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Between Generations: the Construction of Mother-Daughter Relationships in the Work of Black Women Playwrights in Britain

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Between Generations: the Construction of Mother-Daughter Relationships in the Work of Black Women Playwrights in Britain THE UNIVERSITY OF HULL Between Generations: The Construction of Mother-Daughter Relationships in the Work of Black Women Playwrights in Britain Being a Thesis submitted for the Degree of PhD in the University of Hull by Honnorine Ranivoharisoa, (MA) August 2005 't"«ýýý. ý. » ýt ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS No thesis could be researched and written without a supporting cast. Acknowledgements are due to the ORS (Overseas Research Scheme) for their sponsorship, and to my husband Philip, his family and mine for their faith in me. Of course, I am grateful for the helpful assistance of many, not least staff at the Brynmor Jones Library (Hull), Christ's College Library and the University Library (Cambridge), and the Manuscript Room of the British Library (London). Special thanks for their personal interest in my work go to Or Judith Stephenson, Chaplainof Hull University, and Professor Gabriele Griffin, who supervised me at the same institution, and who - by turns - has offered advice, insight and warm support, and encouraged me to persevere to the end. CONTENTS Acknowledgements Introduction 1 Chapter 1- Mothers and Displacement 56 Chapter2- Daughters:Alienation from Maternal Culture and Britain 88 Chapter 3- The Body 115 Chapter4- Matricide 142 Chapter 5- Becoming Woman 159 Chapter 6- Black Women's Friendship: Redefining Community 181 Chapter 7- Negotiating the Past 209 Chapter 8- Homecoming 228 Conclusion 245 Bibliography 266 1 INTRODUCTION Since the end of the SecondWorld War, race relations and immigration have become major subjects of debatein the political, social and cultural life of Britain'. The presence of immigrants from Britain's former colonies and the subsequentarrival of economic migrants and asylum seekers have triggered discussion of many issues, not least those surrounding difference, assimilation, diversity and identity (Gilroy 1993). It is these particular issues (and the tensions that they engender), often articulated through the depiction of mother-daughterrelationships, which are dramatized in the work of contemporary Black British female playwrights such as Winsome Pinnock, Trish Cooke, Paulette Randall, Maya Chowdry, J. B. Rose, Tanika Gupta, RukhsanaAhmad, Jackie Kay, Grace Dayley, JacquelineRudet, Maria Oshodi and Zindika2. My thesis is thus about the construction of mother-daughterrelationships as presented in the work of these playwrights. It places particular emphasis on how mothers and daughters negotiate their relationships, positions and identities in the context of their respective experiences as first- and second-generation female migrants in Britain. 1 See, for example Hiro Dilip 1991; Solomos, John in Braham et al. 1992; Visram, Rozina 2002. 2 My use of the term "Black" is defined below. 2 Considering "Black" Before discussing my use of the term "Black", it is important for the reader to understandthe breadth of tradition, experience and background representedby the twelve playwrights whose work is considered in this thesis. Demographic details regarding the playwrights have not been readily available. Although Susan Croft's She Also Wrote Plays, for example, has been helpful in providing a number of playwrights' biographical elements, information on a few others has been difficult to ascertain. This is partly because their work is not archived with such information in the Theatre Museum, London, or the British Library Manuscript Room, but also becausethe lack of critical reception of their work means that few additional sources of information are available. I have therefore relied on a variety of sources for this information, which include "blurbs" in the introduction to playscripts, theatre companies' websites, and the playwrights' works in areas other than playwriting. Based on this range of sources,I will proceed to discussthe playwrights' ethnic backgrounds. Of the twelve women playwrights on whose work I focus, nine are of African or Caribbeanextraction, with two of them (Kay, Oshodi) having a mixed-race, Black and white background. Kay, for instance, identifies herself as "Black" and a number of her writings are characterizedby the 3 consciousnessof being Black in Britain3. The three remaining playwrights (Ahmad, Chowdhry and Gupta) have Pakistani, Punjabi and Bengali backgrounds respectively. Despite her Asian descent, Gupta's first play was performed by Talawa, a Black theatre company and as recently as 1998 Chowdry, for example, defined herself as "a lesbian and a Black woman" in Acts of Passion: Sexuality, Gender and Performance (9), a book she jointly wrote with Nina Rapi. In her notes to the usage of "Black" in that work, Chowdry specifically mentions that it "denotes a political identity" and is used "in a way which highlights my experience" (19). Thus, in this thesis, I use the word "Black" to refer to people of African and Asian descentin the British context. That the term "Black" is used to indicate both Black and Asian women in this context is not unproblematic4. Indeed, it might suggest the kind of reductive 3 Kay's experienceof being adopted by and growing up within a white family informed her first collection of poetry, The Adoption Papers (1991). She also wrote poems such as "So You Think I am a Mule?"