Synopses & Reviews
Cultural Writing. This collection of essays charts the author's intellectual journey as an academic teaching postcolonial literature in a Canadian university. Mukherjee challenges and shows the inadequacy of the postcolonial, feminist, and postmodern theories that emerge from the metropolitan centres of the West. Using detailed, nuanced, and informed readings of a variety of authors from India, Africa, and Canada she demonstrates how in their universalizing such theories fail to take account of the specific histories, cultures, and struggles within the so-called third-world countries as well as the non-European immigrant and Native communities of North America. Arun Mukherjee is a Professor of English at York Universtiy in Toronto.
Synopsis
This work charts the author's intellectual journey during the last ten years as an academic teaching Postcolonial literature in a Canadian university. The essays critique the dominant models of Postcolonial theory that emerge from metropolitan centres and ignore the specifics of time and place. Arun Mukherjee tests these theories by applying them to her classroom experience of teaching authors such as Mulk Raj Anand, Dionne Brand, Anita Desai, Claire Harris, Bessie Head, Sky Lee, and many others.