Postcolonial Literature

This study explores the representation of trauma and identity crisis in Okey Ndibe’s Arrows of Rain and Richard Wright’s Native Son. It examines how both authors employ narrative technique to portray the psychological fragmentation of individuals struggling under repressive sociopolitical structures. In Arrows of Rain, Ndibe situates trauma within the postcolonial African landscape, exposing how state violence, corruption, and moral decay deform both personal and collective consciousness. Conversely, Wright’s Native Son situates trauma in a racially stratified America, where systemic oppression and poverty shape the disintegration of Black identity. Through close textual analysis, the research reveals that both authors transform narrative into a means of resistance— employing silence, symbolism, memory, and stream of consciousness to articulate suffering that language itself often fails to express. The study concludes that literature serves not merely as an artistic mirror of pain but as an act of reclaiming voice and agency within a world structured to silence the oppressed.