Reading Multiculturalism: Interrogating the Ironies in Andrea Levy’s The Small Island and Fruit of the Lemon

A Dissertation Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Award of the Degree of

Master of Philosophy in English Studies

by Namitha Merin Thomas (Reg. No. 1730025)

Under the Supervision of Abhaya N. B. Associate Professor

Department of English

CHRIST (Deemed to be University) BENGALURU, INDIA December 2018

Approval of Dissertation

Dissertation entitled Reading Multiculturalism: Interrogating the Ironies in Andrea Levy’s The

Small Island and Fruit of the Lemon by Namitha Merin Thomas, Reg. No. 1730025, is approved for the award of the degree of Master of Philosophy in English.

Supervisor: ______

Chairperson: ______

General Research Coordinator: ______

Date: ……………………..

Place: Bengaluru

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DECLARATION

I, Namitha Merin Thomas, hereby declare that the dissertation, titled Reading Multiculturalism: Interrogating the Ironies in Andrea Levy’s The Small Island and Fruit of the Lemon is a record of original research work undertaken by me for the award of the degree of Master of Philosophy in English Studies. I have completed this study under the supervision of Dr. Abhaya N. B., Associate Professor, Department of English.

I also declare that this dissertation has not been submitted for the award of any degree, diploma, associateship, fellowship or other title. I hereby confirm the originality of the work and that there is no plagiarism in any part of the dissertation.

Place: Bengaluru Date: ………………… Namitha Merin Thomas Reg No. 1730025 Department of English CHRIST(Deemed to be University), Bengaluru

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CERTIFICATE

This is to certify that the dissertation submitted by Namitha Merin Thomas (Reg.No.1730025) titled ‘Reading Multiculturalism: Interrogating the Ironies in Andrea Levy’s The Small Island and Fruit of the Lemon’ is a record of research work done by him/her during the academic year 2017-2018 under my supervision in partial fulfillment for the award of Master of Philosophy in English Studies.

This dissertation has not been submitted for the award of any degree, diploma, associateship, fellowship or other title. I hereby confirm the originality of the work and that there is no plagiarism in any part of the dissertation.

Place: Bengaluru Date: ………………… Dr. Abhaya N. B. Associate Professor Department of English CHRIST (Deemed to be University), Bengaluru

Head of the Department Department of English CHRIST (Deemed to be University), Bengaluru

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Acknowledgement

I bow before my Lord Almighty with a grateful heart for being with me at every moment of my life.

The dissertation would not have been possible without the help and support of many people around me.

I wish to express my gratitude to the Department of English, Christ University, for providing me with the wonderful opportunity to pursue this degree.

With humble gratitude I would like to thank Dr, Abhaya N. B., my guide, for her constructive comments and her encouragement throughout my dissertation work. I am immensely thankful for the learning I received under her guidance.

I wish to thank my internal examiner Prof. Sreelatha R. for her valuable suggestions and insightful feedback that greatly aided my dissertation.

I would like to thank Dr. Arijitha Pradhan, for her guidance and support throughout.

I would also like to express my gratitude to the present and former MPhil course co- rdinators Dr. Kishore Selva Babu, Dr. Sweta Mukherjee, and Mr. Joseph Edward Felix for the organization of presentations and submissions.

Much love and thanks to my dearest mother for the emotional and prayerful support she provided me with. I thank my family and friends for their support and encouragement that gave me strength for the successful completion of this dissertation.

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Abstract

Andrea Levy, a Black British author of Jamaican descent, interestingly narrates the lived experiences of the Black Britons throughout her works. Her novels reflect her life as an immigrant and her Jamaican ancestry and heritage. Her works stand proof to her concern in binding the British history and the Caribbean history. Levy, in her novels The Small Island and

Fruit of the Lemon, explores the immigrant lives of the Caribbean community in Britain. The two novels set in two different eras, The Small Island set in post World War II and Fruit of the Lemon set in 1970s England, the Thatcher Era, demonstrates a critique of multicultural Britain where the immigrants suffer racism and alienation in spite of the ‘egalitarian’ society of Britain. The thesis works to prove that Andrea Levy in The Small Island and Fruit of the Lemon subtly and tactically examines the faultlines of multiculturalism in the multicultural Britain. The thesis argues that the racial attitudes and discrimination in the ‘mother country’ forces the diaspora community to integrate into the mainstream British culture and inhabit the liminal space of Caribbean –British.

The thesis therefore questions the issues of identity and belonging in the novels in the context of multiculturalism. The thesis identifies that the immigrants evolve themselves to acquire a hyphenated identity of Caribbean – British, where they retain their Caribbean Black identity within the British society.

Keywords: Multiculturalism, Hyphenated Identity, Liminality, Caribbean immigrants in Britain,

Second-generation Caribbean immigrants

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Contents

Approval of Dissertation ii

Declaration iii

Certificate iv

Acknowledgement v

Abstract vi

Contents vii

1. Introduction 1

1.1 Andrea Levy – Authorial Voice 1

1.1.1 Defining Diaspora and a Brief Exploration of the Caribbean Diaspora 4

1.1.2 History of the Caribbean Nation and Migration 6

1.1.3 Multiculturalism in Britain 9

1.2 Thesis Statement 12

1.3 Research Question 13

1.4 Objectives of the Study 13

1.5 Review of Literature 13

1.5.1 Author’s Perspective 13

1.5.2 Scholarship on the Primary Texts 14

1.5.3 Understanding Multiculturalism 17

1.5.4. The Hyphenated Identity 18

1.5 Theoretical Framework 19

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1.6 Significance of the Study 22

1.7 Limitation of the study 23

1.8 Methodology 24

1.9 Organization of the Study 23

Works Cited 24

2. “My Eyes No Longer Believed What They Saw”: Examining the Ironies of

Multiculturalism in The Small Island 28

2.1 The Windrush Generation of post WW II Britain 29

2.2 Immigrant as the ‘other’: Racial Attitudes and Discrimination 38

2.3 Narrating Fragmented Identities in Multicultural Space 46

2.4 Shaping of the Immigrant Identity 49

Works Cited 53

3. Multicultural Dilemma in Fruit of the Lemon 56

3.1 Multicultural tensions: Racism, Discrimination, and Othering 61

3.2 Generational Differences: Identity and Belonging 69

3.3 Questioning Identity and Culture: In search of roots 75

3.4 Negotiation of Identity 82 Works Cited 85

4. Conclusion 88

Works Cited 97

Bibliography 98

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Chapter 1

Introduction

1.1 Andrea Levy – The Authorial Voice

Andrea Levy is an acclaimed British author of Afro-Jamaican descent who writes about the Black British experiences in Britain. Her parents belong to the windrush generation during which multitudes of immigrants from Caribbean nation reached the shore of Britain soon after World War II. Her Jamaican heritage is what triggers her writing. She wanted to write the stories she wanted to hear the most – stories of people like her, the black Britons.

She wanted to write stories that bind British history and Caribbean history together. She wanted to show that Caribbean history is a part of British history, which was long neglected.

Her novels closely look at the nation of Britain, its varying population, and the close connection between British history and the Caribbean. Her flair for humour relaxes the grim topics that are dealt with in her fiction.

Levy’s major works include Every Light in the House Burnin’ (1994), her first novel, in which she explores the life of a Jamaican immigrant family in London, their physical and emotional struggles in the diaspora. The novel is said to be semi-autobiographical. Her following novel Never Far from Nowhere (1996) is a tale of two sisters Olive and Vivien, second generation Caribbean immigrants, born to Jamaican immigrant parents living in

Britain. Olive, a shade darker than Vivien encounters racism, which makes her question her own identity. In her Fruit of the Lemon (1999), Levy narrates the life of a second generation immigrant, Faith, in Britain whose conflict in identity and the struggles related to it leads to her visit to Jamaica to find her roots. The story explores the struggles of racism in Britain. Thomas 2

The Orange Prize winning Small Island (2004) is another work of Levy where the black- white interaction in the post-war Britain is evidently dealt with. The novel narrates the lived experiences of the first generation Caribbean immigrants and the natives. This novel also bagged her Whitbread Book of the Year and Commonwealth Writers Prize. The Long Song

(2010), which was awarded the Walter Scott Prize and also shortlisted for Man Booker Prize is written as a neo slave narrative and a historical fiction where the emancipation of slavery in the Caribbean Islands serves as the backdrop of the work. It is set in Jamaica and recounts the life of July, a slave girl living in the plantation. Slavery, in the novel, is dealt with in detail through the eyes of July. In Six Stories and an Essay (2014), her most recent work, Levy provides the short stories with the historical background of each one. Levy’s works constantly proves her journey back to the past and her eagerness to connect the Caribbean history and the British history.

Levy has always been keen on bringing back the Caribbean to its mother country, Britain.

The fact that most people of the mother country was unaware of its history and relation to

Britain was unacceptable to Levy. She says: “It was just something that just went on over there – metaphorically and physically. Bringing [this fact] home, bringing it back to the mother country is very important. It’s very important to me.’ To emphasise her point Andrea

Levy describes a couple of small but highly significant incidents indicating how this exclusion has crept into the British education system. ‘When I was out doing publicity

(for The Long Song) I did two separate interviews with very intelligent women – two different women who had been through the university system – who did not know that slavery had happened in the Caribbean.....And I was more than shocked. Something has gone horribly wrong. Because it is so important to our understanding [about] who we were in the

British Empire and how it came together. It cannot be written out of history.” (Barranger) Thomas 3

She herself having been encountered several incidents were her identity was questioned, her characters too go through the same ordeals as we see. Identity crisis is one of the significant themes that run through in her novels and short stories. She shares in her essay

This is my England that inspite of being lived her life and educated as English, she was the odd one out among the white children at school. That they saw Jamaica as a place “full of inferior black people”. “I was embarrassed that my parents were not English.” She continues to say that when she wanted to fit in the English mob as a child, it was the regular parcels from Jamaica and her parents that held her back. Later, we see her gaining pride in her

Jamaican heritage which resulted in her fictions.

The Writing of The Long Song, which is given as an additional material at the end of her novel The Long Song describes the experience that led her to write the novel:

At a conference in London, several years ago, the topic for discussion was the

legacy of slavery. A young woman stood up to ask a heartfelt question of the

panel. How could she be proud of her Jamaican roots, she wanted to know, when

her ancestors had been slaves? I cannot recall the panel’s response to the

woman’s question but, as I sat silently in the audience, I do remember my own.

Of Jamaican heritage myself, I wondered why anyone would feel any

ambivalence or shame at having a slave ancestry? (405)

Levy continues to say that their ancestors were strong and clever to have survived the hardships at the plantations and they have a rich and proud heritage to hold on to. Levy wanted the young woman and many others like her who questioned their ancestry to have pride in their slave ancestors through a story. This stirred her to write The Long Song. Levy visited Jamaica to find more about her ancestors, her land and culture. She says: “When I left,

I wanted to know more about the people who formed me”. She now wanted to delve deeper Thomas 4 into her roots, which is evident in her works where the island of Jamaica itself is treated as an important character.

Language is an important cultural marker which is also a carrier of culture. Levy, in her works consciously use language for the same. Most of her characters like Gilbert, an immigrant in The Small Island, July in The Long Song, Wade and Mildred, also first generation immigrants in Fruit of the Lemon speak Caribbean creole. It shows the intricate nature of Caribbean identity. The elements of diaspora pervades in all of her works that she weaves together the Caribbeanness and Englishness in them.

1.1.1 Defining Diaspora and a Brief Exploration of the Caribbean Diaspora

Diaspora is a Greek term meaning “to scatter about” or “dispersion” (Diaspora (n.)). In line with its etymological meaning, diaspora is the scattering or movement of people from the nation of their origin to another land. The history of diaspora could be traced back to the exile of Jews from Israel. The Jewish diaspora is recorded to be the greatest diapora in history.

The Jewish experience was largely a diasporic experience …… Diaspora

dominates the history and imagination of the Jewish people. Jews have brooded

about it for two and a half millennia. For many, it constitutes the defining

characteristic of Jewish experience. The notion of removal from the homeland is

firmly entrenched in the mythology of the jewish people...The image of Jewish

scattering, of resettlement in alien places of insecurity, powerlessness,

marginality, and repeated readjustments, holds sway (Valiurrahman 178).

Diaspora is a socio-geographic concept of understanding roots and routes of migrated/migrating people – whether by force, by luck, by desire, by and by or somehow else

(Valiurrahaman 177). Thus, in the context of postcolonialism, diaspora is the dispersion or Thomas 5 displacement of people from their homeland to an alien nation, voluntarily or involuntarily.

Mari Peepre, in her essay Resistance and the Demon Mother in Diaspora Literature: Sky Lee and Denise Chong Speak Back to the Mother/land, defines diasporic literature as:

[A]bout the loneliness and alienation of the displaced person, the struggle to

survive in the harsh circumstances, the battle to retain their heritage culture

while adjusting to the strange, new host culture, and the search for tradition

and roots by the partially acculturated second and third generation. Most of

these works are loosely autobiographical, and mark a passage from the

silence of the immigrant ghettos to the often out spoken self-examination of

the partially hybridized, third-generation, host-migrant writer (80).

African diaspora is one another significant diaspora that still has a continuing impact on the immigrants. During the colonial period, Africans were forced to leave their country and were brought to Caribbean Islands as slaves. The ‘trans-atlantic slave trade’ has thus shattered the lives of uncountable Africans. They were treated mercilessly. The slavery as

Franklin Knight observes, led to the widespread distribution of Africans around the world in an exceptional manner. This increased the migrants extensively and a long history was born

(Gikandi 141).

