Postcolonial Poetics: 21st-Century Critical Readings

Join us to hear Elleke Boehmer in conversation with Wen-chin Ouyang and Amina Yaqin. The event will celebrate the launch of Elleke Boehmer's new book: Postcolonial Poetics.

Postcolonial Poetics asks primarily whether postcolonial texts solicited a particular kind of reading, and what its main characteristics were. Boehmer examines how the structures of postcolonial writing in English (focusing on southern and West Africa, black and Asian Britain, and India) ‘shape our reading’.

Emphasis moves from text and author, to recipient: Boehmer believes that literature can “keep re-imagining and refreshing how we understand ourselves in relation to the world and to some of the most pressing questions of our time, including cultural reconciliation, survival after terror, and migration”, and shows “that literary writing itself lays down structures and protocols to shape and guide our reading”.

In Postcolonial Poetics, Boehmer’s careful examination of ‘reading’ practices permits a deeper understanding not only of the formal aestheticism of postcolonial writing, but also of our role as readers in decoding and experiencing a text. It constitutes an invigorating relocation of attention in postcolonial studies.

See the below poster for more information.