Maria Moa: Identity, Alienation, and Hybridity in Alan Duff's Once Were Warriors

17.9.13

Maria Moa: Identity, Alienation, and Hybridity in Alan Duff's Once Were Warriors

Conventional ideas of home and belonging often depend upon clearly defined and static notions of being in place, firmly rooted in a community or a particular geographical location (cf. McLeod 248). However, the dominant narratives of 'belonging' and identity cannot accommodate those who live in-between cultures (cf. McLeod 250). By its very nature, colonization both physically displaces the colonized and psychologically distances them from their traditional culture (cf. Greer xxix). One of the techniques of cultural invasion practised by the colonizer was to suppress the language of the indigenous people whose lands they were expropriating (Walker 193). In other words, language was used as a part of colonial power. Native languages, frequently oral rather than written languages, have been marginalized or dismissed in educational and other institutions along with the cultural values and traditions to which they testify (McLeod 146). The colonized were made to look negatively upon their people, their culture and themselves (cf. 22). Sometimes when the trauma of unbelonging and loss of identity is too deep and when the solutions are too difficult to find, literature has the power to indicate often suppressed and neglected issues in the particular society. Novels may signal the distress in which the characters find themselves and address the problems associated with post-colonial identities (cf. Bičakčić 3).