impure and polluted. He does this by constantly thanking God in his poem for his colour and celebrating the fact that he is black in opposition to seeing it as a detrimental aspect of his self.

Further through lines 20 to 25, he speaks about being pierced and branded thirty-six times which is another biblical allusion to Christ being crucified. He is trying to depict the fact that his race of people did not belong to only one set of masters throughout their history but rather have been tortured and exploited by many different people across various times in history. But even this, instead of being portrayed in a negative manner, is used to create a sense of identity for themselves, to feel proud about their lives and history and all that they have endured yet survived. He encourages his people to embrace their past and integrate that with their present to bring about a new future wherein they are not subjugated by the so called superior white man. Virtually everything that has been negatively regarded by the white man is used to help create an identity for themselves in this poem. In line 24, he talks about how his blood has reddened snow due to the wars and killings of his people. This line if looked at closely has been constructed very cleverly. By saying his blood has reddened snow; he indirectly refers to foreign lands where snowfall is common which cannot be Africa, thus referring to the Europeans and Americans exploiting them during the dark ages of the colonial period and the era of slavery. He almost places the blame very covertly on the white man and his wrong doings to the African people.

In the concluding stanza of the poem, the poet yet again refers to the colour white as being a colour of occasion and black being an everyday colour. He then refers to his laughter bringing about day over the world. This refers to the fact that, despite facing so many hurdles and problems, being in darkness, under the burden of exploitation and oppression, the black man is still able to laugh in these tough circumstances and hence this becomes symbolic of hope that someday their situation will improve and they will be their own people, with their own identities, not something they are forced to accept and imbibe.  

If You Want To Know Me,

Noemia De Souza

This is what I am
empty sockets despairing of possessing of life
a mouth torn open in an anguished wound...
a body tattooed with wounds seen and unseen
from the harsh whipstrokes of slavery
tortured and magnificent
proud and mysterious
Africa from head to foot
This is what I am

If you want to know me, by Noemia De Souza, has ruefully used literary devices. It is seen to have a mysterious and carefree title. Only after reading the poem will one realize and understand the depth of the feelings that have been expressed in the poem. That is where the power of the poem lays, in its words, images of wounds, untold stories and so on. She is seen to have written this poem in defense of the colonization of Africa and oppression. It portrays the physiological and psychological impact of colonization. It also showcases the struggle for cultural and political autonomy along with hybridity.

In the beginning of the poem, she establishes her lost identity due to colonization and uses the image of “empty sockets”. The eye is one part of the body that best expresses emotions and that very part itself is seen b devoid of its function/life. She is unable to see her past experiences and life and is now blind to it but despairs her present life. She goes on to tell us the harsh past experiences and marks that she has to live with for the rest of her life. The marks all over her body seem like tattoos that last forever leaving marks of slavery, which will always be part of her and he life no matter what. She uses language as a device to protest against slavery and gain liberation. Her usage of words like magnificent and torture together, beautiful and marred shows her resistance and only form of voicing her opinions.

 She proudly goes on to say “Africa from head and foot and this is what I am”. The colonization, slavery, all forms of violence, abuse, every single experience that she has ever gone through is what gives her identity. Even though it has distorted her life to a great extent, she still proudly believed in liberating her country and also for being an African. This powerful poem has well described and contributed to the identities of all Africans, created a bond against the hegemonic colonizer.

  -Sahana J (1214298)

PIANO AND DRUMS

When at break of day at a riverside
I hear the jungle drums telegraphing
the mystic rhythm, urgent, raw
like bleeding flesh, speaking of
primal youth and the beginning
I see the panther ready to pounce
the leopard snarling about to leap
and the hunters crouch with spears poised;

And my blood ripples, turns torrent,
topples the years and at once I’m
in my mother’s laps a suckling;
at once I’m walking simple
paths with no innovations,
rugged, fashioned with the naked
warmth of hurrying feet and groping hearts
in green leaves and wild flowers pulsing.

Then I hear a wailing piano
solo speaking of complex ways in
tear-furrowed concerto;
of far away lands
and new horizons with
coaxing diminuendo, counterpoint,
crescendo. But lost in the labyrinth
of its complexities, it ends in the middle
of a phrase at a daggerpoint.

And I lost in the morning mist
of an age at a riverside keep
wandering in the mystic rhythm
of jungle drums and the concerto.

