A Character in Transition: The Theme of Reinventing One's Self in Jamaica Kincaid's Work "Lucy" (PDF)

Seminar paper from the year 2004 in the subject American Studies - Literature, grade: 2,0, Humboldt-University of Berlin (Amerikanistisches Institut), course: HS: Postcolonial Theory, Literature and Gender, language: English, abstract: Introduction

The autobiographical novel Lucy was written by Jamaica Kincaid in 1990. The author, who was born in 1949 on the Caribbean island of Antigua, is one of the representative figures of postcolonial literature, which has been gaining prominence since the 1970s. With the apppearance of the work "The Empire Writes Back: Theory and Practice in Post-Colonial Literatures" written by Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths, and Helen Tiffin in 1989 the popularity of the term "Postcolonialism" grew even more. The definition of the term is still widely discussed but in general postcolonial literature deals with the effects of colonization on the colonized people and society after the end of colonization.
The term "post" indicates that Postcolonialism is relating to the time following the establishment of independence in a colony. That means, the time after the colonial powers have left the country and the time of colonization is over. Nevertheless, the issues of Postcolonialism are so many-sided that they often transcend a
strict definition of the term, which is therefore used much more loosly in practice. Postcolonial themes not only discuss the period after the departure of the imperial powers but also deal with the time before independence.
Major issues are the oppression of the indigenous people by the imperial powers, the gaining of independence, the impact of colonization on postcolonial history and culture, the search
for personal and national identity but also the economic dependency of the postcolony on its former colonizers.
Thus some critics even question the term Postcolonialsm, since it indicates that the period when the colony was dependent on its colonizers is over. They argue that most former colonies are still or even again economically dependent on the mother country that colonized them. Those neocolonial forms of oppression and exploitation are probably caused by globalization, which means by the increasing mobility of goods, services, labour, technology
and capital throughout the world.
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