Caribbean Disapora is a part of this African diaspora where the people of the Caribbean diaspora are doubly diasporized, having undergone the displacement twice – the migration from Africa to the Caribbean and then from the Caribbean to other European nations,

America, and Canada. It is therefore a culturally and historically rich diaspora as the cultural and aesthetic essence of Africa, Caribbean and the host nations are ingrained in the people of the Caribbean. Though there has been the loss of traditions due to the forcible movement from Africa to the Caribbean, the inherent Africanness in the people cannot be erased. The

Caribbean culture and traditions are a mixture of that inherent Africanness and the acquired Thomas 6

Caribbeanness. The culture of the colonial master has influenced this Caribbeanness.

Therefore it is acquired. The colonization and slavery that continued for around 300 years has had a major impact on the people of Caribbean. The ways of the British and their education system that included British literature and history with no regard to the history of the

Caribbean had been a central factor in the culture of the Caribbeans. Their language is a creole, which is mostly a mixture of English and their native African tongue which essentially shows the influence of the British among the Caribbean. The British colonialism in the islands influenced the migration of people to the empire. Many admired their masters and considered England as their ‘mother country’, a country that they thought will take care of them because they were dependent on England for 300 long years. They were naive enough to think that the British will always be in gratitude towards the Caribbean and migrated to Britain in the hope of a prosperous life. Caribbean migration to Britain by the

Windrush ship initialized the increased flow of people from the Caribbean to Britain.

1.1.2 History of the Caribbean Nation and Migration

The Caribbean nation and its people carry a history of slave trade, plantation slavery and migration that define their nationhood. Caribbean literature goes back to the past to interpret or talk about the present. They reveal the cultural history of the Caribbean society. Several

Caribbean writers such as Derek Walcott (1948) and George Lamming (1953), in their literary works, recreate history to make the present listen to the unheard voices of the past.

Derek Walcott in his poem Omeros (1990) and also in the collection The Prodigal (2004) reiterate the Caribbean life and the Caribbean past while George Lamming in his novels In the Castle of my Skin (1953), and the Emigrants (1954), brings stories from the Caribbean.

Caribbean literature often deals with identity, nation and history. In his essay, The Muse of

History, Walcott remarks that the writers who concentrate much on the wrongs of the British Thomas 7 and who reject all European influences should “…know that by openly fighting tradition we perpetuate it, that revolutionary literature is a filial impulse, and that maturity is the assimilation of the features of every ancestor” (qtd. in Ashcroft 370). Andrea Levy, like

Walcott does not embrace the magnificent narrative/history that is presented. She instead rewrites or reimagines history in her writings. The history that resides in the memory of the

Caribbean inhabitants is retrieved and remembered in the narratives to reclaim an identity that had been lost in slavery, migration and displacement.

A history of about three hundred years of slavery is sung around the islands of the

Caribbean nation. The nation that was occupied by the indigenous population of Caribs,

Arawaks, and Cibony, after Columbus’ discovery of it in 1492 was turned into a colony of major European powers such as the French, Spanish, Dutch and British with the slow disappearance of the native communities. Robin Cohen says:

The earliest settlers of the Caribbean, the Caribs and Arawaks, generally failed to

survive the glories of Western civilization – nearly all died from conquest,

overwork and disease. Virtually everybody in the Caribbean came from

somewhere else – the African slaves from West Africa, the white settlers, planters

and administrators from Europe, the indentured workers from India and the

traders from the Middle East (124).

The European settlers found the land apt for sugarcane cultivation for the production of sugar and brought in enslaved Africans to work in the plantations. Jamaica, one of the islands of the Caribbean, witnessed the atrocities caused by the plantation slavery.

The history of the Caribbean diaspora in Britain is built on the episode of migration. The

Caribbean nation was struck by poverty and economic depreciation during 1948 which led to the eventual migrations. Sewel claims that there were three major factors for the migration. Thomas 8

The post- war era’s immediate need for workers in London Transport and National Health

Service was the first reason. The second being the poverty, high rate of unemployment, and the economic recession in the then British West Indies. The 1944 hurricane hit Jamaica badly which left the island with homeless people, destroyed agriculture, and a bad economy.

Thirdly, during this time there was a prohibition of migrant workers in the USA. (qtd. in

Dostalova 12). These reasons eventually led to the migration of people from the British West

Indies. Maxwell, in his study, Incorporation, Expectations, and Attitudes: How Ethnic

Minority Migrant Groups Feel about Mainstream Society, notes that the Caribbean immigrants were prepared to blend into the mainstream British society as “...at the time of the post–World War II migration, modern Caribbean cultures were in many ways the creation of their colonizers” (395). He continues to say that, though there were matters that differentiated the Caribbeans and the White Britons such as accent, culinary customs, music, dance, and so on, most migrants were ready to consider themselves as British citizens and participate in the mainstream culture (Maxwell 395). British culture held a hegemonic position in the

Caribbean that they were taught British history, literature, and culture and nothing of their own. They were acclimatized to the British ways in the Caribbean which made the

Caribbeans confident to come to the mother country.

Caribbean diaspora in Britain thus began with the post-war mass migration of West

Indians to their mother country by sea route on the ship Empire Windrush in June 1948. As mentioned in The National Archives of the government of United Kingdom, “Immigration from the West Indies was encouraged by the British Nationality Act of 1948, which gave all

Commonwealth citizens free entry into Britain, and by a tough new US immigration law introduced in 1952 restricting entry into the USA” (Web). The immigrants landed on the shores of Britain during post-war era are collectively called the windrush generation. They came in hope of a life of prosperity and happiness but were welcomed with poverty, racial Thomas 9 discrimination and marginalization. These Black British subjects were treated with contempt, which was continued to the generations after.

1.1.3 Multiculturalism in Britain

This increased post-war immigration of caribbeans and other colonials led to the habitation of varied cultures and ethnicities. The assimilation of the immigrants was seen unfeasible, and this gave rise to multiculturalism in Britain. Hesse notes:

The discourse of multiculturalism was the culmination of liberal attempts to

address the social accomodation of racially marked white/’non-white’ cultural

differences in terms that enshrined the values of liberty and tolerance for both the

‘British’ self and the Caribbean, Asian and African ‘others’ (8).

Multiculturalism, as the word suggests, is the co-existence of people with multiple cultures, ethnicities, language, and religion in a unified space. Bikhu Parekh defines multiculturalism as “a body of beliefs and practices in terms of which a group of people understand themselves and the world and organize their individual and collective lives” (2).

He says that multiculturalism is “about those that are embedded in and sustained by culture”

(2).

According to Parekh, Multiculturalism is used to refer to a society with basically three kinds of cultural diversity namely, subcultural diversity, perspectival diversity, and communal diversity , and other kinds of diversity, one that displays the last two kinds such as perspectival diversity and communal diversity, or that characterized by only the third kind i.e., the communal diversity (4). Communal diversity is the presence of immigrants, established communities of Jews, Amish, religious communities and also the indigenous peoples. According to him, the diversity here is “sustained by a plurality of long established communities, each with its own long history and way of life which it wishes to preserve and Thomas 10 transmit. The diversity involved here is robust and tenacious, has well-organized social bearers, and is both easier and more difficult to accommodate depending on its depth and demands” (3-4). The policy of multiculturalism emerged in countries with such distinct cultural groups. When the newly arrived immigrants and the long established communities hesitated to assimilate and “insisted on ascertaining their cultural identity” and were followed by different problems related to it, the countries found the need to introduce multicultural policy. The process of assimilation also concerned the natives were they feared the mixing or assimilation of the minorities would change the identity of the nation as such. This was therefore an unacceptable policy for the immigrants as well as the natives. After the strong denial of assimilation, the immigrants were entitled to practice their culture and retain their ethnicity and heritage, which gave rise to the multicultural policy.

The policy of multiculturalism was hence introduced in Britain respecting the diverse cultures and ethnicities of the people. However, the interaction between the natives and the immigrants was not as expected. The white natives were hostile to the immigrants.

Inevitably, multiculturalism resulted in social exclusion and division.

The racism and discrimination in the multicultural society of Britain was justified by the mainstream society that it was the result of ignorance or prejudice among the whites towards the immigrants in the process of cultural adjustment. (Hesse 8). Multiculturalism was criticized severely for such negligence towards the discrimination of the immigrants. Phil

Cohen adds:

The multicultural illusion is that dominant and subordinate can somehow swap

places and learn how the other half lives, whilst leaving the structures of power

intact. As if power relations could be magically suspended through the direct

exchange of experience, and ideology dissolve into the thin air of face to face

communication (qtd. in Hesse 8). Thomas 11

Caryl Phillips, a prominent Black British writer from the Caribbean diaspora and a second generation Caribbean immigrant notes his experience in the multicultural Britain:

By the 1970s their children’s generation, my generation, was still being subjected

to the same prejudices which had blighted their arrival, but we were not our

parents. You might say we lacked their good manners and their ability to turn the

other cheek. Whereas they could sustain themselves with the dream of one day

‘going home, we were already at home. We had nowhere else to go and we

needed to tell British society this. The 1976 and 1977 Nothing Hill riots were

born out of this frustration (qtd. in Kato 10).

Levy, in her Small Island, and Fruit of the Lemon portrays this life of Caribbean immigrants in Britain, where they had to suffer discrimination in housing, at work and everywhere else in the land of England. In her essay, Back to My Own Country: An Essay by

Andrea Levy, Levy delves into the perception of racism in the multicultural Britain. She says that even with the presence of several cultures, there are misunderstandings and gaps between the white Britons and the immigrants. She notes: “Everyone is used to a mix of cultures and

London buses are full of Londoners from all over the world. But still there are silences and gaps in our knowledge and understanding”. Levy, in her writings, try to fill in these gaps of ignorance about the Caribbean nation and its people. Levy further in the essay discusses the racism she encountered in her childhood. Levy recalls:

....we were asked, 'When are you going back to your own country?', 'Why are

you here?', 'Why is your food so funny?', 'Why does your hair stick up?', 'Why do

you smell?' The clear message was that our family was foreign and had no right

to be here. When a member of the far-right group the National Front waved one

of their leaflets in my face and started laughing, I felt I owed them some sort of

apology. I wanted them to like me. It would be years before I realised I could be Thomas 12

angry with them. The racism I encountered was rarely violent, or extreme, but it

was insidious and ever present and it had a profound effect on me. I hated myself.

I was ashamed of my family, and embarrassed that they came from the Caribbean

(Back to My Own Country: An Essay by Andrea Levy).

This clearly indicates that the discrimination towards the coloured immigrants was incessant in the white majority Britain. This feeling of being an outsider in one’s own country as Levy proclaims in the essay, made her think about her black identity and the black experience in the diaspora, which indeed led to the breaking of silences, shame and denial through her writing (Back to My Own Country: An Essay by Andrea Levy).

Levy therefore tries to answer her questions on her black identity and the connection between the Caribbean and the Britain, which serves as an answer to several other

Caribbean immigrants in the diaspora.

1.2 Thesis Statement

The thesis examines the ironies of multiculturalism in the multicultural Britain in Andrea

Levy’s The Small Island and Fruit of the Lemon. The thesis argues that the racial attitudes and discrimination in the ‘mother country’ forces the diaspora community to integrate into the mainstream British culture and inhabit the liminal space of Caribbean –British. The thesis highlights Levy’s questions on the issues of identity and belonging in the novels in the context of multiculturalism.

1.3 Research Question

The questions the study tries to address are: How does the Caribbean immigrant characters in The Small Island and Fruit of the Lemon negotiate the conflicts in identity in the

Thomas 13 multicultural Britain? How does the negotiation of identity differ among the first generation and second generation immigrants?

1.4 Objectives of the Study

The objective of the study is to identify the consequences of multiculturalism on the

Caribbean immigrants in Britain, as portrayed in the texts. The study also examines the impact of these consequences on the identity of the immigrants in the diaspora in Britain.

1.5 Review of Literature

The review of literature is divided into three sections, where the first section is devoted to the author, Andrea Levy and her works, the second section focuses on the works of research on the primary texts, the third section discusses the related literature on the concept of multiculturalism and its failure, and the fourth section is dealt with the hyphenated identity in the diasporic context.

1.5.1 Author’s Perspective

Andrea Levy, like the other Caribbean diasporic writers, in her works discuss the history of the Caribbean nation and its people. She says: “None of my books is just about race.

They’re about people and history” (qtd. in Hickman). Her voice gave voice to the people and stories that might have forgotten in history.

In her essay This is My England, Andrea Levy asserts on England being her home, when she and her community is treated differently in the country. She recalls her childhood: “I was educated to be English. Alongside me - learning, watching, eating and playing - were white children. But those white children would never have to grow up to question whether they were English or not...... I wanted just to fit in and be part of everything that was around me, and these strange parents were holding me back.” She shares in her essay that in spite of Thomas 14 being lived her life and educated as English, she was the odd one out among the white children at school. That they saw Jamaica as a place “full of inferior black people”. “I was embarrassed that my parents were not English”. She herself having been encountered several incidents were her identity was questioned, her characters too go through the same ordeals as we see. Identity crisis is one of the significant themes that run through in her novels and short stories. She says that the increased migration of people of different nationalities made her comfortable and took interest in the country of her parents. She later gives account of her visit to Kingston to her family and trying to trace her geneology by asking her family members. This autobiographical element is seen in her The Fruit of the Lemon. Levy notes:

“Saying that I'm English doesn't mean I want to be assimilated; to take on the majority white culture to the exclusion of all other. (I cannot live without rice and peas. I now dance like a lunatic when Jamaica wins anything. And I will always make a noise when moved by emotion.) I will not take up a flag and wave it to intimidate. And being English will not stop me from fighting to live in a country free from racism and social divisiveness”. This same mentality of choosing the hyphenated-identity of Black-British is seen in her characters in the two novels The Small Island and Fruit of the Lemon. Hortense and Gilbert in The Small

Island and Faith in Fruit of the Lemon, despite the racial discrimination and othering, choose to position themselves in the hyphen, where they belong to both Caribbean and Britain.

