The Post-Colonial Studies Reader

Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths and Helen Tiffin (eds), The Post-Colonial Studies Reader (London: Routledge, 1995)

Collection of many important pieces of postcolonial scholarship, organised thematically. Some highlights: 

• Edward W. Said’s ‘Orientalism’ is a classic on how the West appropriates the East as a colonial tactic;
• Ngugi wa Thiong’o’s ‘The Language of African Literature’ argues that postcolonial writers must write in their own language to resist against Empire;
• Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak’s ‘Can the Subaltern Speak?’ discusses the manifestations of Eurocentrism across history.