SOURCE: Lazarus, Neil. “Great Expectations and the Mourning After: Decolonization and African Intellectuals.” In Resistance in Postcolonial African Fiction, pp. 1-26. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1990.

In the following essay, Lazarus outlines the political, social, and cultural circumstances surrounding the development of postcolonial African literature, focusing on the struggle by African writers to establish a new mode of writing based on the changed postcolonial and post-independence conditions in their various nations.

On March 6, 1957, Ghana gained its independence from Britain, becoming the first sub-Saharan African colony to do so. Over 100,000 people crowded into the Polo Ground in Accra, the capital city, to watch the proceedings. The ceremony took place at midnight. There was tremendous excitement in the air as the Union Jack was lowered and the new Ghanaian flag—red, green, and gold—hoisted in its place. In the hushed silence that followed the flag-raising, Kwame Nkrumah, the...