1.5.2 Scholarship on the Primary Texts

The study examines the pitfalls of multiculturalism and the negotiation of the immigrant identity in Andrea Levy’s The Small Island and Fruit of the Lemon. Kim Evelyn, in her article in the South Atlantic Review, Claiming a Space in the Thought-I- Knew-You-Place:

Migrant Domesticity, Diaspora, and Home in Andrea Levy's Small Island discusses the literary tradition of the Caribbean diaspora in Britain in the the light of two notable novels,

Lonely Londoners (1956) by Sam Selvon and The Small Island (2004) by Andrea Levy. The Thomas 15 author briefly gives the history of Caribbean migrants, particularly, of the Windrush generation, which forms a major theme in the literatures of Caribbean diaspora. She later in the article explains how the authors have used this history to understand the migrants or the diasporic characters in their novels. Evelyn examines in detail the domestic space and the idea of home in the context of the Caribbean diasporic community. She analyses this aspect of home and belonging in Andrea Levy’s The Small Island. Here, she argues “...the domestic spaces of The Lonely Londoners and The Small Island become spaces of promise and security as characters fight to claim them, keep them, and use them as diasporic hubs where they can maintain dignity in the face of discrimination” (Evelyn 131). The article talks about the identity crisis and homelessness of the Caribbean migrant community in Levy’s The

Small Island which is one of the major aspects of my study on Andrea Levy’s fiction.

Njeri Githire asserts on the idea of “intersection of food and national identity” (Githire

857) in her The Empire Bites Back: Food Politics and the Making of a Nation in Andrea

Levy’s Works. Githire claims her arguement by quoting few theoreticians and writers. She says: “....taste is intimately bound to mechanisms of inclusion and exclusion, of belonging and not belonging...., food, cooking and (not)-eating have constituted major lenses through which issues of trans-national /diasporic belonging, as well as the multicultural, race and gender nexus are problematized” (Githire 857-858). She discusses how food and eating problematizes the dialogues of diasporic belonging, multiculturalism, and race. In the article, she explores the concepts of identity, belonging and diasporic consciousness, ultimately linking these with food and nation. She focuses on the works of Andrea Levy, which could be of help to my study to explore in detail the culture and identity of the Caribbean immigrants in Britain. Food is a major ingredient in the culture of a community, it identifies them as belonging to a particular community and nation. The literature of the Caribbean diaspora Thomas 16 focuses much on their food, music, dance, and so on which forms a significant part of their identity.

The study looks at how the immigrant characters in the two primary texts position their hyphenated identity in the multicultural Britain. Duboin, in her thesis Contested Identities :

Migrant Stories and Liminal Selves in Andrea Levy’s Small Island looks at the conflicted identities of the immigrants in the text. It focuses mostly on the prologue of the novel, the empire exhibition, which discusses the west attitude towards the non-west. The thesis discusses the liminal identity of the immigrant within the diaspora. This is of help to my research where I also come to the conclusion that the immigrants are in a liminal state.

Whereas, I use the theories and concepts of multiculturalism along with those of identity to identify this positioning.

An engaging article by Jo Pready, discusses the relationship between the identity of the individuals and the geographical space around them. In the article The Familiar Made

Strange: The Relationship between the Home and Identity in Andrea Levy’s Fiction, though his focus is on Levy’s Every Light in the House Burnin’ (1994) and Never Far from Nowhere

(1996), and not the primary texts, Pready looks at the immigrant identities carefully. It will help the study to understand the negotiation of space, identity, and relationships in postcolonial Britain as presented in the primary texts. He says that “there is a dialectical relationship between the space and the individual in Levy’s early novels...... Levy’s characters constantly strive for human-centred relations to space, but the tensions between real and ideal spaces ultimately lead individuals to experience a sense of spatial disruption as well as to disengage from both the spaces and the people around them” (26-27). The defamiliarisation and diasassociation in the immigrant identity that occurs due to the racial diascrimination and social exclusion in the diaspora are brought in the article. But here the characters and the identity crisis they face are analyzed only based on the geographical space. Thomas 17

The aspects of ‘othering’ and racism they face in their host land , hybridity, and the revision of past could also help analyze the identity of the characters.

1.5.3 Understanding Multiculturalism

Bikhu Parekh, in his Rethinking multiculturalism: Cultural diversity and political theory asserts on the celebration of the ingrained culture of people, and the freedom to practice it.

Here he defines multiculturalism and its significance. For Parekh, a multicultural perspective is the creative interplay of the three insights of multiculturalism, that culture is ingrained in all the people, cultural diversity and the coexistence of all cultures, and that all cultures are plural and not any one culture is purely one (338). These three insights as provided by Parekh have been helpful in understanding multiculturalism. The violation or absence of these insights as presented in the primary texts is regarded as the failure of multiculturalism in the study.

The policy of Multiculturalism that was introduced with earnest desire for the coexistence of diverse ethnicities has had its pitfalls. Dark side of multiculturalism: Social exclusion and other unintended consequences of multiculturalism delves into the dark side of multiculturalism, where multiculturalism has backlashed. Michaela Kvasnová, in his work names the consequences of multiculturalism and how that creates social exclusion. The paper is a critique of multiculturalism, while he asserts that the living together of people from diverse cultures is essential, he says that necessary conditions should be provided for that peaceful coexistence. Kenan Malik observes this fall of multiculturalism in his essay Against

Multiculturalism. Where, he contends that equality, for the immigrants, are denied in the multicultural society. The immigrants are secluded from the mainstream society, which creates rift between the immigrants and the natives. The study explores how thi division has occurred among the immigrants and the natives with the inclusion of multiculturalism in the Thomas 18 nation of Britain through the analysis of Andrea Levy’s The Small Island and Fruit of the

Lemon.

1.5.4. Hyphenated Identity

The hyphenated identity of the immigrant could be explained as the dual identity of the immigrant that allows him/her to connect to both the homeland and the hostland. The immigrant would not want to move away from any one of it.

Victor J. Ramraj observes this liminal identity of the immigrant: “Diasporic writings are always concerned about the “individual’s or community’s attachment to the centrifugal homeland” (216). Yet, this attachment to the homeland is counteracted by the desire to belong to the present living space. (216) He continues: “Caught psychically between two worlds, diasporans are, to use Victor Turner’s terms, ‘transitional being[s]’ or ‘liminal persona[e]’, that is, they are in the process of moving from one cultural state of existence to another” (216). He says that, some react ambivalently to this dual identity, while some others assimilate or integrate, and some find it hard to cope with and return to their homeland (216-

217). Here, in The Small Island, Hortense and Gilbert do not assimilate, but integrate into the mainstream society by retaining their Caribbean identity. While for Faith, in Fruit of the

Lemon, England is home, but she also accepts the Jamaican identity that is inherent in her.

The positioning of the Black-British hyphenated identity of the immigrant in the multicultural society of Britain is the major discussion in the study. Hesse, in his

Diasporicity: Black Britain’s Post-Colonial Formations examines the meaning and the connection between the Black and British identities. Referring to Amina Mama, “The Black

British subject is therefore born out of an imposed contradiction between Blackness and

British-ness, British-ness being equated with white-ness in the dominant symbolic order”

(qtd. in Hesse 96). Hesse further interrogates the meaning of to be Black and British. Thomas 19

1.5 Theoretical Framework

The study follows multiple theoretical frameworks based on the thematic concern of the chapters. Charles Taylor’s theory and Parekh’s thought on multiculturalism will form the basis of the study to carefully look at the faultlines of multiculturalism in Levy’s The Small

Island and Fruit of the Lemon. The contributions of Hall, Bhabha, and Gilroy in the areas of identity will be used in the study to discuss in detail the identity conflict and the negotiation of identity of the immigrants in the primary texts.

Charles Taylor’s concept of ‘politics of recognition’, states that in a multicultural society, the “recognition or misrecognition” of the individuals or in particular, the immigrants, creates an impact on their identity. Therefore, according to him, ‘nonrecognition’ causes harm to the immigrant, that the misrecongnition can be interpreted as a form of oppression or humiliation

(25). This idea of ‘recognition and ‘nonrecognition’ is used in the study to analyze the failure of multiculturalism. The presence of the immigrants are not positively recognized in the

British society by the natives, as presented in both the texts. They are ‘misrecognized’ by the white Britons, which causes the subjugation of the immigrants. The theory of ‘politics of recognition’ is therefore essential to be employed in the analysis.

The features of multiculturalism are to be looked at in order to inspect the neglect of those, to analyze the failure of multiculturalism in the texts. Parekh’s understanding of multiculturalism with its three insights: “the cultural embeddedness of human beings, the inescapability and desirability of cultural diversity and intercultural dialogue, and internal plurality of each culture” (338) will serve as the basis of the study to recognize and analyse the failure of multiculturalism in the texts. According to him, not all cultures are good or every culture is uniformly rich, but every culture deserves respect as it is significant for the members of that community. Levy, in both the texts portrays that the immigrant – native Thomas 20 interaction is antagonistic, unlike what the policy of multiculturalism expects in a multicultural society. Therefore, the study will employ Parekh’s idea of multiculturalism and understand the violated aspects in the society.

Identity is a major concern in the study, where, the non-observance of the multicultural policy, causing a misrecognition of the immigrants ruptures the identity of the immigrants.

The study will utilize Stuart Hall’s notion of identity to understand how they negotiate their identity in the diaspora. Stuart Hall, the British sociologist of culture, does not use the term

‘diaspora’ in the ‘imperializing’, ‘hegemonising’ sense of ‘scattered tribes whose identity can only be secured in relation to some sacred homeland to which they must at all costs return, even if it means pushing other people into the sea’. Instead, the diasporic experience is defined ‘not by essence or purity, but by the recognition of a necessary heterogeneity and diversity; by a conception of “identity” which lives with and through, not despite, difference; but hybridity’. ( Selden, et.al. 239) Cohen, in his Global Diasporas: An Introduction, states that, Stuart Hall, in discussing about the Caribbean argues that the Caribbean identity cannot be considered merely as a variation of an African identity as the fragmentation that the slavery has brought about and the migration of other people to the Caribbean is part of that

Caribbean identity; and that this has created in the individual a sense of hybridity (Cohen

125).

In his essay, Cultural Identity and Diaspora, Hall notes that identities are social and cultural formations and constructions that are subject to differences in time and place. He points out that there are two principal ways of thinking about (cultural) identity. The traditional model views ‘identity in terms of one, shared culture, a sort of collective “one true self”, hiding inside the many other, more superficial or artificially imposed “selves” which people with a shared history and ancestry hold in common... Within the terms of this definition, our cultural identities reflect the common historical experiences and shared Thomas 21 cultural codes which provide us, as 'one people', with stable, unchanging and continuous frames of reference and meaning, beneath the shifting divisions and vicissitudes of our actual history. This 'oneness', underlying all the other, more superficial differences, is the truth, the essence, of 'Caribbeanness', of the black experience.” (Hall 223). This identity, he says is what a Caribbean or Black diaspora must find out. He then continues to talk about ‘imaginary unification’ to create meaning in cultural identity. That the “loss of identity” in the Caribbean experience is to be healed by reconnecting with the forgotten past. This idea of reconnecting with the past to create meaning in identity is employed in the thesis, where in one of the texts,

Fruit of the Lemon, the immigrant is seen going back to know her roots.

Hall then explains the second notion of cultural identity. “Cultural identity, in this second sense, is a matter of 'becoming' as well as of 'being'. It belongs to the future as much as to the past”. He says that Cultural identity “undergo transformation”. Other than being only dependent on the ‘recovery of past’ “identities are the names we give to the different ways we are positioned by, and position ourselves within, the narratives of the past” (225). The study will use the two notions of identity to analyze the identity of the immigrants as presented in the texts.

The construction of the hyphenated identity of the immigrant is central to the study. Homi

K. Bhabha’s theory of ‘liminal identity’ will be employed in the study to analyse this.

According to Bhabha, the inbetweenness or the liminal space between the blackness and whiteness creates the interaction between both the sides. He observes: “This interstitial passage between fixed up the possibility of a cultural hybridity that entertains difference without an assumed or imposed hierarchy” (4). This liminal space therefore can be interpreted as the hyphenated space and therefore, hyphenated identity. Here, the spaces on the sides of the hyphen, i.e., the Black Caribbean identity and the British identity, are equally involved. Bhabha’s concept of liminality will hence be employed to understand how the Thomas 22 immigrants negotiate their hyphenated identity of being in the liminal space, in the primary texts.

Paul Gilroy’s expanded concept of W.E. B. Du Bois’ “doubleness” or “double consciousness” of black subjectivity in the context of modern black political culture emphasizes that the integral experience of the diasporic identities in the modern diasporas is that of living in the west but with no sense of belonging. The immigrants are caught up in between two worlds – neither belonging to the one or the other. This is because, the immigrants tend to have less connection with their homeland and so they do not feel themselves a part of it at times. While in the hostland, they do not find themselves as belonging to the nation. Thus, the immigrant lives in between two cultures and suffers from what Homi Bhabha calls ‘unhomeliness’. The immigrant characters Gilbert and Hortense in

The Small Island and Faith in Fruit of the Lemon suffers from this ‘double consciousness’ when they encounter racial discrimination in the country that they thought was theirs.

