Dismantling the History of Slavery and Colonization in the Poetry of Mohamed Al-Fayturi and Langston Hughes (Critical Essay)

Introduction In "The Politics of Post Coloniality", Aijaz Ahmad celebrates the efforts to designate the contemporary literature of Africa as post-colonial and thus , to make it available for being read according to the protocols that metropolitan criticism has developed for reading what it calls minority literature (Ahmad 1997: 282). Integral to Ahmad's thesis is an attempt to find common grounds between post-colonial and minority literatures which could be pursued in the black poetry tradition in Africa and the United States. While the painful ordeal of slavery and colonization turned the black people of Africa into a nation of exiles and outcasts, the same experience brings about enormous consequences which bind the black people together triggering literary interaction between black writers from different parts of the world.