This book examines the diverse responses of colonized people to metropolitan ideas and to indigenous traditions. Going beyond the standard isolation of mimeticism and hybridity -- and criticizing Homi Bhabha's influential treatment of the former -- Hogan offers a lucid, usable theoretical structure for analysis of the postcolonial phenomena, with ramifications extending beyond postcolonial literature. Developing this structure in relation to major texts by Derek Walcott, Jean Rhys, Chinua Achebe, Earl Lovelace, Buchi Emecheta, Rabindranath Tagore, and Attia Hosain, Hogan also provides crucial cultural background for understanding these and other works from the same traditions.