1.6 Significance of the Study

The study creates an understanding of the Caribbean diaspora in Britain through the two novels -- Fruit of the Lemon, and Small Island of Andrea Levy. It discusses multiculturalism in Britain and contributing factors to its failure in the society as depicted in the two texts. It also looks at the generational differences among the Caribbean immigrants in the diaspora in

Britain through both the texts. . Andrea Levy, the author and her works are less explored in

Caribbean Diasporic Literature unlike her contemporaries Caryl Phillips, Zadie Smith,

Jamaica Kinkaid and other major writers. The study thus explores how Levy has treated the interaction of the natives and the immigrants in the multicultural Britain. Also, it discusses the second generation Caribbean immigrants of which Levy is a part.

Thomas 23

1.7 Limitation of the study

The study is limited to analyzing the hyphenated identity of the immigrant as a consequence of the failure of multiculturalism in the two primary texts.

1.8 Methodology

The study is intended to follow a qualitative approach by means of textual analysis. An analysis of the two novels to discuss the self-positioning of the immigrant in the multicultural

Britain is the main concern of the study.

1.9 Organization of the Study

The study is divided into four chapters, where chapter one is an introduction to the study which provides the structure of the work. It addresses the thesis statement, objectives, and research questions that outline the basis of my study. It also includes other major components that design my study such as significance, limitations, theoretical framework, methodology, historical background, and review of literature. The second, third and fourth chapters are devoted to the analysis of the texts. The second chapter analyses The Small Island to enquire the pitfalls of multiculturalism and explores the first generation immigrant experiences and their negotiation of identity in the liminal space. The third chapter discusses Fruit of the

Lemon where the ironies of multiculturalism is determined from the immigrant experiences.

The chapter also looks into the generational differences in the negotiation of diasporic identity. The fifth chapter is a conclusion that reviews the study, where the thesis statement is reinstated.

Thomas 24

Works Cited

Anteby-Yemini, Lisa, William Berthomière “Diaspora: A Look Back on a Concept.” Bulletin

Du Centre De Recherche Français à Jérusalem, 2005, pp. 262–270. Accessed 07 Dec

2017.

Barrenger, Nicole. “Andrea Levy – Addressing the Question of Slavery”. Newbooks.

Accessed 25 Jan 2018. http://www.newbooksmag.com/left-menu/author-coverage/andrea-levy-the-big-interview.php

Brown, Marina Salandy. “Andrea Levy: “This was not a Small Story””. Caribbean Beat, no.

70, Nov. /Dec. 2004, www.caribbean-beat.com/issue-70/was-not-small-story. Accessed 18

Aug 2017.

Cohen, Robin. Global Diasporas: an Introduction. Routledge, 2010.

“Diaspora (n.).” Online Etymology Dictionary, www.etymonline.com/word/diaspora. [...]

Donnell, Alison, and Sarah Lawson Welsh. The Routledge Reader in Caribbean Literature.

Routledge, 1996.

Duboin, Corinne. "Contested Identities : Migrant Stories and Liminal Selves in Andrea

Levy’s Small Island." Obsidian III, vol.12, no. 1, 2011, pp. 14-33.

Evelyn, Kim.”Claiming a Space in the Thought-I-Knew-You-Place: Migrant Domesticity,

Diaspora, and Home in Andrea Levy’s “Small Island” “ South Atlantic Review, Vol. 78,

No. 3/4, 2013, pp. 129-149. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/43739219. Accessed 17 Aug.

2017.

Gikandi, Simon. Ed. The Routledge Encyclopedia of African Literature. London and New

York: Routledge. 2009. Thomas 25

Githire, Njeri. “The Empire Bites Back: Food Politics and the Making of a Nation in Andrea

Levy’s Works” Callaloo, Vol. 33, No. 3, 2010, pp. 857-873. JSTOR,

www.jstor.org/stable/40962682. Accessed 17 Aug. 2017.

Hesse, Barnor. "Un/settled multiculturalisms: Diasporas, Entanglements, Transruptions". Zed

Books, 2000.

Hickman, Christie. “Andrea Levy: Under the Skin of History”. Independent, 6 Feb. 2004,

http://www.newbooksmag.com/left-menu/author-coverage/andrea-levy-the-big-

interview.php. Accessed 18 Aug 2017.

Levy, Andrea. “The Writing of The Long Song”. The Long Song. UK: Headline Review,

2010.

---. The Long Song. UK: Headline Review, 2010.

---. The Small Island. UK: Headline Review, 2004.

---. Fruit of the Lemon. Review, UK, 2004.

---. Never Far From Nowhere. Hachette, UK, 2010.

---. Every Light in the House Burnin'. Hachette, UK, 2010.

---. “Back to My Own Country: An Essay by Andrea Levy”. British Library.

www.bl.uk/windrush/articles/back-to-my-own-country-an-essay-by-andrea-levy. Accessed

30 Nov 2018.

Lichtenstein, David P. “The Importance of History in Caribbean Writing.” Literature of

Caribbean. 1999. Accessed 22 Nov 2017. Thomas 26

Malik, Kenan. “Against Multiculturalism”. New Humanist. London, vol. 117, no. 2, 2002, pp.

14-16. Accessed 2 Oct 2018.

Parekh, Bikhu. Rethinking Multiculturalism: Cultural Diversity and Political Theory.

Palgrave Macmillan, New York, 2006.

Peach, Ceri. The Caribbean in Europe: contrasting patterns of migration and

settlement in Britain, France and the Netherlands, Research Paper in Ethnic Relations

No. 15, Coventry: Centre for Research in Ethnic Relations, University of Warwick.

Accessed 30 Nov 2017.

Peepre, Mari. “Resistance and the Demon Mother in Diaspora Literature: Sky Lee and Denise

Chong Speak Back to the Mother/land.” International Journal of Canadian Studies,

vol. 18, 1998, pp. 79-92. Accessed 6 Aug 2017.

Pready, Jo. "The Familiar Made Strange: The Relationship between the Home and Identity in

Andrea Levy’s Fiction." Entertext, no. 9, 2012. pp. 14-30. Accessed 10 July 2018.

Ramraj, Victor J. “Diasporas and Multiculturalism”. New National and Post-colonial

Literatures, edited by Bruce King, Clarendon Press, 1996, pp. 215-228.

Selden, Raman, Peter Widdowson, Peter Brooker. A Reader’s Guide to Contemporary

Literary Theory. Pearson Education, 2007.

Taylor, Charles. "The politics of recognition." New contexts of Canadian criticism. vol. 98,

1997, pp. 25-73. Accessed 5 Aug 2018.

Toplu, Şebnem (2005) "Home(land) or ‘Motherland’: Translational Identities in Andrea

Levy’s Fruit of the Lemon," Anthurium: A Caribbean Studies Journal, vol. 3, no. 1 ,

Article 7. Accessed 7 June 2018. Thomas 27

Valiurrahaman. Interpretations: Essays in Literary Theory. RBSA Publishers, 2011.

Thomas 28

Chapter 2

“My Eyes No Longer Believed What They Saw”: Examining the Ironies of

Multiculturalism in The Small Island

In this chapter, the study intend to bring forth the ironies of multiculturalism in Britain by critiquing the faultlines of multiculturalism as presented in The Small Island and fathom how the first generation Caribbean immigrants in Britain negotiate their liminal identity in the multicultural diasporic space. On careful observation of the novel, Andrea Levy presents the pitfalls of multiculturalism in the multicultural society of Britain, subtly, through the polyphonic narrations of the four characters – Hortense, Queenie, Gilbert, and Bernard. The

“Prologue” and the 59 chapters titled “1948” and “Before” alternatively present it with each character narrating their lives in the post war era. The chapter uses the theories of Stuart Hall,

Homi K. Bhabha, Paul Gilroy, and Charles Taylor, and situate them in the context of multiculturalism to identify the evolution of identity of the immigrants to a liminal identity.

Identity is a dynamic and fluid concept in diaspora and multiculturalism, where an immigrant possesses a dual identity within the diasporic space. Identity of a diasporic individual is thus defined by the culture and heritage of his homeland and host nation, whereby it results in the hybrid identity of the immigrant. However, situating oneself in a hybrid identity is an excruciating process with the racism, discrimination, and cultural clash domineering the immigrants.

Andrea Levy’s The Small Island is set in the post world war II Britain, a period when the

British nation and its people were on its mission to recover from the aftermath of the dreadful war. There was an increased migration to Britain from the Caribbean islands during this time. Thomas 29

The novel journeys through the history of the Windrush generation and the remarkable encounter of the Caribbean immigrants and the British population. The novel is framed in a fragmented narrative structure where four characters Gilbert, Hortense, Queenie, and Bernard narrates their lives. Gilbert and Hortense are the couple who migrate from Jamaica to Britain during the Windrush era. Gilbert Joseph, is a former RAF personnel who comes back to

England with great expectations. His newlywed wife, Hortense Roberts, later arrives in

England desiring a prosperous life. The dream of coming to England has always been in

Hortense, but on arriving, she finds it as an unfriendly and unwelcoming ‘mother country’, unlike what she had expected of. Gilbert and Hortense are the first generation of immigrants from the Caribbean – the windrush generation, as they were later described as. Queenie, another significant character in the novel, is an Englishwoman who provides accomodation to

Gilbert and Hortense when, for the “coloured”, it is very difficult to find a decent house to live in. Bernard is Queenie’s husband, who has not come back home for several years after the war. Queenie has come to terms with his disappearance and believe that he is dead. But, later in the novel, Bernard comes home after several years. Bernard, in the novel, is portrayed as a racist who disapproves the coloured immigrants living in his house. The past and present lives of the four characters are entwined in the novel, where the tales of war, the state of

Britain after war, the immigration and the immigrant experiences are portrayed. Presenting both the perspectives - that of the immigrants and the natives, Levy try to bring in an unbiased picture of the multicultural Britain. This fragmented narrative framework itself could be seen as a form of a cry against this false ‘multiculturalism’ in Britain

2.1 The Windrush Generation of post WW II Britain

Andrea Levy in her novel The Small Island, explores one of the momentous events in modern British history, the post-war immigration of Caribbeans on the Empire Windrush, and also the causes and consequences of the historical immigration. The Small Island offers Thomas 30 insight into the lives of the windrush generation of Caribbean immigrants in England. There was an increased migration of Caribbeans to Britain after the Second World War. In 1948, with the British nationality act that permitted British citizenship to those from commonwealth countries, about 500 immigrants landed on the British shore. They are called the Windrush generation. In the novel Gilbert and Hortense, the major migrant characters are portrayed as part of the windrush generation who came to England from the Caribbean on the Empire

Windrush ship.

As described in the novel, Gilbert served in the British Royal Air Force during the Second

World War like many Caribbean men and men from other colonies of the British Empire.

Empire’s children came to her help in time of need. And few years after the war, Gilbert like other Caribbean men, especially the ex- RAF personnel, sails back to England to start a new life. They imagine being treated with respect in the mother country as they fought for the

Empire in the war. Caribbeans had a very close relationship with the British, or as they thought, unlike many of British Empire’s colonies. For the Caribbeans, Britain was their

‘mother country’. The name ‘mother country’ itself suggests the integral position they’ve given to the British in their lives. In the novel there are several times when Gilbert addresses

Britain as the mother country. In the American army camp, Gilbert describes Jamaica and its connection to Britain to those who are ignorant of a land called Jamaica. When the American soldiers doubts his British identity as he is black, we see Gilbert reiterating that he is from

Jamaica and that England is his mother country (156). He declares: “Jamaica is a colony.

Britain is our Mother Country. We are British but we live in Jamaica” (157). This shows the loyalty and pride Gilbert holds as a British subject. Similarly, many Caribbeans also considered Britain as their mother country, for which they migrated to the nation.

Nevertheless, not everyone approved of this idea. In the novel, we see that Gilbert’s cousin

Elwood is staunchly against the British and he tries to stop Gilbert from joining the RAF to Thomas 31 help the British in the war and also tries to persuade him not to go back to England. But

Gilbert, is determined to go back for a better life as he realized that Jamaica is a “small island” with lack of opportunities. He says to Elwood: “So why so many young men and women queuing up for passport? Why so many striking for job and busting up the place?

Elwood, I have seen it with my own eye. The world out there is bigger than any dream you can conjure. This is a small island. Man, we just clinging so we don’t fall off” (207). Gilbert, like many other Caribbean citizens wants to move out of Jamaica and sail to Britain, the land of opportunities. He still believes that the mother country of Britain will take care of him and his needs.

The Post World War II Britain witnessed a drastic change in the British society when there was an increased migration of people, especially from the Caribbean. The war-torn empire was to rebuild itself and requested the help of its colonies and particularly from the Caribbean islands (Huseby and Mustad 66) which resulted in the inflow of people to Britain. For

Caribbeans, Britain was their ‘mother country’ and was in a state where they would do anything for her. Many Caribbean men had fought for the British in the war and now they wanted to come back to their mother country to rebuild their lives alongside rebuilding the nation. The immigrants were called to Britain to be used in the menial jobs with meagre income. They were not given proper jobs and were treated badly, for the colour of their skin was black. They were therefore the victims of British colonisation yet again. The process of migration in the Caribbean have always been quite complex due to the negative reaction they received in their host lands in the form of racism which in effect affects their identity. As

Mary Chamberlain, in her review of Elizabeth Thomas – Hope’s Freedom and Constraint in

Caribbean Migration and Diaspora, notes: “Migration in the Caribbean has never been a simple equation of push and pull, but the result of intricate processes of motive, culture, and response. Its impact is equally complicated” (270). The unique culture and language of theirs Thomas 32 were looked at with indifference and aversion in the hostlands. Levy, in the text depicts this complicated nature of Caribbean migration and their experiences in diaspora.

In the novel, we also see the introduction of the National Health Service by the British government as an other cause for the rampant migration of the Caribbeans. Mr Todd,

Queenie’s racist neighbour angrily declares: “For the teeth and glasses. That was the reason so many coloured people were coming to this country...That National Health Service – it’s pulling them in, Mrs Bligh. Giving things away at our expense will keep them coming” (111).

