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Negotiating Britishness in Sam Selvon's the Lonely Londoners, Hanif Kureishi's the Buddha of Suburbia, and Zadie Smith's White Teeth

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Negotiating Britishness in Sam Selvon's the Lonely Londoners, Hanif Kureishi's the Buddha of Suburbia, and Zadie Smith's White Teeth University of Montana ScholarWorks at University of Montana Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers Graduate School 2009 "This Blessed Plot": Negotiating Britishness in Sam Selvon's The Lonely Londoners, Hanif Kureishi's The Buddha of Suburbia, and Zadie Smith's White Teeth Kathleen Vickers The University of Montana Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.umt.edu/etd Let us know how access to this document benefits ou.y Recommended Citation Vickers, Kathleen, ""This Blessed Plot": Negotiating Britishness in Sam Selvon's The Lonely Londoners, Hanif Kureishi's The Buddha of Suburbia, and Zadie Smith's White Teeth" (2009). Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers. 8. https://scholarworks.umt.edu/etd/8 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at ScholarWorks at University of Montana. It has been accepted for inclusion in Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks at University of Montana. For more information, please contact [email protected]. “THIS BLESSED PLOT”: NEGOTIATING BRITISHNESS IN SAM SELVON'S THE LONELY LONDONERS, HANIF KUREISHI'S THE BUDDHA OF SUBURBIA, AND ZADIE SMITH'S WHITE TEETH By Kathleen Anne Vickers MA (Hons) First Class, University of Dundee, Scotland, 2007 Thesis presented in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in English Literature The University of Montana Missoula, MT Spring 2009 Approved by: Dr. David A. Strobel, Dean Graduate School Dr. Eric Reimer, Chair Department of English Dr. Kathleen Kane Department of English Dr. Hiltrudis Arens Department of Modern and Classical Languages and Literatures “The study of art that does not result in making the strong less willing to oppress the weak means little.” Booker T Washington, Inaugurating Address to the 1896 season of the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences. The Brooklyn Museum, New York. ii ABSTRACT Vickers, Kathleen, M.A., May 2009 English “THIS BLESSED PLOT”: NEGOTIATING BRITISHNESS IN SAM SELVON'S THE LONELY LONDONERS, HANIF KUREISHI'S THE BUDDHA OF SUBURBIA, AND ZADIE SMITH'S WHITE TEETH Chairperson Dr Eric Reimer This thesis considers how contemporary British literature helps us negotiate better ways of being in an increasingly diverse world. Britain understood itself as a relatively homogenous white society and reacted badly when commonwealth citizens unexpectedly began to “return” following World War II. Colonial migrants’ increasingly large presence, particularly as many settled and had children, challenged the myth of a “pure” Anglo-Saxon Britain and forced a re-conceiving of what it is to be British. This thesis particularly examines how colonial immigrants found ways to (re)negotiate their identities as British in the face of hostility in their “mother country.” Chapter One looks at how Sam Selvon’s The Lonely Londoners depicts ways early West Indian immigrants found to endure in immediate post-war, nationalist, Britain. I argue that while working class migrants found ways to survive, they did so at the expense of personal growth. Nevertheless, their tenacity laid down the foundations of a new Britishness on which future generations could build. Chapter Two examines Hanif Kureishi’s The Buddha of Suburbia. I argue that Kureishi’s novel indicates how second-generation migrants, who are often more psychically flexible, form their identities differently to their immigrant parents. They negotiate ways of being British via their heritage and immediate family, but also with peers, and across various boundaries including those of class, gender, and culture. Chapter Three considers Zadie Smith’s White Teeth. I argue that this novel suggests how immigrants negotiate their identities across even more boundaries and increasingly take advantage of the changing circumstances of life in Britain. This literature indicates reasons for some minority groups’ disaffection and subsequent behavior and so helps us to better understand and negotiate difference. In the Afterword, I reiterate that, starting from Britain’s nationalistic fear of hybridity in the 1950s, the novels in this study show the trajectory of how colonial immigrants found ways of being accepted as British. While it must remain vigilant to possible peril, Britain’s “social imaginary” has expanded to understand the benefits of multiculturalism and of valuing all citizens as equal. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION .......................................................................................... 1 CHAPTER 1— “Give Me A Chance Big City” ....................................................................... 