This study offers a postcolonial and cultural studies reading of identity formation in Fences by August Wilson. Situating the play within the sociohistorical context of mid-twentieth-century African American life, the study examines how race, gender, labor, memory, and generational transition shape the construction of identity under systemic oppression. Drawing upon postcolonial theory—particularly concepts of internal colonization, cultural hybridity, subaltern subjectivity, and trauma—as well as cultural studies frameworks of representation, performance, and spatial politics, this research analyzes the Maxson family as a microcosm of broader African American experience.

The study argues that identity in Fences is not an essential or fixed category but a historically conditioned and socially negotiated process. Troy Maxson embodies a generation shaped by segregation and racial exclusion, whose wounded masculinity reflects both structural injustice and internalized limitation. Rose Maxson emerges as the ethical and emotional center of the play, negotiating race and gender expectations while sustaining communal continuity. The generational tensions between Troy, Cory, and Lyons illustrate the transmission of cultural trauma alongside shifting possibilities in the post–World War II era.

Symbolically, the fence, baseball, and domestic space function as cultural signifiers through which belonging, exclusion, protection, aspiration, and division are articulated. These material and metaphorical structures reveal how identity is constructed within—and against—historical boundaries imposed by racism and economic marginalization.

By integrating postcolonial theory with African American literary analysis, this dissertation contributes to expanding postcolonial discourse beyond traditional imperial geographies to include racialized minorities within the United States. Ultimately, the study demonstrates that Fences dramatizes African American identity as dynamic, contested, and continuously renegotiated through memory, resistance, and community formation.