The National Health Service offered health services free of cost to the citizens of the nation.

This was an attractive factor for the Caribbeans to migrate to Britain. However, here

Queenie’s neighbour entirely ignores the favour of the Caribbeans during the war and complaints of their arrival. Ceri Peach, in his research paper in ethnic relations, The

Caribbean in Europe: Contrasting Patterns of Migration and Settlement in Britain, France, and the Netherlands (1991), gives a detailed explanation of the migration pattern of

Caribbean citizens to each European nation mentioned above. Regarding the Caribbean migration to Britain, Peach states that it

was essentially powered by free market labour forces, but it had its origins

in government sponsored war time recruitment. Post war direct recruitment

by British Rail, London Transport and the National Health Service,

although not numerically dominant, were important in shaping the

movement (6).

The British government’s offer of direct employment in the government services resulted in the large migration from the Caribbean. The Caribbean immigrants sailed to their mother country in the hope of a life of prosperity and quality, yet what they received was nothing like they imagined. The British nation was not a welcoming mother; the immigrants were Thomas 33 unwelcomed strangers in the British nation. In spite of their major contributions in the war as well as the British economy by working hard in the sugar plantations, they were neglected and discriminated in the British society. Levy refers to her parents’ experience in one of her essays:

They came to Britain on British Empire passports in order to find more

opportunities for work and advancement. But once here they struggled to find

good housing. They had to live in one room for many years. They had a period of

being homeless and then living in half-way housing where my dad was not

allowed to stay with his wife and his three children (Back to My Own Country:

An Essay by Andrea Levy).

Her parents, who were middle class in Jamaica was “poor and working class” (Back to My Own Country: An Essay by Andrea Levy) in Britain. They had to suffer through many difficulties to continue living in Britain. They were expected to assimilate into the mainstream society without causing any trouble to the white Britons. The Caribbean immigrants, as evident, were treated with contempt and disparity in the nation of

Britain.

Ceri Peach in his study explains by providing numerical proof that 8000 men from the

Caribbean, a majority of 7000 men from Jamaica, were recruited to serve in the RAF (Royal

Military Force). Most of these men migrated to Britain soon after. Peach states that the post- war migration began in 1948 with the arrival of 417 men in the “Empire Windrush”. They later came to be known as the “windrush generation”. The windrush generation is considered to be the cause of a major change in the country of Britain, where the increased flow of people created chaos in the country. The sudden arrival of the immigrants with different cultures, languages, colour, and creed was objectionable to the native white Britons. Thomas 34

Andrea Levy, in her The Small Island, attempts to present this picture of the first generation Caribbean immigrants in Britain where they are the neglected part of the population. The two main characters in the novel, Gilbert and Hortense, here belong to the windrush generation of Caribbean immigrants. The novel has its autobiographical elements as

Levy’s parents belong to the windrush generation, who landed the British shore on the

Windrush ship. Gilbert was one of those several Jamaican men who joined the RAF to fight for the British in world war II. He then came back to England on the Windrush in search of opportunities and in hope of a better life. We see Gilbert in conversation with his friend

Elwood regarding his departure for England: “The world out there is bigger than any dream you can conjure. This is a small Island” (207), when Elwood later says: “Me know you would wan’ go live Babylon” (208). Gilbert came to England with such confidence in the mother country, as he believed it is the land where milk and honey flows.

John Duany in his discussion of the history of Caribbean migration in Beyond the safety valve: Recent Trends in Caribbean Migration, notes the nature of the 1940s migration to

Great Britain as mentioned by Foner: “The post-World War character of migration is quite different, largely composed of households who resettle abroad. During the mass movement from Jamaica to Great Britain during the 1950s, many people moved in entire families rather than as individual workers. Although all household members did not move at the same time, the migration process tended to lead to eventual reunification” (100). The migration from the

Caribbean to Britain in the 1940s is considered a mass migration due to this reason of whole families being migrated to settle in Britain and it was not just one individual who migrated. In the novel too, we see Gilbert coming to England and getting a rental room which followed

Hortense’ arrival. Likewise, other immigrants as well followed the same pattern for migration. Thomas 35

As seen in the novel, Hortense offers to lend Gilbert the money for him to sail to England and asks him to marry her upon the promise that he will help her sail to England. She was ready for a marriage to desperately get to England. Gilbert says: “With no persuasion, with no fancy words, with no declarations of love, she let me know that I would have to marry her for the money. This woman was looking for an escape and I was to be the back she would ride out on.” (210) We also see her friend Celia Langley dreaming about “going to live in

England”, in a big house with a doorbell (11). Everyone who sailed for England had such several beautiful dreams that they thought would be fulfilled once they reach the ‘mother country’. As we further see in the novel, Hortense and Gilbert are shocked and disappointed at the attitude of the Britishers.

The novel directs attention to the disillusionment of the immigrant characters in the novel once they set foot in the mother country from the “1948” narrations of Hortense and Gilbert.

The Caribbean immigrants sailed to their mother country in the hope of a life of prosperity and quality, yet what they received was nothing like they imagined. The British nation was not a welcoming mother; the immigrants were unwelcomed strangers in the British nation.

The passengers of the Windrush, from the Caribbean were confronted with several issues after reaching the British shores. Finding accomodation and employment was a much strenuous task for the immigrants. They coudn’t find a suitable job as they were not hired in the jobs they were skilled at. After long futile searches they settled on to any job that came their way. Among these immigrants were men and women who had quite good and formidable jobs back in the islands. The blacks were refused employment for jobs that had vacancies still and were advertised. This biased treatment of the blacks was evidently clear to everyone. This living situation made the immigrants bond together and help each other whenever necessary, whether in the case of looking for a house or a job. And this resulted in the Caribbean immigrants living together with their own people in communities and detached Thomas 36 themselves more from the mainstream British society. This distressed state of the newly arrived immigrants in Britain is portrayed throughout the novel.

For Hortense, England is a promised land. Gilbert’s optimistic vision of England also added to her idealistic view of England. Hortense recollects: “He told me opportunity ripened in England as abundant as fruit on Jamaican trees” (98). But on her arrival to England she is disappointed at the state of England , the attitude of the natives and the living conditions. She is disillusioned of her understanding of Britain from the moment she sets foot in England.

She was surprised that her “best accent” is not really understood by the Taxi driver. Queenie also seem to have had a difficulty at first to follow her pronunciation she thought the best

(16-17). Hortense’ English with the Caribbean accent which she thought was the best English was not really the best in England. Her confidence of being taught by an Englishwoman also shrinked when she realized that her English was not the accepted standard one. Further in the novel, several surprises await her. Hortense is taken aback at the sight of Gilbert’s living situation in England. It was just one room in the house. We see her asking Gilbert, “Just this?

Just this? You bring me all this way for just this?”(21). Back in Jamaica, she lived in a proper big house and was thus shocked at the sight of this one room rental, where the living room, the bedroom, and the kitchen was all just one room. And this was the beginning of her fine dreams of England being shattered one by one. The novel also subtly pinpoints towards the immigrants’ disillusionment of the mother country when Gilbert, when arrived in Britain spies a brooch on the floor of the station and thinks of it as a good luck sign and on approaching to it realizes that it was just cluster of flies on dog poop. He says: “My eyes no longer believed what they saw. For after the host of flies flew they left me with just the small piece of brown dog’s shit they had all gathered on . Was this a sign? Maybe. For one of the big-eyed newcomer boys walk straight along and step right in the muck” (213). Gilbert’s Thomas 37 words sounds like a prophecy of what was to happen to them later and what they will have to endure in the mother country.

Britain offered poor housing conditions for the Caribbeans who arrived in England. Gilbert says: “Sleep in a room squashed up with six men and you will come to know them very well”

(213). He had to live in such uncomfortably crowded environment as it was a rarity to get rental houses for the coloured immigrants. They were not welcomed in many areas as the natives did not want to mix with the black immigrants. In the novel, Queenie, who is an

Englishwoman is seen opening boarding for these immigrants in her house in spite of the displeasure of her neighbours. Her neighbour Mr Todd is one of the many who was against the immigrants’ arrival to Britain. His concern was that the darkies “would turn the area into a jungle” (113). Mr Todd’s immense racist attitude towards the coloureds is seen here. This thought of his shows his comparison of the coloureds to animals. That’s how lowly he thinks of these immigrants who are also British now. The analogy to jungle shows the west attitude towards the blacks. He and other neighbours therefore didn’t approve of the immigrants living in their neighbourhood. The issue of poor housing for the immigrants is also portrayed in Sam Selvon’s “Lonely Londoners”, where large group of immigrants stay together in small places with less amenities. It was difficult for the immigrants to live in such cramped spaces.

The employment opportunities for the immigrants were much limited, they were offered menial jobs in spite of their qualifications. Gilbert, who was an RAF personnel proudly sets out in search of jobs after his arrival in England only to realize that he is the ‘other’ in this country. The mother country doesn’t treat him as her citizen when he consider himself

British. He is rejected at many jobs for his coloured skin. Hortense, who was confident of her teaching skills and the good recommendation letter from her professor who was English was astonished at the attitude of the staff at the school where she went for an interview for a Thomas 38 teaching job. Hortense’ educational qualification for being a teacher was not valued in

England. She was told that she had to study again to become a teacher here (454).

The novel portrays the post-war England as broken and dreary. In the novel, Hortense is baffled at the land which was known to her as the land of milk and honey, “I never dreamed

England would be like this. So cheerless. Determined, I held my breath but still I could hear no bird song. The room was pitiful in the grey morning light” (225). Contrary to the colourful and energetic Jamaica, England was sober and dull. Hortense being a Caribbean soul couldn’t adjust to the unexciting and dreary England.

The increased influx of Caribbean and other migrants from the colonies led to the rise of

‘multiculturalism’ in Britain. Britain with the inclusion and celebration of all its varied ethnicities, cultures and religions, claims to be a multicultural society. Bikhu Parekh, in his

Rethinking Multiculturalism: Cultural Diversity and Political Theory, notes that a multicultural perspective is the creative interplay of the three insights of multiculturalism, i.e., “the cultural embeddedness of human beings, the inescapability and desirability of cultural diversity and intercultural dialogue, and internal plurality of each culture”. (338)

Parekh here stresses on the respect for different cultures in a multicultural environment. He also states that every culture is interrelated and so each culture should be acknowledged likewise. Multiculturalism allows every culture to coexist in a single space. Yet, the question arises, whether Britain does create a harmonious place for its immigrant citizens to practice and celebrate their culture. Are they discriminated in the so called ‘multicultural’ nation?

2.2 Immigrant as the ‘other’: Racial Attitudes and Discrimination

Andrea Levy in her The Small Island tries to expose the racialized differences and the marginalization of the immigrants in the multicultural society of Britain. Several instances in the novel suggest the racial attitudes and discrimination against the Caribbeans. Gilbert who Thomas 39 was in the RAF was treated with utter disrespect like several other Jamaican men. He was assigned as a “driver- cum-coal shifter”, which he says: “was not an official trade in the RAF

Table of Trades for Aircraft Hands”. He says: “This coking felt like punishment” (148).

Coking is the process of making coke by burning coal. This was Gilbert’s duty in the RAF.

At times he was assigned as a driver for errands in the barrack. He was never given a chance to fight alongside other RAF men like he wanted. He was always used for such menial jobs because he was black. In another situation, when Gilbert went on an errant to the US army base, the army officer was furious to see a coloured man in the camp. They thought of it as an insult to having sent a “nigger”. “These niggers are more trouble than they’re worth” (150).

Gilbert says: “Coloured, black, nigger. All these words had been used to characterise me in the last few minutes. Insults every one” (151). The inhumane treatment of black men among the whites is evident here. They are addressed by the colour of their skin and their race and are called names that are offensive. He later says: “If a coloured man finds himself on an

American army base surrounded entirely by white people, then, man!, he is in the wrong place.” (153). Gilbert here states that blacks are never welcomed among the whites. It was painful and annoying for him when he was asked where Jamaica was. The Americans in the camp were ignorant and unaware of the fact that there was an island called Jamaica in the

Caribbean. This incident shows how insignificantly he is treated, for the colour of his skin is black.

Throughout the novel, with each narrator recounting their lives, the unacceptable attitudes of racism and discrimination is exposed. Gilbert experiences much racism in Britain when he starts searching for a house to live in. He is seen rejected outrightly by the landlords. He says:

“Let me count the doors that opened slow and shut quick without even me breath managing to get inside....there was a list of people who would not like it if I came to live – husband, wife, women in the house, neighbours, and hear this, they tell me even little children would Thomas 40 be outraged if a coloured man came among them” (215). The natives did not want the coloureds to live among them. Even the children were warned by the adults to not go near a black man. Queenie, who let Gilbert and his friends to rent rooms in her house, in spite of being a friend charged high rent which led his friend to ask him “...so why the woman act like a bakkra?” (223). The English overseer in the Caribbean sugar plantations who were in charge of the slaves was called a bakkra. Bakkras mostly acted in a cruel and irrational manner towards the slaves. Here, in this instance, they compare Queenie to a bakkra, as she was charging such high amount for one room, though she was a friend of Gilbert’s. This discrimination towards the black immigrants was present everywhere in England as presented in the novel.

The experiences he faced were not much different for Gilbert when he went job hunting.

The employers gave him several irrational excuses to not employ him. The ‘black’ immigrants were denied employment and a decent living in the post war Britain. Thus, the multicultural aspect of peaceful co-existence couldn’t find its place in Britain. The division of people on the basis of race and ostracizing them is as opposed to the harmonious existence of several cultures and ethnicities.

