Through close readings of works by writers like C. L. R. James, Salman Rushdie, Ama Ata Aidoo, Michelle Cliff, and Hanif Kureishi, Using the Master’s Tools examines instances of
textual resistance elaborated within imperial/metropolitan epistemologies and ideologies. In her analysis, Anuradha Needham focuses especially on each writer’s historical location, personal
and political affiliations, presumed audiences, and position on gender as integral contextual determinants of the strategies of textual resistance each deploys. Drawing on the extensive
scholarship on “subaltern” and anti-colonial resistances in a number of disciplines, this book demonstrates the mutual interactions of (general) theory with (specific) practice such that
each is enriched, extended, and refurbished.
