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I have always been fascinated by the study of postcolonialism and all the terms that follow this notion. It is important, when discussing the subject of postcolonialism, to credit the seminal works of Frantz Fanon, Edward Said, Homi Bhabha and W.E.B Du Bois that have brought this notion to light through a mosaic of terms including those of ‘hybridity’, ‘double consciousness’, ‘orientalism’, ‘self determination’, ‘the Other’, and many more. Thanks to these chef d’œuvres postcolonial literature has flourished and is now considered a literary movement. 

 

There is a very strong analysis of the postcolonial value of the play Come Good Rain by George Seremba in Marc Maufort’s Transgressive Itineraries: Postcolonial Hybridizations of Dramatic Realism. In the chapter called “African Canadian Diasporic Identities”, Maufort outlines the abundance of African American drama, and contrasts it to Canada, where such African drama has “remained almost invisible” (Maufort, 94). He implies that the postcolonial themes in Come Good Rain such as the “healing process of the traumas caused by diaspora” can largely be extended to the Canadian context. Not only does this apply to the numerous refugees and immigrants who call Canada home, it also applies to the very people Canadian land belongs to but was taken away from, the Indigenous Canadian people. 

 

Because Come Good Rain is structured like an autobiographical solo piece, it allows the protagonist to have full agency in accepting the horrifically violent memories that he has suffered by “re-enacting” them (Maufort, 94). The protagonist, who discovers his own agency as he re-lives his traumas on the stage, is a living metaphor representation of the African-Canadian ‘Other’. This account of the African-Canadian ‘Other’ is one of the very few that can be found in Canadian drama. Therefore, it is absolutely vital towards understanding the healing process of the African Canadian ‘Other’ as it represents, in one play, millions of African-Canadians who have lived through their own traumas. This is definitely something that can be pinpointed towards student activism at the University of Toronto against violence targeted to the Black, Indigenous and People of Colour communities. The term ‘Other’ encompasses a tremendous amount of lived violences, terrors, and hate crimes that the BIPOC communities are only just beginning to receive attention for, in Toronto specifically. An example of this are the peaceful protests of the summer 2020 for the Black Lives Matter movement. These protests not only brought huge attention to the violence against the Black community in Toronto, but also the horrific societal, racial, economic and political inequalities of the Indigenous communities in Canada. 

 

Another fundamentally significant motif found in Come Good Rain is the term ‘hybridity’. Not only is this term fully incorporated into the protagonist’s identity – as he is forced to drop all of his original language, mannerisms, culture, to make space for the coloniser’s culture: English – this term is also nuanced in the structure and design of the play itself. For example, Seremba creates a hybrid mix of “Western and African artistic techniques” (Maufort, 94) in order to redefine the limitations of “conventional stage realism” (Maufort, 94). Examples of the Western techniques show themselves in: the two-act structure of the play, the stage directions, the Chorus-like verses of poem, as well as the “dramatic and novelist devices” (Maufort, 94) found in the impressive recounting of the protagonist’s survival. In contrast, Seremba also employs a significant amount of devices that would relate more to African origins, such as the incorporation of drums and other instruments, chants and singing, Ugandan dialect, and the “poetic use of African tales and legends” (Maufort, 94). This hybridity of the playwright’s artistic techniques gives Seremba’s double-consciousness away – in Maufort’s words, “Seremba’s in-betweenness of identity as an African exiled to Canada” (94).