African and Chinese Counter-Colonial Fictional Narratives: A Comparative Study of the Retrieval of Indigenous Cultural Identities

The oppressive British and chauvinistic Japanese colonialism imposed a hegemonic culture in Africa and China. Things Fall Apart by Achebe and Red Sorghum by Mo Yan demonstrate British and Japanese colonial misshaping of African and Chinese cultures respectively. In response, the indigenous writers sustain their identity and culture crumbling under colonial corrosion. Things Fall Apart deals with the bitterness of colonialism in Africa, while Red Sorghum deals with Chinese colonial experiences. This article addresses the question how these authors, despite their different spatial and temporal contexts, encounter the hegemonic administrative structures and discourse. The principles of intertextuality are exploited to unveil the colonial governance structure and the literary reassertion of the colonized. Postcolonial theory helps unearth the colonial strategies and retrieval of the colonized identity. Said’s ‘filiative’ and ‘affiliative’ principles help evaluate how these ‘liminal intellectual(s)’ encounter the oppressive ideology