Workshop from Butterfly Effect Writing Series

Rivers in Her Eyes: the emergence of post-colonial expression
journey into post-colonial writers/genres

"Censor the body and you censor breath and speech at the same time.
Write yourself. Your body must be heard. "
--Helene Cixous
from The Newly Born Woman

Description:

This presentation is an academic/writerly overview of the post-colonial movement: its writers, their voice/style/philosophy and how/why this expressive and essential writing occurred.

We will discuss/explore topics such as:

--do you have to be a person of color to become a post colonial writer

--how the post colonial movement impact fiction (for instance, is the omniscient narrator dethroned/obsolete and WHY)

--is poetry impacted by post-colonial writing (for instance: are metaphors rendered obsolete)

--is feminism an inspiration for/impacted by post colonial writing

--how does post-colonial differ from OR become experimental writing

--is post-colonial cross-genre

An Overview of the Post Colonial Movement

Post-colonial writers and voice emerge from the impulse of no longer being the "subject" of a hierearchal schemata, literally and figuratively no longer "colonized" by a white, male- dominated culture. For this reason the literature of this style reflects voice, content AND form (often deemed "experimental") which rearranges an assumed view of the world. That is, the premise of self/other as opposite/separate often is reconstructed as either unified or reflexive rather than polarized in opposing/power-over paradigms.

The cyclic/tribal voice emerges in post-colonial writing. The concept of time is often shifted from a linear perception to more circular presentation of story/images/characters. Much like oral tradition of the indigenous people from which much of this literature emerges, post-colonial writers offer stories/poems which are freed from linear--beginning-middle-end--format and craft. The cyclic/tribal voice apparent in some of this work is aware of the illusion of time and is more concerned with an expression of inter-connective ness of all life through cycles. In this way, linear presentation is organically oppressive to the post-colonial writer, to the cycle of life itself and thus the entire form of writing shifts from "logical" time sequences to varied perceptions of events.

Details of the workshop
Genres of fiction and poetry are main emphasis.

The workshop will include in-class AND pre-assigned writing exercises which will intend to illicit the experience of post-colonial impulse. We will discuss/read prior to class, key works by post-colonial writers including: Julio Cortazar, Jamaica Kinkaid, Isabele Allende, Leslie Marmon Silko ( Laguna Pueblo), John Trudell (Lakota, Dakota) and the poetry of Sherman Alexie (Couer d'lene).

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antoinette nora claypoole
All People are One