The mass migration of people to Britain, majorly from its colonies has built it into a multicultural nation. Britain and its people were forbearing of these people when they came to help them during the war. But when it was convinced that the immigrants are to settle in the country, the presence of multiple ethnicity turned to a crisis as Britain did not want to treat the immigrants as equals in the society. The immigrants were therefore distressed about the racism and discrimination towards them in the British white society.

Racism was initially termed to describe the victimization of Jews and Nazism in Germany.

Though the term was introduced in 1930s, it is understood that the attitudes of racism existed Thomas 41 long before that. George M. Frederickson, in his Racism: A Short History assumes that racism was not quite a modern term, “but rather a manifestation of the ancient phenomenon of xenophobia” (qtd. in Ďurianová 39) He also placed racism as not merely being prejudiced about a specific group, but that racism creates a “hierarchial ordering of the society, so called racial order, as based on the laws of nature and God” (Ďurianová 39). “Racism is prejudice or discrimination against other people because of their ‘race’ or because of what is thought to be their ‘race’ (their biology or ancestry or physical appearance)” (qtd. in Ďurianová 39).

Ďurianová in his thesis The National Identity and Racism in the Fiction of Black Immigrant

Writers in Great Britain, discusses the concept of multiculturalism. He observes:

multiculturalism, being the prime idea of racial justice, is modelled on the idea

that all cultures have ‘the right to be authorized as authentic in the public sphere

and should be given social support’. With the emergence of mass migration, a

diverse array of cultural groups have been marginalized and excluded as being

too distinctive from mainstream society. Thus different multicultural policies took

place in order to unify the fractured society, namely assimilation and integration

(qtd. in Ďurianová 19).

The idea of multiculturalism emerged from the thought of integration, where it promotes cultural diversity and a harmonious co-existence of multiple cultures, and therefore the prefix

‘multi’. The multicultural society or multiculturalism is a term that has been used in multifarious fashion, where Bhabha describes it as a portmanteau term (Hesse 1). Parekh says that the term also defines those who

demand equal status, rights, power and opportunity to participate in and shape the

collective life of the wider society…Minority communities anticipate the wider

society to accept them as equals and to recognize and reflect their presence in its Thomas 42

major institutions and self-understanding (Parekh, “A Commitment to Cultural

Pluralism”).

Sneja Gunew, in her work Postcolonialism and Multiculturalism: Between Race and

Ethnicity observes the mismanagement of multiculturalism,

Multiculturalism has been developed as a concept by nations and other aspirants

to geo-political cohesiveness who are trying to represent themselves as

homogeneous in spite of their heterogeneity... Multiculturalism may also

sometimes be invoked as a way of signalling divergence from a notional

monoculturalism often wrongly identified with the 'West' or 'Europe' and here it

overlaps significantly with postcolonial concepts and debates (23)

She continues to say that multiculturalism is perceived as a hidden means of indicating racialized differences (23).

The prologue of The Small Island is Queenie’s detailed description of the Empire

Exhibition she visited as a kid with her family. The exhibition was put out from the point of view of the colonizer. It had all its colonies and so, Africa too. Queenie describes her experience when she and the house helpers “got lost in Africa” (5). She talks about Africa as the jungle it was presented as and the woman’s skin colour as “black as the ink that filled the inkwell in my school desk. A shadow come to life” (5). The association of Africa to a jungle and blacks to animals is a usual attitude among the whites. The west attitude of blacks as barbaric and uncivilized is evident from Queenie’s outlook of Africa and its people. One of the helpers, Graham, says with aversion: “They’re not civilised. They only know drums” (5).

Here, Graham negates the culture and traditions of Africa as mere drums. The binary opposites of the ‘self’ and the ‘other’ is clearly defined through this incident, where the white man treats the black woman as the inferior ‘other’ who is not in par with him. He assesses her Thomas 43 by demeaning her race, culture, and lifestyle. In his eyes, her culture is barbaric. This prologue, hence, can be viewed as a precursor to the rest of the action in the novel i.e., the treatment of the immigrant characters in the novel.

Bhushan, in The Self/Other Syndrome in Nadine Gordimer’s Fiction, opines:

The act of othering is a manifestation of power relations. It involves stereotyped

characterization, stratification, stigmatization that perceive another person/group/

community in a negative or sometimes, in a demonic way. Operating through the

ideology of ‘difference’ (in sexuality, gender, ethnicity, ‘race’, class, etc.) and

‘segregation’, it blatantly undermines the similarities between the dominant and

the suppressed....So othering becomes a powerful weapon that is wielded to

delegitimize others (173).

Thus, othering is an act that suppresses and segregates a group of people based on the colour, creed, or culture. Gilbert, in the novel, sarcastically expresses his objection towards this attitude of ‘othering’ by the white natives:

Politeness has always been my policy. It makes the good people of England

revise what they think of you, if only for a second or two. They expect us colony

men to be uncultured. Some, let us face it, do not expect that we can talk at all. ‘It

speaks, Mummy, it speaks’, has been called after me. Oh, yes, Mummy, it speaks

and when it speaks it usually speaks with courtesy (165).

The incident shows that Gilbert is very familiar with such behaviours of the natives that he has learned to act with composure in such situations. The immigrant is forced to adjust to such behaviours inorder to continue living in the host nation. Also, it is quite apparent from this example that the superior and civilized mentality of the British has come down to its Thomas 44 children too. Gilbert, later in the novel, continues to talk about another instance when he was in the RAF to show the same abhorrence the natives show towards the coloured immigrants:

I had been in England long enough to know that my complexion at a door can

cause – what shall I say? – tension. When I was new to England all the doors

looked same to me. I make a mistake, I knock at the wrong one. Man, this

woman come to the door brandishing a hot poker face in my face yelling that she

wanted no devil in her house. ‘Since when was the devil in the RAF?’ I asked her.

Stand back – I had learned that day – stand back, smile and watch out! (168).

The white woman here inhumanely equates the coloured immigrant to a devil. The comparison of the coloured immigrants to animals is also seen in the novel. This shows the intolerance of the whites in the presence of the blacks or coloureds; like Gilbert says that his complexion creates “tension” among the whites.

“Othering” is the discrimination of people on the basis of colour, race, ethnicity, gender and class, in which one group’s weaknesses are projected out to make the other group look stronger. As defined by Martin Jones et al. ‘othering’ is “a term, advocated by Edward Said, which refers to the act of emphasising the perceived weaknesses of marginalised groups as a way of stressing the alleged strength of those in positions of power” (43). The classical example is Colonialism, where the weak side of the colonised was perceived to make the coloniser look strong and powerful. The colonized were marginalized as the ‘other’ for no fault of theirs. Thus, the act of ‘othering’ is the manifestation of power relations. The process of othering can be seen in various writings on colonialism. Mary Louise Pratt detects an example of othering in John Barrow’s Account of travels in the interior of Southern Africa in the years 1797 and 1798: Thomas 45

The people to be othered are homogenised into a collective ‘they’, which is

distilled even further into an iconic ‘he’ (the standardised adult specimen). This

abstracted ‘he’/’they’ is the subject of verbs in a timeless present tense, which

characterizes anything ‘he’ is or does not as a particular historical event but as an

instance of a pregiven custom or trait (Pratt, 1985: 13 qtd. in Post- Colonial

Studies: Key Concepts 2000: 157 ).

For the west, anything that is not west is the ‘other’. The western mind considers themselves as superior and the standard form of culture and civilization. No colour or class or nation or gender or sexuality is superior to another.

Zygmunt Bauman, in his Modernity and Ambivalence, explains the binary opposition of

‘self’ and the ‘other’ in a clearer fashion:

Thus, woman is the other of man, animal is the other of human, stranger is the

other of native, abnormality the other of norm, deviation the other of law-abiding,

illness the other of health, insanity the other of reason, lay public the other of

expert, foreigner the other of state subject, enemy the other of friend (qtd. in

Bhushan 174).

For defining the ‘other’, the existence of the ‘self’ is essential. Here, in this context, the ‘self’ is entitled to the native white Britishers while the ‘other’ is the black

Caribbean immigrants (Bhushan 173).

Above given instances from the novel points towards the unfair attitudes of the native Britishers towards the black Caribbean immigrants. Racism and othering are the major factors that distressed the multicultural space of Britain which therefore points Thomas 46 towards the irony of differentiation and segregation of the immigrants and natives in the multicultural setup.

2.3 Narrating Fragmented Identities in Multicultural Space

The Jamaican heritage of Hortense and Gilbert and other Jamaican characters are ignored and laughed at as seen in the novel. Their creole, colour, and their mere presence seem to annoy the British citizens. The racist attitude of Queenie’s neighbour Mr Todd against the

Jamaican boarders in her house validates this. The sense of multiculturalism, of having a harmonious existence of all cultures and ethnicities was completely absent in the supposedly multicultural nation.

Charles Taylor, one of the pioneer critics of multiculturalism proposed the concept of

‘politics of recognition’ which influences the identity of the immigrant. Taylor, in his essay,

Politics of Recognition, discusses the interconnectedness of “recognition or misrecognition” and “identity” in a multicultural space. He argues:

.. identity is partly shaped by the recognition or its absence, often by the

misrecognition of others, and so person or group of people 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. Non recognition

or misrecognition can inflict harm, can be a form of oppression, imprisoning

someone in a false, distorted, and reduced mode of being (25).

According to Taylor, the identity of an individual or a community could be influenced by the acknowledgement from other communities. The lack of recognition could result in a fractured identity. This we observe in The Small Island where they are seen “misrecognised” and neglected in the nation of Britain. In the context of the Caribbean immigrants in Britain, Thomas 47 when they are discriminated by the mainstream society, they lose confidence in their identity which eventually leads to their conflict in identity.

This is apparent on looking at the novel where there are several instances that attest to the

“misrecognition” of the Caribbean immigrants that leads to an identity crisis within them. In

Gilbert’s narration and Hortense’ there are numerous times where they talk about Britain being their “mother country”. But, yet we see that the natives of Britain are not even aware of the geographical positioning of Caribbean islands or the country of Jamaica. This ignorance of the natives are unacceptable when this is a place which they colonized and ruled for a very long time.

Despite these unfavourable conditions, there are few favourable acts of “recognition” that can be seen in the novel. Queenie is a significant character in the novel who is in favour of the immigrants. She doesn’t treat Gilbert any differently from the day she meets him in her hometown when he saves her father-in-law, Arthur. They even go to a restaurant and a movie theatre together. Unlike her fellow native whites, she is not prejudiced of him. She rents her rooms for the immigrants who find it hard to rent a decent living space. This shows that there are such people who are in favour of the immigrants. But it is just a minority of the population. The majority of the natives are against the natives and create an uncomfortable space around them.

Queenie’s relationship with Hortense’ cousin Michael, a Jamaican RAF personnel, is also another evidence to her “recognition” of the immigrants. She also gives birth to their biracial child. However, she knows that she wouldn’t be able to raise her child in a society which is staunchly against the blacks. We see in the novel that Queenie begs Gilbert and Hortense to adopt her child in order to protect the child and herself which doesn’t allow a black among Thomas 48 the whites. The child doesn’t belong to the white part of England, but the black. Thus it again falls back to the “misrecognition” or the negligence of the black/coloured immigrants.

These incidents of “misrecognition” in the novel therefore, as opined by Taylor, affects the identity of the immigrants. They themselves come to a partial realization that they do not belong in this place. Paul Gilroy talks about ‘doubleness’ or ‘double consciousness’ of black subjectivity in the context of ‘modern black political culture’ emphasising that the constitutive experience of modern diasporic identities is that of being ‘in the west but not of it’ (Selden). This double consciousness of the self has affected Gilbert and Hortense, where they are conflicted in the sense of their belonging in Britain.

Stuart Hall, in the context of Caribbean diaspora, opines that identity is a “‘production which is never complete, always in process, and always constituted within, not outside, representation” (222). He asks to not think of identity as an “already accomplished fact” (Hall

222). Thus this fluidity of identity affects the immigrants whose identities are not complete or accomplished. They go through identity construction in the diasporic space. The newly arrived immigrants require a healthy and amiable environment for this. Yet this wouldn’t be the case in many diasporas. Therefore, the nation’s policy of immigrant integration is crucial.

The Multicultural policy in Britain, which was introduced keeping this in mind therefore favours integration in the form of co - existence.

W. E. B. Du Bois and Paul Gilroy proposed that the immigrant acquire a double consciousness, an inner conflict due to subjugation in the dominant host nation. According to

Du Bois, double consciousness is the inner conflict seen as joining of two souls “in one black body” (Gilroy 161). And thus, in the multicultural Britain where, the Caribbean immigrant is subjected to racism and discrimination, the immigrant’s identity is fractured were the inner Thomas 49 conflict of ‘doubleness’ arises. The feeling of non-belonging to the mainstream society is built up among the immigrants. The immigrant identity is affected in several ways.

The fragmented narrative structure of the novel also reflects the fragmented selves of the immigrant characters. The immigrants identified themselves as both Caribbean and British.

However badly they were treated in their mother country, they choose to stay. Gilbert and

Hortense are forced to integrate into the mainstream British culture. Their Caribbean native culture is not well received in the nation.

2.4 Shaping of the Immigrant Identity

Gilbert towards the end of the novel asserts on his identity and his assurance of staying in

Britain, when he says “You and me, fighting for empire, fighting for peace. But still, after all that we suffer together, you wan’ tell me I am worthless and you are not. And I to be the servant and you are the master for all time? No. Stop this, man. […] We can work together,

Mr Bligh. You no see? We must. Or else you just gonna fight me till the end?” (525). Here,

Gilbert and Hortense holds onto his Caribbean identity and the acquired British identity. As

Kim Evelyn notes on the idea of home and belonging in The Small Island, she argues that the domestic spaces in the novel “become spaces of promise and security as characters fight to claim them, keep them, and use them as diasporic hubs where they can maintain dignity in the face of discrimination” (131). This shows that the immigrants accepts a hyphenated identity for themselves which allows them to belong to both the cultures and nations. This could be identified as a third space, where the interaction of the immigrants happen in a duality.