Gabriel Okara

Born in Nigeria, Gabriel Okara focuses much of his poems on the disparity between African and Western cultures and how it further influences one’s frame of thought. As the name suggest, the poem merely expresses Okara’s thoughts on this issue and through the use of various poetic devices, such as symbolism and imagery, he successfully puts forth his feelings. The poem begins by describing the ‘mystic rhythm’ of the drums which automatically takes the reader to what the West would refer to as a ‘primitive land’. Towards the end of the poem, Okara writes about listening to a ‘wailing piano’, symbolising the West.  It is evident that Okara is going through a process of identifying himself i.e. whether he wants to be associated with his ‘primal’ land or the ‘advanced’ West.

While analysing the poem, one comes across the fact that Okara has structured the poem in such a manner that it begins by describing the primal lands and then talks about the West. This can be seen as a representation of Western colonisation wherein the tentacles of Western culture barges its way through that of the indigenous. The imposition of the Western culture on the indigenous leads to a transformation in ideologies as well. Okara, here, accepts the superiority of the West by describing the complexities of a piano through the use of words such as ‘ crescendo’ and ‘diminuendo’ and at the same time hinting at the simplicity of a drum. This further perpetuates the belief of the ‘white man’ that he is the superior one compared to the indigenous.

The effect of the imposition of such notions on the native individual’s psyche has been well portrayed in the poem. Although the narrator wishes to abide by the ‘rhythm of the drum’ he is interrupted the sound of the ‘wailing piano’. This represents the identity crisis he goes through as a result of the coloniser’s influence. He is faced between accepting his ‘primitive’ culture or being the submissive colonised, giving in to the ‘coaxing’ rhythms of the piano and thereby mimic the White man.

Further, this poem can be seen an example of the consequences of identity formation for the colonised who is forced into accepting the status of the ‘other’.  Okara internalises the belief that the ‘drum’ is a primitive instrument compared to the piano i.e. the drum is everything that the piano isn’t. One way of interpreting the poem is that he tries to overcome the traumatic belief of his inferiority by trying to inculcate the ideals of the western culture, as Fanon did with reference to the French culture. However, the fact that he hasn’t come to a conclusion could be indicative of an attempt to decolonise the mind. According to Fanon, more than political or economic change, the end of colonialism is marked by psychological change. Hence, the poem which could be interpreted as a quest for identity can also be seen as the beginning of decolonisation for Okara.

Elizabeth Korah

1214230

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).

Touched by an angel 

Maya Angelou

This poem hypothesizes a lot of things. It is not a soothing poem talks about love and how it is important and brings life into everyone.

In the first stanza poet Maya Angelou talks about how people are not customized in having courage towards everything and fails due to not facing the world with confidence. We get into the world of loneliness until love comes into our lives. This love helps in healing the loneliness. She tries to explain the power of love.

In second stanza, poet talks about effects of love in our lives. We just start remembering all our memories that took place and think about it. There are good as well as bad incidents would have taken place.

Third stanza, through love any person in the world gets courage and automatically it takes away our fear. And people are ready to do anything and everything because they love each other. She says that love also takes away the timidity experienced with a specific person. When someone falls in love, confidence starts growing between the two and later one realizes that there is no more timidity in being with that person which existed earlier.

In the end she says that love is everything and it cannot be replaced by anything no matter what. We become depended over it only love can set us free. It feels that love is the only thing and without it we are nothing. Ultimately love is worth because life will have no meaning and is empty without something or someone’s love. It simply means that love may have few consequences but at the end it makes you feel alive, bold and brave.

Maya has used many figurative aspects in order to explain her point of view on love. Throughout the poem we can find she has used personification.  She says," ...until love leaves its high holy temple and comes into our sight to liberate us into life. Love is an idea, but it is not a person or a human. She tries to explain that love life is like a human life. Love comes to us in a very emotional way but not exactly it comes towards us. We tend to achieve it. She referred love as a person than an idea, to explain what love does when it enters in a person’s lives. If a person is brave enough he or she tries to follow the way love leads and sets free from all kinds of disturbances by facing as life comes as a new teacher into our life.

