Abstract
Drawing on postcolonial theory and adopting the perspective of critical race theory, this article argues that Lillian Horace's posthumously published novel Angie Brown (1949) depicts a transformative, dialectical anti-colonial discourse. This stems from the fact that Horace's people in this novel undergo an internal colonial experience. In addition, the novel strikingly demonstrates and resembles various aspects of anti-colonialism. To challenge internal colonialization, the novel presents two aspects of anti-colonial agency: negation and affirmation. Negation is used to destabilize the colonial racist subjectivity, and affirmation is employed to construct an alternative postcolonial subjectivity. In all of its breadth, Horace's transformative discourse is rendered through three phases: economic empowerment and independence, educational fulfilment and progress, and political participation and representation. My contention is that Horace's challenge to racism is part of a larger umbrella of challenging colonialism and imperialism. Moreover, I am driving at dialogic intersectionality of African American liberating thought and anti-colonial discourse, as demonstrated by Horace's novel. As I am concerned throughout with analysing the institutionalized and systematized racist ideology implemented by white racist people to subjugate black Americans, I also scrutinize Horace's anti-colonial and anti-slavery discourse.