Postcolonial black identity in the selected poems of Amiri Baraka and Maya Angelou

Abstract EN

Though the Black American poet Amiri Baraka has been a figure of much academic work, as a prominent member of the African American literary canon, he has seldom been considered in conjunction with Frantz Fanon, postcolonial theorist.

However, reading Baraka through Fanon demonstrates the significance that racial trauma and mimicry play in Baraka’s literary formation of Black identity.

To a lesser extent, the poet Maya Angelou also shows an interest in racial mimicry and in hybridity, using subversion to bolster her characters.

Comparison with Angelou’s work situates trauma as a central feature of Baraka’s poetry, particularly in his works “Ka’Ba” and “As Agony.

As Now.” When subversion is considered as an alternative strategy, the comparison reveals the extent to which trauma is essential to Fanon’s and Baraka’s works.

Though Baraka and Fanon regard mimicry as a traumatic and detrimental process, Angelou and Bhabha observe mimicry empowering individuals, with Bhabha arguing that mimicry provides a means of undermining the dominant power structure, and Angelou using it in such a fashion through her characters.

This article seeks to reconsider the role of trauma in Baraka’s work, as well as subversion in the work of Angelou, and to argue for the appropriateness of postcolonial theory in providing new ways to read Black American poetry.