She uses contradicting points in revealing things about the character. The character feels that the more hardship is endured the more she loves to live. But, where as many people think of two opposite things life and death meaning to say that in her own reality love and death both exists together. She likes the very thing to suffer, getting old, and losses of life to the end of her life that is the actual death. She says that both pain and death should not become a reason to avoid anything for the living because they are the very reality in everyone’s life. Love should be the reason for living is what she endures this as a challenge.

We should just stop worrying about the little things that are in our lives instead by loving and showing love towards others people also give love to the person who gave love to them. Love to be given to be received.

“Black Woman” by Leopold Sedar Senghor

Black Woman

- Leopold Senghor

Naked woman, black woman

Clothed with your colour which is life,
with your form which is beauty!

In your shadow I have grown up; the
gentleness of your hands was laid over my eyes.

And now, high up on the sun-baked
pass, at the heart of summer, at the heart of noon,
I come upon you, my Promised Land,
And your beauty strikes me to the heart
like the flash of an eagle.

Naked woman, dark woman

Firm-fleshed ripe fruit, sombre raptures
of black wine, mouth making lyrical my mouth
Savannah stretching to clear horizons,
savannah shuddering beneath the East Wind's
eager caresses

Carved tom-tom, taut tom-tom, muttering
under the Conqueror's fingers

Your solemn contralto voice is the
spiritual song of the Beloved.

Naked woman, dark woman

Oil that no breath ruffles, calm oil on the
athlete's flanks, on the flanks of the Princes of Mali
Gazelle limbed in Paradise, pearls are stars on the
night of your skin

Delights of the mind, the glinting of red
gold against your watered skin

Under the shadow of your hair, my care
is lightened by the neighbouring suns of your eyes.

Naked woman, black woman,
I sing your beauty that passes, the form
that I fix in the Eternal,

Before jealous fate turn you to ashes to
feed the roots of life.

The poem “Black Woman” was written by Leopold Senghor and published in “Chants d’Ombre” in 1945. It was initially written in French as “Femme Noir” and then translated to English. Senghor was a Senegalese poet who was instrumental in starting the emotional, intellectual and political and literary movement called “negritude” along with other writers of African origin- like Aime Cesaire- in Paris. This movement was born as a result of Senghor going to Paris to study in 1928. In Paris, Senghor met Aime Cesair, young man from the French Caribbean island of Martinique, and together with the help of Leon Damas of Guyana, they started the Negritude movement. The negritude movement is essentially focused on making the value of the African people manifest. Negritude philosophy believed that despite the diversity and plurality of the African culture, and the African Diasporas, African people all over the world still had shared experiences of racial brutality and oppression. Hence, the negritude writers essentially tried to convey through their works, the pride they felt in being African and the pride they felt in African culture itself.

In the poem “Black Woman”, Senghor reinforces the ideas of negritude. He personifies Africa- the nation- as an African woman. In the first three lines (Naked woman, black woman/ Clothed with your colour which is life, / with your form which is beauty!), he says that the African woman’s true beauty lies in her natural self. He says that her colour is life, and that it is the natural form of beauty. The African woman that Senghor talks about in this poem is a representation of the African race itself, as well. In the fourth and fifth lines, Senghor equates Africa to a mother. He says that he grew up under the protection of his mother land. He calls Africa the “Promised Land” (Line 8) and says that he is returning to Africa which, for him, is the Promised Land. Further in the poem, Senghor compares Africa to a lover. He praises her and compliments her, comparing her to a goddess. Throughout the poem, Senghor equates the African woman to everything beautiful and graceful. For instance, in the last stanza, he compares her skin to the well oiled, beautiful skin of an athlete, or the Princes of Mali. He goes on to say that the African woman is as elegant and graceful as a gazelle. Senghor ends his poem on a philosophical note by saying that he will keep alive the African woman’s beauty eternally in his poetry.

The idea of negritude is very important in understanding “Black Woman” and Senghor’s poems, largely. In this poem, Senghor represents his love for Africa, his home land, his mother country, by personifying Africa as every woman he loves. He praises the African culture by finding beauty in the colour of the African skin, which had been the main cause for brutality and discrimination during the British rule in Africa. Writing in a period of decolonization, Senghor went to great lengths to uplift the standards of the African people, and the African culture, and the African people’s own view of themselves and their culture. In this poem, he showers praises on the “black woman” thus implying the greatness of the African culture and the African people. He takes immense pride in being African- and this itself is the main idea behind the negritude movement.

