Reading intersections of race, class and gender in fiction by black British women writers.
Book chapter
Scafe, S. (2022). Reading intersections of race, class and gender in fiction by black British women writers. in: The Race and Gender Reader Routledge. pp. 1-19
Authors | Scafe, S. |
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Abstract | This chapter identifies two cultural periods or ‘moments’ in black British cultural production and, using a selection of fiction by women writers, argues that each of these texts intervenes in discourses of race, gender and class to interrogate easy assumptions about black British identities in the post-war and contemporary periods. Using a concept of ‘ethical criticism’, derived from the work of Michael Mack (2012) and Stuart Hall (2008/2018), I argue that the fiction analysed in this chapter provides a ‘certain kind of learning’ about how identities emerge in representation and how these representations are contested (Hall 2008). I begin with a discussion of Buchi Emecheta’s Second-Class Citizen and Joan Riley’s Waiting in the Twilight and conclude with an analysis of the novels of Bernardine Evaristo. In my reading of this work, I demonstrate the ways in which this fiction exposes both the constructed nature of race and gender and the extent to which gender identities and roles are raced. |
Keywords | Buchi Emecheta Second-Class Citizen, Joan Riley Waiting in the Twilight, Bernardine Evaristo Lara, Mr Loverman, race, gender identities, sexuality. |
Page range | 1-19 |
Year | 2022 |
Book title | The Race and Gender Reader |
Publisher | Routledge |
File | License File Access Level Open |
ISBN | 978-3-030-83947-5 |
Publication dates | |
08 Mar 2022 | |
Publication process dates | |
Accepted | 01 Dec 2019 |
Deposited | 06 Mar 2020 |
Digital Object Identifier (DOI) | https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-83947-5_20 |
https://openresearch.lsbu.ac.uk/item/89434
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