Duboin discusses Levy’s metaphoric use of the stairwell in Queenie’s house as a “liminal space” (19; Bhabha 4) in her article Contested Identities : Migrant Stories and Liminal Selves in Andrea Levy’s Small Island. She notes that the stairwell to Gilbert and Hortense’ one room rental “exemplifies in a fictional way identity transformation in relation to the Other and the Thomas 50 process of becoming, undergone by new arrivants like Hortense at Queenie’s” (19). She explains that the dark stairwell “is a transitional space of ambiguity and uncertainty” (19), where the positioning of Hortense and Gilbert, the immigrants, in the mainstream British society is in a state of ambiguity. Then their confined one room could be read as a marginalized space (19). However, Hortense and Gilbert, reconcile with this unfortunate situation and use it as a space of interaction with the whites. They accepts this liminal space they are in.

Bhabha, in his “Location of Culture” introduces this concept of “in-between” in the context of postcolonial discourse. What Homi K. Bhabha claims about the salient feature of colonial culture is its hybridity, it’s “in betweenness” and “liminality”. He calls this liminal space between two worlds or cultures of the colonizer or colonized as the “Third space of enunciation” (Bhabha 54). Gilbert and Hortense in the novel, locates their identity in this third space where the Caribbean identity and the British identity are held together. From a conflicted and confused state of identity they evolve to this hyphenated identity of Caribbean-

British.

Bic Ngo, in his essay “Beyond Culture Clash” Understandings of Immigrant Experiences”, looks at culture and identity as dynamic. He uses the theories of Hall and Bhabha to explain this. The cultural studies theorists Stuart Hall and Homi K. Bhabha, in their works explain culture and identity and shows that they are in motion, with a continuing progression of change. Hall and Bhabha therefore rejects the singularity of cultural identity, where the cultural identity is one single identity with a shared culture (Hall 1990). Ngo, referring to their works, continues to say that, the construction of identity is based on discourse, representation, and power play (Hall 1996). Pointing to Hall’s work, he says that cultural identity is a consequence of delineation in social relations. As Hall notes, “identities are constructed within, not outside discourse” (4). He continues to say that identities are to be Thomas 51 understood as created in specific times and within peculiar practices, with effective strategies.

Because identity is constructed through the “play of specific modalities of power, and thus are more the product of the marking of difference and exclusion” (Hall 4), identity is a positioning—political and negotiated (Ngo 4).

Hall, in his essay, Cultural Identity and Diaspora, observes that identities are social and cultural formations and constructions that are subject to differences in time and place.

According to him, there are two kinds of cultural identity. The first one is a shared identity, where one could connect to his/ her community with the common ancestry and ancestry

(223). Hall’s notion of a shared identity therefore reflects the common cultural codes and the historical experiences of a group, thereby making an individual be a part of the community.

In The Small Island, the immigrants, i.e., Gilbert and Hortense confirm their hyphenated identity by detaching themselves from the mainstream society and its attitude towards them.

Sibley quotes Roger Kimball, an Ameican cultural critic, where he discusses the hyphenated identity in the context of America: “... hyphenated identities are not merely descriptive, but also prescriptive. That is to say, they intimate a divided allegiance, a hesitant loyalty. “The multicultural passion for hyphenation is not simply a fondness for syntactical novelty. It also speaks of a commitment to the centrifugal force of anti-American tribalism.” Substitute “anti-

American” for “anti-western” and you have the long-term consequence of radical multiculturalism” (5).

Multiculturalism, as opposed to assimilation, is a concept that facilitate the integration of immigrants to the society. According to C. W. Watson, the word ‘multicultural’ “create not just a sense of differences, but also to recognize those differences as springing from a universally shared attachment of importance to culture and to an implicit acknowledgement of the equality of all cultures” (2). The Small Island stands as a complete negation of this notion of multiculturalism, which is an irony in itself, where the ethnic minorities, here, the Thomas 52 black Caribbean immigrants, are not recognized as its citizens. Yet, the immigrants themselves try to negotiate their identity in this failed multicultural space.

Thomas 53

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Thomas 56

Chapter 3

Multicultural Dilemma in Fruit of the Lemon

Andrea Levy, in her initial novels Every Light in the House Burnin′ (1994), Never Far from Nowhere (1996) and Fruit of the Lemon (1999) presents the second generation immigrants and their lives as the Caribbean- British in the white dominated British society.

Levy is keen on telling the stories she is familiar with-- her life, the people, the surroundings, and so on. She wanted to share her experiences and the experiences of those around her, as seen in all her novels. Every Light in the House Burnin′ is an emotional journey which tells the story of a Caribbean immigrant family consisting of a father, mother, and four children.

The novel revolves around the familial issues of the strained relationships, sickness, and so on. It doesn’t go on to talk about racism or immigration issues. While, the second novel

Never Far from Nowhere moves a step ahead by discussing the racial discrimination and identity issues among the second generation Caribbean immigrants. The novel is about two sisters, daughters of Caribbean immigrant parents, who are constantly reminded of their differences due to the colour of their skin.

Levy’s third novel Fruit of the Lemon also discusses this theme of the conflicting experiences of a second generation immigrant Faith in Britain, which she considers her home.

The novel, set in 1970s Thatcher era of England, follows through the life of Faith, the tensions in her identity and belonging in her ‘home’ of Britain, and her journey in search of her roots. It is sectioned in England, Jamaica, and then back to England. The novel is Faith’s discovery of the self, her ancestry and heritage. She redefines her identity through this journey to Jamaica, journey to her past. Thomas 57

Faith, the protagonist of the novel, is the daughter of Wade and Mildred Jackson, the first generation Caribbean immigrants who sailed to England on a banana boat. Faith and her brother Carl were brought up with not much knowledge of Jamaica, where their parents came from. Therefore she is shocked at their parents’ decision to go back to Jamaica. The first part of the novel set in England engage with Faith’s life in England where she has a job in BBC and shares flat with her friends who are all white. Faith, who never thought of herself as

‘black’ suddenly get exposed to her ‘blackness’ with the racism she faces at work and the unempathetic attitude of her friends. In the wake of the racism she faces, Faith is conflicted in her identity as a British. A country she thought was hers suddenly rejects her as the ‘other’.

She is ignorant of her Jamaican ancestry as well, which leads to her identity crisis.

Devastated by this, she falls into desolation when her parents suggest her to visit Jamaica.

Part two set in Jamaica unravels the past of her parents and the history of her ancestors. A world that is hers, but was unknown to her opens for her in the land of Jamaica. Towards the end of the novel, Faith, after familiarizing her Jamaican ancestry, accepts herself having a dual identity that of the British and the Caribbean. She therefore takes up a hyphenated identity.

The novel attests to several autobiographical elements from Andrea Levy’s life. Her parents being the Windrush generation immigrants from the Caribbean, her experiences of living as a black in Britain is reflected in Faith in the novel. In her essay This is My England,

Levy recalls her childhood: “I was educated to be English. Alongside me - learning, watching, eating and playing - were white children. But those white children would never have to grow up to question whether they were English or not...... I wanted just to fit in and be part of everything that was around me, and these strange parents were holding me back.”

The state of feeling different and being treated different in one’s own country can be conflicting. Levy, here shows how conflicted she was growing up in England as the child of Thomas 58 black immigrants. In the novel, Fruit of the Lemon, the protagonist Faith shows this identical clash of a black second generation immigrant in the white dominated England.

The chapter delves into the novel Fruit of the Lemon to unearth the faultlines of multiculturalism in Britain through the changing perspectives of the first generation and second generation immigrant experiences of racism and discrimination which causes rootlessness in the immigrant and in turn, creates a conflicted identity. The chapter also looks into the differences of experiences of the first generation and second generation immigrants in the multicultural Britain and the different ways they cope with it. The study intends to use the theories of “double consciousness” by Paul Gilroy and Caryl Phillips’ “high anxiety of belonging” to show the state of belonging of a black Caribbean immigrant in the white dominated British society. Homi K. Bhabha’s theory of “liminal identity” also helps to prove this where the identity crisis of the immigrant arises from this state of “liminality” or

“inbetweenness”. Stuart Hall’s theory of identity is essential to the study as it is relevant in the Caribbean context. The study also uses the theories on multiculturalism by Charles Taylor and Bikhu Parekh to discuss the expectations and realities of multiculturalism in Britain as presented in the novel.

The Second World War had a great impact on the British society, where there had been a lack of resources and people to rebuild the nation. The people from its commonwealth nations were requested to come to the mother country for labour. The inflow of the people was in larger numbers which led to the rise of multiculturalism in Britain. People from different nations and ethnicities came under a big vast roof called Britain in need of jobs and better lives.

According to Floya Anthias and Nira Yuval-Davis, Thomas 59

Multiculturalism emerged as a result of the realization originally in the USA, and

then in Britain, that the melting pot doesn’t melt, and that ethnic and racial

divisions get reproduced from generation to generation. Multiculturalism

constructs society as composed of a hegemonic homogenous majority, and small

unmeltable minorities with their own essentially different communities and

cultures which have to be understood, accepted and basically left alone – since

their differences are compatible with the hegemonic culture – in order for the

society to have harmonious relations (qtd. in Hesse 7).

Multiculturalism and melting pot are different policies to create a harmony within the diverse ethnicities residing in a single space. Melting pot asks the people to assimilate into one culture, where their own culture and traditions are left out. Whereas, multiculturalism offers the freedom to practice one’s culture. Therefore, the British government introduced the policy of multiculturalism in order to control the multiethnic population of the country. The

British Home Secretary, Roy Jenkins is one of the policymakers of Britain who embraced the idea of multiculturalism. Jenkins proposes: “I do not think we need in this country a ‘melting pot’, which will turn everyone out in a common mould, as one of a series of carbon copies of someone’s misplaced vision of the stereotyped Englishman... I define integration, therefore, not as a flattening process of uniformity, but cultural diversity, coupled with equality of opportunity in an atmosphere of mutual tolerance” (qtd. in Crowder 3). Jenkins here explains the clear goal behind the introduction of multicultural policy in Britain that it was to ease the tension of multiple ethnicities in the nation and to provide the immigrants with equal opportunities.

But not many were happy with this. Several others, the policymakers as well as the common people among the native Britishers, did not welcome this idea of multiculturalism, where they had to accept other cultures and live in harmony. The multicultural policy gave Thomas 60 way to racial tensions and riots. There were conflicts among the natives and the immigrants.

This continued in the 1970s as well where, the immigrants were discriminated and treated as second class citizens. Andrea Levy sets her novel, Fruit of the Lemon in the 1970s where in spite of the existing laws against discrimination at workplace and racism, the attitudes towards immigrants were unjustifiably wrong.

Therefore, multiculturalism brought about a sense of division as opposed to its idea of co- existence of different cultures and ethnicities. Multiculturalism is a policy which was introduced to bring about a liberal integration in societies with people from multiple cultural and national backgrounds. It had been evidently adopted in several countries like Britain,

Canada, Australia, Sweden, and so on. Yet, the question of multiculturalism being the effective and efficient tool for the integration of immigrants has been debateable among many critics of multiculturalism. Multiculturalism has its elements of integration and division in itself. Looking at it from the integration point of view, it allows and strives for the harmonious existence of different cultures, ethnicities, religions, and nationalities in one society or nation. Whereas a division is created in such a multiculturalist society when there are conflicts among the natives and the immigrants, where the natives are unable to accept the immigrants’ cultures and ways. Racism is a significant example to show that the differences are unwelcomed, when the immigrants are treated as the ‘other’ and as not belonging to the society. For this reason, multiculturalism as a policy seems difficult to be implemented in societies.

This is the dilemma of multiculturalism where the immigrants are discriminated for their cultural difference and the colour of their skin. They are rejected if they hold on to their cultural and ethnic difference according to the concept of multiculturalism, and are also rejected when they try to assimilate to the mainstream British society. In any way, they are shunned by the mainstream society. This dilemma causes an identity conflict in every Thomas 61 immigrant. But there is a generational difference in the clash of identity. For the first generation immigrants, here in the case of Caribbean immigrants, Caribbean is their homeland and Britain their mother country, which is also the host land. Many first generation immigrants even pampers the dream of returning home. They therefore are not very much fond of Britain after the torment they had to face in the nation. They are the ‘other’ although they hold a citizenship. This is one of the causes for the dilemma of multiculturalism. But for the second generation immigrants, the children of these first generation immigrants who are born and brought up in Britain, it is their home. Thus it is the feeling of these second generation immigrants not belonging to one’s own country that arises from being treated as the ‘other’ in your country that could add to the dilemma.

3.1 Multicultural tensions: Racism, Discrimination, and Othering

Lemon tree very pretty

And the lemon flower is sweet

But the fruit of the poor lemon

Is impossible to eat - Will Holt (Lemon Tree)

The title of the novel, Fruit of the Lemon, alludes to the song by Will Holt which inspired

Andrea Levy. It is a folk song which directs its meaning towards the fruit of the beautiful lemon tree being inedible, that though the tree is visually appealing to the eye, the fruit’s taste is unbearably bitter to eat. Though Will Holt wrote the song to describe love, here Levy uses it as a metaphor to describe the life of immigrants in England. Levy recalls that her mother used to sing the song to her as a child. The refrain of the song serves as an epigraph to the novel which directs us into the life of the second generation Caribbean immigrant, Faith.