(1984) and "In My Country" (1993) in which she explores white people's inability to imagine that Blackness and Scottishnesscan be combined. 4 The use of the term "Black" as a homogenizing label has been the subject of considerabledebate. As an Asian, Tariq Modood, for example, argues that the term "Black" is rather limited/ing in that it is biased towards those of African descent. Since it owes its origins to the Black Power movement it effectively 4 homogenisationwhich non-white immigrants have suffered in this country for at least the last four decades.Anne Marie Smith makes the point in arguing that "the new laws of the 1960s invented the black immigrant becausethey legally constituted the Asian, African and Afro-Caribbean peoples from the former colonies as outsiders" (23). And yet the migratory history of Black and Asian people in Britain and the diverse socio-economic and political features attached to their respective migrations point to the fact that they do not represent a homogeneous group of people. For example, although in many instancesmid-twentieth- century migration into Britain from Africa, the Caribbean, India and Pakistan involved those whose histories were rural and highly impoverished (Wilson 1978), political refugeesof Asian descentwho left East African countries for the UK during the 1970s were often from middle-class backgrounds, not unfamiliar with significant economic success.(Brah 1996) However, what has bound Black and Asian migrants together is "an experiencewhich is both historical and contemporary,both collective and individual" (Lewis and Parmar 89). Their experience of Britain is characterizedby the common exclusion endured by them - an exclusion which hardened into the use of "Black" as a term of common abuse but carries a concept of "Afro-political leadership" which cannot encompass Asianness (399). See also Hazareesingh'sarticle entitled "Racism and Cultural Identity: An Indian Perspective" (1986). 5 also, eventually, of political empowerment through coalition-building. During the 1980s the suffering experiencedby immigrants led them to work together to re-claim the term from its negative associations. Coalitions were forged in which the word "Black" was strategically adopted as a bulwark against the common economic, social and racial oppressions these diverse groups had suffered (James 1985). Simultaneously, the term became (for such migrants) a symbol of pride and a means of collective empowerment. In the words of Heidi Safia Mirza: In Britain in the 1980s,this shared senseof objectification was articulated when the racialized disempowered and fragmented sought empowermentin a gestureof politicized collective action. In naming the shared space of marginalization as "black", postcolonial migrants of different languages,religions, cultures and classesconsciously constructeda political identity shapedby the sharedexperience of racialization and its consequences.(3) Among those articulating and constructing this common political identity were playwrights such as Grace Dayley, Trish Cooke, Tanika Gupta, Jackie Kay, Paulette Randall, Jacqueline Rudet, Winsome Pinnock and Zindika all of whose work first came to prominence in the 1980s and a decadelater encourageda secondwave of playwrights amongstwhom, for instance,was Maya Chowdry. In Modood's words: 6 They [Blacks and Asians] may not all share identical notions of "black", let alone a common political perspective,but they do all believe that the term "black" should be used to promote a positive identity. The importantpoint to note is that this use of black, is no longer descriptive. It is evaluative or aspirational. (1988: 4) It is in this sensethat I proposeto use the term "Black" in my thesis, as a positive reclamation of an identity that has been denigrated but is now being revalued. Changing attitudes towards victimization is, for instance, a case in point. In one of her interviews, Winsome Pinnock states that she reclaims the term "Black" in her plays by refusing to give the charactersthe roles of a victim: One of the themes in all my plays is examining the idea of the victim. To be black was always to be in the position of victim. I think in all of those plays I play with the idea of what a victim is and none of my charactersaccept that definition of themselves,because they all take action. It's not just about being angry, it's about somehow moving forward. So Minda has her way of doing it, whatever one thinks about it. Enid again, whatever one thinks about her position, is trying to do something for her daughters, trying to 7 save them from the fate of victimhood and the same goes for Claudia It ... was about exploring that and exploding a stereotype around the issue of Black identity. (Stephensonand Langridge 51) This re-evaluation and hence celebration of Black identity stemsfrom the playwrights' personal lives. For example, Pinnock cites the pride associatedwith being who she is and demonstrateshow that is largely reflected in a play like "Leave Taking".
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