Another idea that stands out quite prominently about Black Woman is the idea of “appropriation.” Appropriation is a postcolonial concept which refers to a technique of writing that many postcolonial writers adopted where they used the language of the colonizer to speak out against them. They used the language that was imposed upon them to express various cultural experiences during the colonial rule. Although language played a major role in the process of colonization, many authors consciously took to English to communicate their experiences about colonial experiences, to other people around the world. Their adoption of the English language to communicate their experiences was almost always a personal choice rather than an imposed one. In “Black Woman”, however, Senghor used French to speak out against the colonizers. He wrote largely from the stand of being a subject of French colonialism as Senegal was colonised by the French.

The ideas of negritude and appropriation, thus, play a major role in understanding the poem “Black Woman” from a postcolonial perspective.

                     ‘AFRICA’  BY  DAVID DIOPE

The poem "Africa" reflects the poet's vision of an independent and sovereign Africa. Diope was strongly critical of Europe and denounced colonialism to the hilt especially during the Second World War when Africans fought and died for the sake of the Europeans. Diope voices his anger against the exploitation of Africa by the colonizers through this poem specially in the moving description of Africa during colonization. The glorious, pre-colonial Africa is no longer the present Africa. The lingering memories of loss, slavery, humiliation makes the present freedom taste bitter. Postcolonial Africa is an Africa of a different kind. Colonialism may end but the bitter memories linger forever. This is a poem in which Diope by the power of his imagination calls forth three stages in the continent of Africa's history: pre-colonial days of proud warrior tribes, the colonial experience of subjugation and humiliation, and the postcolonial freedom and sovereignty. The first seven lines present an essentially idealized image of Africa with which the speaker identifies .Then follows a realistic picture of Africa's experience of bitterness, despair and mockery under colonial rule. The last eight lines present a future of hope built on some of the realistic elements of colonial experience: Africa as a young tree patiently springing up and gradually acquiring "the bitter taste of liberty". In David Diope's poem, "Africa", the poet hopes to create a renewed Africa out of the bitter experiences of colonialism. The poem is postcolonial as it gives the understanding that the effects of colonialism will continue to haunt even after the disappearance of colonialism. The poet's preoccupation with the past glories is also suggestive of its postcolonial nature.

Despite not having been to Africa, he calls it “My Africa” to emphasize his sense of belonging as he describes the “black blood” which flows in his veins as a descendant of the continent. The verses assume an angry and accusatory tone as he stresses that it is the blood and sweat of his people which is irrigating the fields of the colonialists without any benefit to the black people of Africa. Diope goes on to urge the black African people to stand up to the humiliation and pain that they suffered in their own motherland, reminding them of the strength and pride they have in them. He stresses the need to say no to the whips of the colonial masters who make them work under the hot midday sun leaving ugly scars on their backs. Despite this suffering the narrator urges Africans to be strong and resist being broken by the heavy weight which colonialism symbolizes. Africa is then personified as an elder who chides the narrator for thinking “impetuous” thoughts, implying that the continent is aware of impending changes or revolution. The tree “young and strong” represents the young generation of Africans who are patiently but “obstinately” waiting until they get the liberty they are waiting for. The tree is standing among the “white and faded flowers’’, by which the poet means the colonialists who will fade in time while the youthful Africans will grow in strength and wait for the moment to seize their freedom from the invaders. Diope realizes that freedom will not be acquired on a silver platter, but will have to be fought for so that the black people will eventually acquire “the bitter taste of Liberty” in the end.

The poem remains significant even after many years of “independence” from colonial rule because the continent still experiences neo-colonialism up to this day. Black people should not be under the illusion that political independence automatically translates into full independence from oppression and exploitation. The demonization of true pan-African leaders such as President Mugabe (pictured left) is an apt example of how neo-colonialists continue to find ways of exploiting Africa despite the façade of “independence” making Africans think that colonialism is over. When President Mugabe calls for economic freedom as opposed to political freedom alone, the neo-colonial powers rush to point out that Africa is now “free’’ when in actual fact it is only the faces in government who have been Africanized whilst the benefits from land and resources continue to be enjoyed by the Europeans. Thus David Diope’s poem continues to be relevant to Africa in the 21st century despite having been penned during the height of colonialism in Africa.

GARNET P T

1214224