Race and Antiracism in Black British and British Asian Literature

Race and Antiracism in Black British and British Asian Literature
Author: Dave Gunning
Publisher: Liverpool University Press
Total Pages: 209
Release: 2012-01-01
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 184631853X

Race and Antiracism in Black British and British Asian Literature offers the first comprehensive exploration of the cultural impact of the politics of race and antiracism in recent novels by black British and British Asian writers. It examines works by Zadie Smith, Caryl Phillips, Nadeem Aslam, Ferdinand Dennis, and others, arguing that an understanding of how race and ethnicity function in contemporary Britain can only be gained through attention to antiracism and the ways it conditions racial categories, identities, and models of behavior. Looking at topics such as the role of Africa, the reception of Islam, and the meaning of multiculturalism, Dave Gunning offers a detailed engagement with the nuances of antiracism and their effects on British literature and culture.

Political Blackness in Multiracial Britain

Political Blackness in Multiracial Britain
Author: Mohan Ambikaipaker
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
Total Pages: 269
Release: 2018-06-29
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0812295161

One evening in 1980, a group of white friends, drinking at the Duke of Edinburgh pub on East Ham High Street, made a monstrous five-pound wager. The first person to kill a "Paki" would win the bet. Ali Akhtar Baig, a young Pakistani student who lived in the east London borough of Newham, was their chosen victim. Baig's murder was but one incident in a wave of antiblack racial attacks that were commonplace during the crisis of race relations in Britain in the 1970s and 1980s. Ali Akhtar Baig's death also catalyzed the formation of a grassroots antiracist organization, Newham Monitoring Project (NMP) that worked to transform the racist victimization of African, African Caribbean and South Asian communities into campaigns for racial justice and social change. In addition to providing a 24-hour hotline and casework services, NMP activists worked to mitigate the scourge of racial injustice that included daily racial harassment, hate crimes and antiblack police violence. Since the advent of the War on Terror, NMP widened its approach to support victims of the state's counterterror policies, which have contributed to an unfettered surge in Islamophobia. These realities, as well as the many layers of gendered racism in contemporary Britain come to life through intimate ethnographic storytelling. The reader gets to know a broad range of east Londoners and antiracist activists whose intersecting experiences present a multifaceted portrait of British racism. Mohan Ambikaipaker examines the life experiences of these individuals through a strong theoretical lens that combines critical race theory and postcolonial studies. Political Blackness in Multiracial Britain shows how the deep processes of everyday political whiteness shape the state's failure to provide effective remedies for ethnic, racial, and religious minorities who continue to face violence and institutional racism.

Race and Antiracism in Black British and British Asian Literature

Race and Antiracism in Black British and British Asian Literature
Author: Dave Gunning
Publisher: Liverpool University Press
Total Pages: 208
Release: 2010-01-01
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1846314828

Drawing on a selection of works from such prominent authors as Monica Ali, Hanif Kureishi, and Zadie Smith, Race and Antiracism in Black British and British Asian Writing offers the first extended exploration of the cultural impact of race and antiracism in Britain through the lens of black British and British Asian literature. With antiracism—the politics of opposing discrimination—increasingly determining racial categorizations and identities, this study traces its influence over the last two decades on individual identities and the wider political debate, including the changing attitudes toward Muslim culture in Britain and the role of Africa as a symbolic focus for black political culture. This volume will be of interest to anyone seeking a better understanding of the nuances of antiracism in Britain.

The Cambridge Companion to British Black and Asian Literature (1945–2010)

The Cambridge Companion to British Black and Asian Literature (1945–2010)
Author: Deirdre Osborne
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 323
Release: 2016-10-14
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1316849104

This Companion offers a comprehensive account of the influence of contemporary British Black and Asian writing in British culture. While there are a number of anthologies covering Black and Asian literature, there is no volume that comparatively addresses fiction, poetry, plays and performance, and provides critical accounts of the qualities and impact within one book. It charts the distinctive Black and Asian voices within the body of British writing and examines the creative and cultural impact that African, Caribbean and South Asian writers have had on British literature. It analyzes literary works from a broad range of genres, while also covering performance writing and non-fiction. It offers pertinent historical context throughout, and new critical perspectives on such key themes as multiculturalism and evolving cultural identities in contemporary British literature. This Companion explores race, politics, gender, sexuality, identity, amongst other key literary themes in Black and Asian British literature. It will serve as a key resource for scholars, graduates, teachers and students alike.

