Decolonizing the self/community in Zeina Hachem Beck and Sujata Bhatt’s poetry

Abstract

Post-colonial female writers have played a large role in voicing themselves and “writing back”, especially in poetry. Zeina Hashem Beck and Sujata Bhatt are two poets who have dealt with many feminist and post-colonial themes, which may be used to compare and contrast their poems. The aim of this study is to compare both Zeina Hachem Beck and Sujata Bhatt’s poems using the post-colonial lens. Employing post-colonial theories such as Homi Bhabha, Edward Said and Gayatri Spivak, this paper argues that both poets Zeina Hachem Beck and Sujata Bhatt feel dislocated and are writing in search of a lost homeland. They seem to return to their homeland through a “poetic return” and they attempt to decolonize the self and the community. They attempt to retrieve their lost culture, history, language and civilization through writing poetry. Both poets employ the device of the duets as a form of resistance. Though they are aware of double consciousness, they cannot get rid of the “us” and “them” divide.