10 CHAPTER 2— “I Am an English man Born and Bred, Almost” ............................................. 35 CHAPTER 3— “Multiplicity Is No Illusion” ........................................................................... 56 AFTERWORD— “The Past Is A Different Country” .................................................................. 83 WORKS CITED ............................................................................................. 86 iv INTRODUCTION In his classic 1927 study Aspects of the Novel, E.M. Forster spotlighted the importance of character in the novel and made the distinction between “flat” and “round” characters. Despite the development of the postmodern novel and sensibilities, Forster’s interpretation of the importance of character has not become outmoded. British literary critic James Wood has recently brought our attention back to Forster because of the persistence of character as an element that keeps us interested in novels. In How Fiction Works (2008), Wood insists that “fiction is both artifice and verisimilitude” (xiii). Fictional characters are “sites of human energy” and are representative of the real (124). This leads to the understanding that to ask how a fictional character exists is to ask “How do we exist?” (118). Further, in Modern Social Imaginaries, Charles Taylor writes of the “social imaginary” as containing the modern idea of order. It is of the ways “people imagine their social existence, how they fit together with others, how things go on between them and their fellows, the expectations that are normally met, and the deeper normative notions and images that underlie these expectations” (23). Since the seventeenth century, it has been increasingly assumed that society is for the advantage of all citizens and that the norm is for peaceful collaboration for the common benefit. The “social imaginary,” which has increasingly presumed equality, is developed through our daily experiences, including reading literature. Literature informs our understanding of the world and how we interact in it and the literature is informed by the world; through this mutually constitutive process we can negotiate better ways of being in an increasingly diverse world. Britain understood itself as a relatively homogenous white society and reacted badly when commonwealth citizens unexpectedly began to “return” following World War II, a period coinciding with the empire’s contraction. The West Indian presence challenged the myth of a “pure” Anglo-Saxon Britain, particularly as increasing numbers of colonial migrants settled, and had children, in Britain and so forced a re-conceiving of what it is to be British. To extend Wood’s ideas, when one reads about characters as they negotiate their identities—where “identity” is an individual’s understanding of who he or she is, of the individual’s defining characteristics—and try to find ways to be in the 1 world, so does one question his/her own identity. Through literature we can find ways to negotiate our own identities and to honor others; we can become more aware of how society’s accepted norms influence lives within minority groups and how, in turn, these individuals can turn to alternative orders that might bring the “social imaginary,” how society believes it should morally operate, into peril. Since the end of the eighteenth century, Westerners increasingly understood humans as having what Taylor calls “individualized identity, that is individual to me, and that I discover in myself” (28). In striving to reach one’s potential, one aims for the ideal of authenticity, of “being oneself” (28). The way we feel about ourselves is affected by our position in the world and about how others receive us. As Taylor writes in Multiculturalism, our identity is partly shaped by recognition or its absence, often by the miscognition of others, and so a person or group can suffer real damage, real distortion, if the people or society around them mirror back to them a confining or demeaning or contemptible picture of themselves. Nonrecognition or misrecognition can inflict harm, can be a form of oppression, imprisoning someone in a false, distorted, and reduced mode of being. (25) Colonial immigrants in Britain were often forced into such a state by the dominant white population and their experience is explored in the novels examined in this study—Sam Selvon’s The Lonely Londoners (1956), Hanif Kureishi’s The Buddha of Suburbia (1990), and Zadie Smith’s White Teeth (2001). I particularly set out to understand how colonial immigrants found ways to (re)negotiate their identities as British in a country that was hostile in its political and ideological climate, its material conditions and its weather. Furthermore, partly because the “social imaginary” supported notions of homogeneity and superiority, immigrants in Britain found
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