Postcolonial literature addresses the problems and promises of decolonization, the process of non-western countries in Asia, the Pacific, Africa, the Middle East, Latin America, and the Caribbean becoming independent from western control. It is the literature of people trying to reclaim their freedom and their new identities after struggling for independence.

Some of the themes of postcolonial literature include re-asserting the identity of the indigenous culture, revisiting and revising colonial history, and providing fuller descriptions of the people created by colonialism and the way in which their lives reflect both cultures. Many postcolonial authors also use hybrid dialects to reflect the intertwining of western and non-western languages.

Jean Rhys's 1966 novel Wide Saragasso Sea is an example of postcolonial literature. Rhys, who was born in Dominica, imagines the earlier marriage of Mr. Rochester of Jane Eyre. The main character, Antoinette Cosway, is torn between her identity as a white creole in Jamaica and her married life in England. The author writes about the confusion of having a mixed identity. Antoinette is declared mad, a comment on the tendency of western cultures to identify what they don't understand as mental illness and the tendency of colonialism to produced fissured and conflicting identities. Things Fall Apart by Nigerian author Chinua Achebe is another example of a postcolonial work in which the main character, Okonkwo, witnesses the dissolution of the traditional Igbo culture with the introduction of Christian missionaries. In both novels, the protagonists are raised in the non-western cultures and are exposed to the confusion of dealing with a western culture that does not recognize their values or identities.

The term postcolonial simply refers to a period immediately after a nation has attained independence from colonial powers. Although that would include such countries as Australia, New Zealand, and the United States, which were originally British colonies, and even England after the Norman conquest, from a certain point of view, the term is most often restricted to the literatures of Asian, African, and South American nations that have attained independence from European colonial powers in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The works normally studied under the rubric of postcolonial literature often are read through the lens of postcolonial literary theory, a framework that emphasizes race, class, and cultural oppression.

Common set of themes addressed are:

• Assimilation: The colonized attempting to "pass" or assimilate to the colonial culture.
• Appropriation: The colonizers taking on features of the colonized.
• Hybridity: The blending of cultures occurring at the intersection of colonizer and colonized.
• Diaspora: Colonial citizens who have emigrated from their own native countries or been displaced.
• Alterity: The definition of the colonized as "other" than the dominant colonizing culture, a phenomenon also addressed under the theme of "orientalism" or exoticizing.
• Subaltern: The subordination of the native population in a way that deprives them of both power and voice.

As with any literary movement that is so focused on the relationship between individuals and their social order in the development of the identity of both, there are many themes in Postcolonial literature.  I think that one particular theme resides in the construction of individual identity.  Much of the literature that comes out of Postcolonialism is very concerned with being able to assess the full effect of the role that social orders play in how individuals perceive themselves and their world.  Of particular importance to the work of Postcolonial literature is how indigenous and external societies clash with one another, oftentimes with the result left upon the psyche of the individual.  Within this arena, the effect of race and ethnicity becomes examined, as consciousness becomes products of a Colonial and Postcolonial setting.  Finally, I think that another theme is how individuals have to endure a level of struggle in trying to articulate their own sense of understanding of the shift that happens during the Colonial period as well as the realities that exist after it.

What are some themes of post-colonial literature written by women?

For female writers as well as for males, primary themes of postcolonial literature are concerned with identity in newly independent nations, generally connected with issues of race, ethnicity, class, and religion as well as politics. The protagonists are usually the formerly colonized peoples who reside in that location or have moved to the imperial metropole. In addition, female writers are likely to be concerned with questions of gender and sexuality, explicitly rejecting masculinist hegemony and exploring same-sex relationships. They often explore the changes in female opportunities and expectations that occur after colonial rule ends. In addition, they often interrogate the Western assumptions of paternalist benevolence that condemned traditional practices and urged women to see the imposed beliefs and customs as liberating them from traditional oppression. Generational differences between women, such as mothers and daughters, are often featured as well, especially those who came of age before and after colonial rule ended.

What are some themes of post-colonial literature written by women?

Given how many different parts of the world were colonized and then gained independence, many world literatures can be described as postcolonial. Modern Indian, African, Canadian, and Latin American literatures are often studied as postcolonial as are many subaltern literatures. Feminist analysis usually looks at postcolonial literatures to see ways in which colonialism was a patriarchal structure doubly oppressing women both as members of ethnic or national groups (e.g. lower-caste women in India, African women slaves) and as a marginalized gender. Thematically, critics look at how these doubly oppressed women respond by being complicit with their oppressors or by subverting oppression.