With post-colonialism comes an age of ambiguity, a battle between appropriation and abrogation with respect to assimilation into the new foreign scene. The chaos in the external landscape paves way for a chaotic internal landscape, which calls for a coping mechanism to deal with it. African writers, like Ben Okri and Langston Hughes used their poetry as a tool to employ self-actualization as a coping mechanism for dealing with the post-colonial identity crisis.

To understand the concept of post-colonial identity crisis, it is pertinent to first understand the historical, political, social, economic background, and the motivation of the writers. 

African writer, Ben Okri's motivation for writing poetry was the fact that he witnessed a lot of political violence during the Civil War in Nigeria. As a result of the war, a famine also broke out and two million civilians died. It was termed as one of the worst forms of genocides, when the matter came in the hands of the United Nations. Hence, Ben Okri back in Nigeria witnessed the conflict between the two states which was driven in the following directions: ethnic, cultural, religious, political and economic. However, later he moved to the Essex University in England, becoming a victim to identity crisis. 

Similarly, Langston Hughes witnessed a similar situation as he had experienced a lifelong of Mullato experiences as his ancestors were of mixed races, leaving a void in him that longed for a coping mechanism to deal with the post-colonial identity crisis. He found a hard time in assimilating into the foreign scene as instead of believing in the American dream, his dream of the future of the Afro-Americans oscillated between the American dream and the African Dream of reclaiming one’s identity. 

Therefore both the writers, Ben Okri and Langston Hughes, through their poetry promote the overarching themes of hope, humanism, and a quest of self-actualization as a solution to the problems arisen from the post-colonial diaspora. 

Self-actualization is a universal concept which is embedded with the ideas of Transcendentalism and the Sufi school of thoughts. This idea had been dealt with and worked upon by writers, universally. From Asian, to American, to African, all thinkers realized that the quest of self-discovery could be taken as a coping mechanism to deal with the ever evolving chaos and the existential dread in the world. 

Poet of the East, Allama Muhammad Iqbal has also employed the mechanism of using Self-actualization as a tool to deal with the chaos during and after the partition of the subcontinent. In one of his verses, he culminates the idea of self-discovery in the anguished and ambiguous people of his time, by making them believe that you are a bird whose limit is even beyond the skies. 

“Tu Shaheen Hai, Parwaz Hai Kaam Tera, 

Tere Samnay Asmaan Aur Bhi Hai”

Verisimilitude is the idea of faithfully representing the reality. Self-actualization is closely linked to verisimilitude in terms of thinking and dreaming. It could be related to Martin Luther King JR’s speech. 

“I still have a dream, a dream deeply rooted in the American dream. 
 One day this nation will rise up and live up to its creed” 

Martin Luther King Jr. in the above mentioned quote is trying to assert that in order to faithfully represent the reality, it is important to dream one’s ‘self’ at a higher stature so that one could think about the ways in order to transform the dreams into reality by working towards achieving those dreams of self-actualization. 

John Milton through his poetry also propagated that self-actualization is all about perspective and attitude. We must dream first with full swing in order to work towards attaining that dream. Dream good and support good. Life is but a dream and it matters what you do in that dream as it'll define who you wake up to be as a person. 

"The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven." 

A French philosopher Rene Descartes describes self-actualization as a coping mechanism by alluding the reason of existence to the ability to think about one’s self.  

“I am able to think, therefore I exist.” 

Keeping in view the historical and socio-political background of both Ben Okri and Langston Hughes, it can be established that they both used poetry as a means of assimilating into the post-colonial scene by culminating a sense of nationalistic spirit, and by propagating the importance of self-actualization in the people of their times. A longing for a utopian discourse, and quest of self-discovery could easily be seen in the poems of both the poets. 

The beauty of African literature is that the first impression that a reader gets by reading a text is equivalent to viewing the tip of the ice berg, which hints towards a much greater depth underneath. For instance, Chinua Achebe’s novel, Things Fall Apart’s title suggests that things are crumbling in the present but it hints at the past that although things are now falling apart, but they were once okay. The poems, ‘As Clouds Pass Above Our Heads’ by Ben Okri, and Langston Hughes ‘I too sing America’, or ‘Themes for English B’ appear to be positive and meditative at the first glance, yet they hint towards the struggle from a dystopian discourse to a utopian discourse, by culminating the quest of self-discovery in the readers. 

Ben Okri’s and Langston Hughes’s poetry revolves around providing solutions to the African problems such as existential crisis, a constant battle between appropriation vs abrogation in the foreign scene, and identity crisis. The hopeful solutions that they propagate through their poetry are the notion of celebration of negritude, humanism, transcendentalism, and self-actualization. 