Race in Mind

Race in Mind
Author: Paul Spickard
Publisher: University of Notre Dame Pess
Total Pages: 410
Release: 2015-11-19
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0268182000

These essays analyze how race affects people's lives and relationships in all settings, from the United States to Great Britain and from Hawaiʻi to Chinese Central Asia. They contemplate the racial positions in various societies of people called Black and people called White, of Asians and Pacific Islanders, and especially of those people whose racial ancestries and identifications are multiple. Here for the first time are Spickard's trenchant analyses of the creation of race in the South Pacific, of DNA testing for racial ancestry, and of the meaning of multiplicity in the age of Barack Obama.

Writing British Muslims

Writing British Muslims
Author: Rehana Ahmed
Publisher: Manchester University Press
Total Pages: 257
Release: 2024-06-04
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1526183765

The Rushdie affair, September 11 2001 and 7/7 pushed British Muslims into the forefront of increasingly fraught debate about multiculturalism. Stereotyping images have proliferated, reducing a heterogeneous minority group to a series of media soundbites. This book examines contemporary literary representations of Muslims by British writers of South Asian Muslim descent – including Salman Rushdie, Hanif Kureishi, Monica Ali and Nadeem Aslam – to explore the contribution they make to urgent questions about multicultural politics and the place of Muslims within Britain. By focusing on class, and its intersection with faith, ‘race’ and gender in identity- and community-formation, it challenges the dichotomy of secular freedom versus religious oppression that constrains thinking about British Muslims, and offers a more nuanced perspective on multicultural debates and controversies. Writing British Muslims will appeal to academics and postgraduate and final-year undergraduate students in the fields of postcolonial studies, English studies and cultural studies.

Contemporary Migration Literature in German and English

Contemporary Migration Literature in German and English
Author: Sandra Vlasta
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 306
Release: 2015-10-14
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 9004306005

Up until now, ‘migration literature’ has primarily been defined as ‘texts written by migrant authors’, a definition that has been discussed, criticised, and even rejected by critics and authors alike. Very rarely has ‘migration literature’ been understood as ‘literature on the topic of migration’, which is an approach this book adopts by presenting a comparative analysis of contemporary texts on experiences of migration. By focusing on specific themes and motifs in selected texts, this study suggests that migration literature is a sub-genre that exists in both various bodies of literature as well as various languages. This book analyses English and German texts by authors such as Monica Ali, Dimitré Dinev, Anna Kim, Timothy Mo, Preethi Nair, Caryl Phillips, Hamid Sadr, and Vladimir Vertlib, among others.

The Cultural Memory of Africa in African American and Black British Fiction, 1970-2000

The Cultural Memory of Africa in African American and Black British Fiction, 1970-2000
Author: Leila Kamali
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 317
Release: 2016-12-10
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1137581719

This book offers a new approach to reading the cultural memory of Africa in African American fiction from the post-Civil Rights era and in Black British fiction emerging in the wake of Thatcherism. The critical period between the decline of the Civil Rights Movement and the dawn of the twenty-first century saw a deep contrast in the distinctive narrative approaches displayed by diverse African diaspora literatures in negotiating the crisis of representing the past. Through a series of close readings of literary fiction, this work examines how the cultural memory of Africa is employed in diverse and specific negotiations of narrative time, in order to engage and shape contemporary identity and citizenship. By addressing the practice of “remembering” Africa, the book argues for the signal importance of the African diaspora’s literary interventions, and locates new paradigms for cultural identity in contemporary times.

British Multicultural Literature and Superdiversity

British Multicultural Literature and Superdiversity
Author: Ulla Rahbek
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 226
Release: 2019-07-30
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 3030221253

This book explores contemporary British multicultural multi-genre literature. Considering socio-political and philosophical ideas about British multiculturalism, superdiversity and conviviality, Ulla Rahbek studies a broad range of texts by writers from across the majority-minority divide. The text focuses on figurative registers and metaphorical richness in multicultural poetry and investigates the interlocked issue of recognition, representation and identity in memoirs. Rahbek analyses how twenty-first-century British multicultural novels both envision and reimagine an inclusive nation and thematise the detrimental effects of individual exclusion on characters’ pursuits of the good life. She observes the ways that short stories pivot on ambivalent encounters and intercultural dialogue, and she reflects on the public good of multicultural literature.