Cultural Imperialism and Binary Opposition: Reference to the Selected Novels Toni Morison and Khaled Hosseini

Cultural Imperialism and Binary Opposition:Reference to the Selected Novels Toni Morison and Khaled Hosseini

This essay investigates the selected novels of Toni Morrison and Khaled Hosseini through innovative way of comparative cultural study. It scrutinizes how these authors explore different aspects of cultural imperialism in their selected works. Hosseini’s The Kite Runner (2003) deals with the challenges Afghanistan tackles with such as racial discrimination, colonialism, gender subjugation and so on. In The Bluest Eye (1970), Toni Morrison describes the oppression of black community and compares the life of white people with the black ones. The researchers will make use of Edward Said s postcolonial theories developed in Orientalism and Culture and Imperialism. The findings show that the relationship between the White and the Black in The Bluest Eye as well as the East and the West in The Kite Runner is in accordance with Said’s postcolonial theories. In The Kite Runner, Hosseini depicts the two different races epitomized in Pashtun as the ‘Self’ and in Hazara as the ‘Other’ in Afghan society. In The Bluest Eye, Morrison compares the life of black people with the white ones. So, the black people who suffer from discrimination are as the ‘Other’ and white people who dominate over other races are the Self.