Postcolonial Speculative Fiction

Blogs by Mary Laffidy

English Major

Senior

Favorite Book: Kabu-Kabu by Nnedi Okorafor

 

Hi everyone! As mentioned above, I'm a senior and I recently completed my capstone paper on ecofeminism in Marion Zimmer Bradley's The Mists of Avalon. Because I was already familiar with the idea of environmentalism in literature, I was eager to read the literature in this course and analyze it from a perspective that closely aligns with my own interests. However, I had not read much African literature prior to this course and the combination of petro/speculative fiction with literature from a wide variety of cultures throughout the African continent led me to thinking about how capitalism continues to colonize other nations to this day. I was assigned the topic of "hybridity" to focus on throughout the readings, and I was able to see many accounts of cultures and people that were hybrid products of colonizers and their native customs. One of my blog posts, "The Destruction of Indigenous Culture and Land by Oil Colonizers" focuses on Native American experiences with oil colonization instead of African; while they come from different geographical regions, I felt that looking at how this issue affects the natives of the very country that is doing the colonizing proves how little capitalist colonizers care for the preservation of "their own" land and instead are only focused on the profits. I hope my blogs (and my classmates') encourage thoughtful ideas and conversation–enjoy!

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