Ben Okri in his poem, ‘An African Elegy’ calls the African race as ‘The miracles that God made’, and the ‘Precious wonders of the Earth’. He does this to culminate the sense of self-worth and self-realization in the African race who have tasted the ‘bitter fruit of Time’, and endured the ‘sufferings of Poverty’. Still, he views them to be strong individuals who possess the ability to feel ‘blessed even in their pain’. For them, there is ‘always hope’, and the ‘sky is not an enemy’ for them. 

Similarly, in his poem ‘As Clouds Pass Above Our Heads’, he is trying to assert that as ‘As clouds pass above our heads/So time passes through our lives/Where does it go/And when it passes/What do we have to show?’ As rain clouds symbolize gloom or disaster, and such clouds can obscure our vision or dim our optimism. Therefore, clouds could be a symbolic representation of life obstructions, and he indirectly asks a question to the collective unconscious of the humanity in general that since now the life obstructions in the form of post colonialism have passed by, how can we make the best use of time to discover ourselves.

He is employing a natural imagery by using words like ‘clouds’, ‘sun’, ‘tree’, and ‘plants’, to refer to and address the internal landscape of the collective unconscious of the people of his times so that they could ‘seek out a higher way’. He also uses the symbol of ‘Buddha’ in order to refer to a desire for an enlightenment, of seeing or trying to achieve more in life that is for the greater goodness, and could be taken as a coping mechanism to deal with the ever evolving time. 

Langston Hughes through his poetry asserts the similar idea that very much deal with the identity crises induced by the post-colonialism and the sufferings of the past by using self-actualization as a tool to cope up with the self/other binary in the changing times. 

In his poem, ‘I too sing America’, he is making a humanistic appeal to promote the notion of brotherhood in order to assimilate into the foreign, post-colonial scene. Despite being a ‘darker brother’ and viewed as a lowly race by the white ‘brothers’, he is trying to celebrate the negritude, and assert the power of the self and consciousness, by quoting that ‘Tomorrow, I’ll be at the table/When company comes/Nobody’ll dare/Say to me/“Eat in the kitchen,”. He is trying to make a humanistic plea to white readers, and culminating a sense of self-worth in the black ‘brothers’ to realize that they are ‘beautiful’ people. He wants to escape from the physical realm embedded with the class boundaries into a ‘beautiful’ imaginary realm where every ‘self’ is equally beautiful and worthy. In another hopeful and prophetic poem, ‘Theme for English B’, Langston Hughes is trying to accentuate that the ethnicities of the ‘white’ or the ‘black’ doesn’t matter, it is the realization of ‘being’ yourself is what differentiates individuals from one another. The divisions of caste, color and creed make people believe that the whites and blacks are not a ‘part’ of each other, but it is actually not ‘true’. The truth is what comes out of ‘you’, and your inner self’, so its pertinent enough to idealize one’s self to be at a higher stature and realize one’s worth.  

Another acclaimed African female writer, Maya Angelou shares the similar themes of realization of the individual ‘I’ in her poetry, which could be taken as a coping mechanism of the Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) induced by the challenging times of post-colonialism. In one of her poems, ‘Still I rise’, she accentuates a journey of self-actualization, when she says “I am the dream and the hope of the slave, I rise I rise I rise’.

Post-colonialism is amalgamated with post-modernism as it also promotes to focus on one’s inner self which is a kind of a self-assessment or a notion of self-reflexivity, which could be construed as an aspect of postmodernism, as it does not believe in hierarchy or divisions of any sorts, as one’s focus only lies upon the self which helps him to transcend beyond the physical divisions. 

The Punjabi Sufi poet from Pakistan, Mian Muhammad Baksh promotes the idea of self-actualization to transcend from the physical realm where the distinctions and divisions are believed to be blurred into an imaginative realm that knows no boundaries or distinctions of caste, color or creed. Mian Muhammad Bakhsh in one of his verses quotes: 

“Loye Loye Bhar le Kuriye, Je Tu Bhanda Parna,

Shaam Payi Bin Sham Muhammad, Ghar Jandi Ne Darna”

It can be concluded that in literature, there are certain phases of post colonialism. The pre-colonial period that focuses on the relationship between the colonizer and the colonized, the colonial period, which focuses on the power dynamics and the post-colonial period where the question of assimilation and identity crisis begins, which focuses on seeing self-actualization as a coping mechanism to combat the post-colonial identity crisis.