A Brief History of the English Language & Literature, for the Use of Schools

The uses of the English language, of the novel form, of literary styles and cinematic techniques, demonstrate a blending, at times happy, at other times conflictual, of indigenous cultural memory with Western education and location. Brodsky's generalized remark that "an exiled writer is thrust, or retreats, into his mother tongue" is hardly true for postcolonial writers who come into the West, most of them inculcated in a colonial(ist) educational system and a Western literary tradition, and who write in English. Of course this reality is full of conflicts. Brodsky's exiled writer is "invariably homebound…excessively retrospective [and since s/he feels] doomed to a limited audience abroad, he cannot help pining for the multitudes, real or imagined, left behind." For postcolonial writers, the opposite is true — they often move away from "home" in order to find an audience. Economic and political expediency at different historical times forcibly transported, or "welcomed," peoples of color — African, Chinese, Japanese, Filipino, Chicano, and, more recently, Caribbean, Vietnamese, South Asian — into North America. "Minority" groups range from United States citizens, African Americans, or thirdgeneration Japanese and Chinese Americans, to newer immigrants (noncitizens) of color driven to the United States for professional and economic reasons ...»