A Postcolonial Reading of Modes of Resistance in Joy Harjo’s and Fadwa Tuqan’s Selected Poems

Abstract

Palestinian and Native American writers share common grounds with regard to the themes, styles and techniques of literary writing, especially writing about resistance to the colonial power. Past studies approached their writings and attempts to regain their freedom and homeland via resistance, yet research comparing modes of resistance in the Native American and Palestinian poetry is scarce. Thus, this article examines modes of resistance in selected poems by Joy Harjo and Fadwa Tuqan as representative poets of Native American and Palestinian writings, which differ in terms of social norms, religion, nature, and even the colonization of their lands. The article follows the assumptions of Edward Said’s Orientalism (1978) and Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o’s Decolonising the Mind (1986) in analyzing the selected poems. The article concludes that Harjo and Tuqan succeeded in producing an anticolonial discourse through their poetic modes of resistance, which are mightier than the colonial discourse, due to raising a universal awareness of the atrocities committed by the colonizers.