Examining in detail the dramas of Baraka, Soyinka, Walcott and Shange, this study describes how these black writers are preoccupied with the invention of a postimperial cultural identity. It charts the foundations of an important aesthetic form, the drama of the African diaspora.

"An excellent job and...[a] must for students of African Literature."--V.Y. Mudimbe, Duke University. "[This book] is destined to elevate comparative research on African Diaspora drama out of the sub-basement of scholarship. Olaniyan literally performs this transformation by his choice of authors, carefull attention to texts, and criticism informed broadly by a rich dialogue among contemporary cultural and literary theorists.... The argument is presented forcfully, at times eloquently, with a turn of phrase likely to be quoted in the future by other scholars."--Ve Ve Clark, University of California, Berkeley. "A long overdue and very successful comparaitve approach to several of the most important contemporary Black playwrights. Scars of Conquest/Masks of Resistance offers a fascinating, ambitious, and challenging reading of modern pan-African drama as a specific conceptual formation and cultural practice. Drawing on a variety of contemporary critical languages, but equally conversant in the contestatory idioms of Negritude writers, Fanon, and their inheritors, Olaniyan illuminates not only the convergence of competing discourses and historical pressures that helped shape a distinctive pan-African theater, but forces reconsideration of the drama's "ambiguous" stagings of anticolonial and "post-Afrocentric" aspirations. Olaniyan's attention to subtle inflections of language and genre produce stimulating and persuasive readings of individual plays, and form the core of his vision of Black drama as an endless "reinvention" of postcolonial identities."--Kimberly W. Benston, Haverford College. "The publication of this book marks the emergence of a major new intellect in the field of post-colonial studies."--Abiola Irele, The Ohio State University, and Editor, Research in African Literatures. "An excellent job and...[a] must for students of African Literature."--V.Y. Mudimbe, Duke University. "[This book] is destined to elevate comparative research on African Diaspora drama out of the sub-basement of scholarship. Olaniyan literally performs this transformation by his choice of authors, carefull attention to texts, and criticism informed broadly by a rich dialogue among contemporary cultural and literary theorists.... The argument is presented forcfully, at times eloquently, with a turn of phrase likely to be quoted in the future by other scholars."--Ve Ve Clark, University of California, Berkeley. "A long overdue and very successful comparaitve approach to several of the most important contemporary Black playwrights. Scars of Conquest/Masks of Resistance offers a fascinating, ambitious, and challenging reading of modern pan-African drama as a specific conceptual formation and cultural practice. Drawing on a variety of contemporary critical languages, but equally conversant in the contestatory idioms of Negritude writers, Fanon, and their inheritors, Olaniyan illuminates not only the convergence of competing discourses and historical pressures that helped shape a distinctive pan-African theater, but forces reconsideration of the drama's "ambiguous" stagings of anticolonial and "post-Afrocentric" aspirations. Olaniyan's attention to subtle inflections of language and genre produce stimulating and persuasive readings of individual plays, and form the core of his vision of Black drama as an endless "reinvention" of postcolonial identities."--Kimberly W. Benston, Haverford College. "The publication of this book marks the emergence of a major new intellect in the field of post-colonial studies."--Abiola Irele, The Ohio State University, and Editor, Research in African Literatures.