<\/p>\n
My Africana courses this semester have forced me to grapple with the term \u201cpostcolonial.\u201d I have learned that this word is fraught because it describes a time period or phenomena which is defined or continues to be influenced by the traumas of colonialism.The Black World Editor\u2019s Note summarizes this point well: \u201cblack people on both sides of the continent have very similar problems and a common source: that of colonialism and enslavement\u201d (SOS<\/em> 207). Even after countries have received independence, they still hold the burden of dealing with the effects of colonialism and, in many cases, watch a new breed, namely, neocolonialism, evolve. <\/span><\/p>\n Artists and writers have dealt with contemporary issues affected by colonialism in their work.\u00a0In \u201cTo Make a Poet Black\u201d Michelle Joan Wilkinson states, \u201cthe 1960s generation of Black Arts poets imagined themselves as black magicians making black poems in and for a black world\u201d and\u00a0<\/span>\u201cthe new slogans included \u201cart for people\u2019s sake,\u201d \u201cart for survival,\u201d and even \u201cart for the revolution.\u201d However, this type of activism through art does not only apply\u00a0<\/span>to the black community. Instead of allowing the postcolonial to be a divisive agent that separates people of different ethnic and racial backgrounds from each other, writers like Ntozake Shange (African American) and Victor Hernandez Cruz (Puerto Rican) display \u201cdiasporic consciousness and cross-cultural poetics” in their work, terms Ron Hernadez used to describe publications like Umbra magazine (Latin Soul 334).<\/span><\/p>\n Shange demonstrates her solidarity with those of the diaspora in Bocas: A Daughter\u2019s Geography<\/a> as a result of a shared colonial past:<\/span><\/p>\n there is no edge<\/span><\/p>\n no end to the new world<\/span><\/p>\n cuz i have a daughter\/ trinidad<\/span><\/p>\n i have a son\/ san juan<\/span><\/p>\n our twins<\/span><\/p>\n capetown & palestine\/ cannot speak the same<\/span><\/p>\n