Levy declares: “The island is beautiful but its history is unpalatable. I, too, am a fruit of the Thomas 62 lemon. The bastard child of the Empire” (Prasad). Here, Levy directly refers to ‘Britain’ as the ‘lemon’ and the ‘Caribbean immigrants’ as the fruit. The novel thus confirms to the bitterness of the lemon to the bitter life of the Caribbean immigrants, the bitterness of racism

Faith encounters in Britain, the land she calls her home. Therefore, evidently, the novel exposes the ironies of multiculturalism in the then British society.

Multiculturalism is a concept that is celebrated in Britain, which shouts out the free practice of culture, nationality, and religion. It supposedly welcomes differences. Yet, the reality of multiculturalism is diverted from this idea. As Kenan Malik, an Indian-born British- bred writer observes:

The irony of multiculturalism is that, as a political process, it undermines what is

valuable about cultural diversity. Diversity is important, not in and of itself, but

because it allows us to expand our horizons, to compare and contrast different

values, beliefs and lifestyles, and make judgements upon them. In other words,

because it allows us to engage in political dialogue and debate that can help create

more universal values and beliefs, and a collective language of citizenship. But it

is precisely such dialogue and debate, and the making of such judgements, that

contemporary multiculturalism attempts to suppress in the name of 'tolerance' and

'respect' (Against Multiculturalism).

Malik, in his essay Against Multiculturalism, argues that the multiculturalist approach of claiming diversity denies equality to those involved. Racism and multiculturalism could be discussed side by side because when multiculturalism arose as a solution to thwart racism, multiculturalism itself created another problem of division and restriction. Through multiculturalism, the immigrants are being constrained to one’s own community and being separated from the British society. Andrea Levy’s novel, therefore can be identified to an idea Thomas 63 similar to this where this division among the people creates discrimination and whereby, they are not allowed to belong to one unified nation.

The Caribbean immigrants in Britain, as evident in Fruit of the Lemon are treated as the

‘other’ by majority of the white British population. They are discriminated everywhere in their own country based on the colour of their skin. In the novel, when Faith and her brother

Carl go into a white dominated area to look at a used car for Faith, they are greeted with a shocked expression by the owner, a white woman. She didn’t expect blacks at her door. The woman seemed very suspicious of them that she was watchful of every action of theirs. This is an instance that shows how discrimination is normalised in the British society.

The novel presents the sentiments of both the first generation and second generation

Caribbean immigrants on being ‘othered’ and how it influences the construction of their identity in the diaspora. “Othering”, is a concept emerged in postcolonial theory, which aids in the study of the relationship between the colonizer and the colonized. Here, in the context of multiculturalism, it helps to identify the relationship between the natives and the immigrants, where racism and discrimination is prevelant as presented in the novel.

‘Othering’ of the immigrant characters in Britain causes a conflict in their identity, causing alienation and rootedlessness, where they question their own identity and positioning in the diasporic space.

The novel begins with Faith’s narration of her encounter with racism as a child, “Faith is a darkie and her mum and dad came on a banana boat” (3), the boys at school bullied her. “So it was a bit of a shock when Mum told me:, ‘We came on a banana boat to England, your dad and me. The Jamaica Producers’ banana boat’. The little boys were right” (3). She was shocked to hear that her parents really came on a banana boat, but she is a little relieved when her mother told her that it was a proper ship with cabins and other amenities and not like how Thomas 64 she imagined it to be. Faith says that she hated lessons on slavery in school as she felt them teasing her saying her parents are slaves who came on a slave ship. She was unsettled and self-conscious from the remarks of her schoolmates:

I remembered the illustrations of slave ships from my history lessons. There was

the shape of a boat with the black pattern of tiny people laid in rows as

convenient and space-saving as possible....Slaves in a slave ship. We had to write

essays telling the facts – how the slaves were captured then transported from

Africa to the New World....I hated those lessons. Although there were no small

boys laughing and pointing, I felt them. ‘Your mum and dad came on a slave

ship,’ they would say. ‘They are slaves’ (4).

Faith’s uneasiness of her Caribbean heritage and her parents’ origin is evident here, where she always felt that she was an outsider in the group – the other. Caryl Phillips’ concept of

“High anxiety of belonging” that emerges from Paul Gilroy’s “double consciousness” becomes relevant here. Caryl Phillips, one among the major Caribbean- British writers, has discussed, in his The European Tribe and A New World Order, the identity and belonging of

Caribbeans in the British diaspora. His observations, being rooted from his personal experiences of growing up as a Caribbean- British in Britain, finds its impact on Levy’s novel. According to Phillips, he was always anxious of his identity as a black and British

(Muukkonen 77).

Faith here, goes through the same anxiety of belonging all along her life which is evident in her choice of friends. Her friends, all of them being white Britishers and her conscious negligence of her black identity reveals her “high anxiety of belonging” in the British society.

Levy shares a similar experience of this concern to belong to the majority, in her essay

This is My England. In spite of being lived her life and educated as English, she was the odd Thomas 65 one out among the white children at school. She says that they saw Jamaica as a place “full of inferior black people”. “I was embarrassed that my parents were not English”. As a child,

Levy, like Faith, was an outsider among her white friends and was discomfited at her non- white parents. She herself having been encountered several incidents where her identity was questioned, her characters too go through the same ordeals as we see in the novel. Living in a white Britain with the rejection of native population, where the immigrants are the minorities can be stressful for the immigrants themselves.

Multiculturalism in England therefore was not a success. The numerous instances in the novel attest to this fact. The blacks were treated as inferior to the British. Faith’s friend

Marion’s dad is seen as a racist in the novel. There is a scene in the novel where black

Caribbean man’s excellent act at the pub was sneered at by Marion’s dad. According to

Marion, him being racist towards the blacks was a “cultural thing” (93). Marion’s dad mocked the black man merely for the colour of his skin being black. The narrow mindset of the working-class Britishers is evident here, where their culture do not approve of the blacks or does not allow their inclusion. This instance shows that racism is normalised in the British society where it is alright to contempt a person for the colour of his/her skin and the ethnicity of the individual.

Racism at workplace was another grave issue during 1970s where they were treated poorly or differently. The black Caribbean immigrants were given menial jobs in spite of their better qualifications. They mostly stayed at the lowest rank at work without being promoted. In the novel, Faith is subjected to discrimination at work. In her interview at BBC, her workplace for the job as a dresser, she is discriminated for the colour of her skin. The first question was where her parents came from, to which she answered “The Caribbean”. This shows their interest in her racial background rather than her academic qualifications. As the interview progresses, they are trying to reject her using illogical reasons saying she walks slow, have a Thomas 66 tendency to be argumentative and so on, in spite of her being overqualified for the job. This establishes their unwillingness to hire her. This she realizes and take courage to ask them if it’s because they don’t like to have black people dressing. This tensed them up where they repeatedly denied the accusation and said: “There is no discrimination going on in this department.....There is absolutely no question of racial or any other prejudice going on here”

(109). Their repetition of the denial confirms to their act of discrimination as true. There was, in fact, racial discrimination towards the blacks. For Faith’s colleague, Henry, the interview was “very, very funny”, while for Faith it was humiliating and distressing. This shows that how the white Britons are insensitive towards this discrimination against the black immigrants.

Fruit of the Lemon is set in the 1970s England when Britain’s multiculturalism was on a decline and racism and discrimination against the Caribbean immigrants still prevailed. The

British government however tried to address the issue by introducing a Commission for

Racial Equality in 1976 (Sutherland 29). It attempted to resolve racial discrimination by making racism at workplace illegal where employers who discriminated against coloured employees were to be prosecuted (Sutherland 30). Yet, multiculturalism was failing due to the lack of intervention and follow up of the law. The Thatcherite government was leaning towards ‘assimilation’ rather than multiculturalism.

Her race always followed Faith, where her being black was pointed out. In the opinion of her tutor, she was offered her first job for being the only black person in the course. “Your work has an ethnicity which shines through, a sort of African or South American feel which is obviously part of you”, her tutor said (31). Faith has never been to Jamaica, her parents’ home country nor she has been told tales about Jamaica, which makes her ignorant of her

Caribbean origin. So it is evident that her works would not emit her ethnic heritage. Here, it shows that the colour of her skin and her racial identity were the concluding factors that Thomas 67 landed her the job. In another instance, her friend Simon’s mother says: “Doesn’t she look exotic?” on putting a flower on Faith’s hat (125). Edward Said’s Orientalism notes the west’s attribution of the ‘orient’ to the exotic, mysterious and supernatural elements. He says that

“The Orient was almost a European invention, and had been since antiquity a place of romance, exotic beings, haunting memories and landscapes, remarkable experiences” (9).

Although Simon’s mother all along seems to not be concerned about Faith being a black

Caribbean, her ingrained western mind of the non-west as the ‘other’ is evident here. Both the instances show how the pretentious west attitude, where they admiringly look at the non- white features as exotic.

In another situation, on her visit to an old English pub in Simon’s hometown, Andrew

Bunyan, an acquaintance of Simon’s family, a little surprised at seeing her, asks Faith which country she is from. This she has been asked several times. When he learns that her parents are from Jamaica, he talks about his recent trip to Jamaica and recounts an incident with a

Jamaican man who hires boat for tourists. His description of the man’s colour was insensitive, when he said: “Down his back to waist. And black ...black! ...Darker than you, my dear...” (130). Here, the white man is asserting his superiority over Faith and the

Jamaican man based on the color of the skin. The dark skin colour, according to the west thought, is associated with negative elements such as evil, dirty, and uncivilized, while the light skin color attribute to purity and civilization. Andrew intentionally commented on the colour of the Jamaican man’s and Faith’s skin without even being apologetic which shows his thinking that it is okay to be offensive or insulting, that it is okay to be inhumane because they are coloured. He continues his tale to say that the man and he had the same last name,

Bunyan, which amazed him. Faith, unable to hold her anger, replies “...that would have been his slave name...Your family probably owned his family once” (131), which he found offensive and insulting. The white guilt of slavery did strike on his consciousness once. The Thomas 68 discrimination based on the colour of one’s skin is termed as “colorism”. “Colorism”, a term coined by Alice Walker, defines colorism as “prejudicial or preferential treatment of same- race people based solely on their color” (Tharps). Here, the white man has already judged the black man as an inferior being based on the colour of his skin. He is therefore the inferior

‘other’ in relation to the white man.

The notion of the ‘other’ is universal, where it is explained in terms of the ‘self’ and the

‘other’, where the ‘self’ is centre or subject and anything that is not ‘self’ is the other. The concept of the ‘other’, therefore is relative and continues to alter depending on the context.

As emerged in the context of colonizer-colonized, in the concept of ‘Othering’, the ‘other’ is used to denote the inferior. The other is therefore always at the margins. According to Gayatri

Spivak, ‘othering’ is a multidimensional process which can be read into various types of social discrimination.

Jensen, in his Othering, identity formation and agency, discusses the concept of othering and formation of identity in ethnic minorities. For Spivak, “the process of othering is classed and raced as well as gendered”. Therefore othering is a way of dealing with an aspect and not an alternative to racism/sexism or class (65). Othering, therefore could be looked at as a a consequence of racism, classism, or other diascrimination in the course of the formation of identity of the ethnic minorities, here the Caribbean immigrants. Thus, in the context of othering, the immigrants are offered this subordinate or inferior position by the natives who are in the superior position. The natives are at the centre when the immigrants are marginalized and are the other.

Othering, as Lister defines, is a “process of differentiation and demarcation, by which the line is drawn between ’us’ and ’them’ – between the more and the less powerful – and through which social distance is established and maintained” (qtd. in Jensen 65). Othering, Thomas 69 hence creates differences among people and are dehumanized as seen from the many instances in the novel. As Jensen defines: “othering is a conscious process by which powerful groups, who may or may not make up a majority, define subordinate groups into existence in a reductionist way which ascribe problematic and/or inferior characteristics to these subordinate groups” (65). On reading the text through this idea of othering, it will help to identify its influence on the identity of the immigrants in the mainstream British society, particularly that of Faith.

Faith is being treated as the ‘other’ in her own home country for the colour of her skin and for the place of her origin. The white superiority is evident in all these confrontations, where they assume it is all right to discriminate and humiliate her, for the colour of her skin is black.

They are unable to accept Faith as part of England when it is her home country. The racial

‘othering’ in the multicultural Britain is intense as presented in the novel.

3.2 Generational Differences: Identity and Belonging

The first generation and second generation immigrants belonging to the Caribbean diaspora in Britain have diverse feelings towards the British society. Andrea Levy, in her interview with Blake Morrisson shares the need to bring forward these diverse feelings:

I mean I always got the feeling of my parents being uneasy in this society, uneasy

and not quite understanding, and as a child I always felt -- I don’t know whether

other immigrant children feel this -- that sometimes I had to parent them because

I understood where I lived and the people I lived amongst, more than they did.

That’s been very important to me, to bring that story and their parents’ story and

their parents’ parents’ story into the mainstream of British culture -- so that we

know those stories too, and understand those people (Levy 329). Thomas 70

Levy here affirms to the significance and necessity of bringing the stories of different generations. She wants those stories to be a part of the mainstream British culture and history, where it is essential that everyone knows about how her parents and other migrants came to

Britian, their sentiments for their mother country Britain, and their lives in the diaspora.

The first generation and second generation Caribbean immigrants’ view on their identity and belonging in England, as presented in the novel, differs in many aspects. Faith and her brother Carl were ignorant of their parents’ past and of Jamaica. She says: “My mum and dad never talked about their lives before my brother Carl and I were born” (4). Wade and

Mildred wanted their children to grow up as Britishers, for which they deliberately did not recount their past in Jamaica or their migration to Britain. Their conscious attempt to forget the painful past of disillusionment and discrimination of migration is seen here. Her mother threw her “little scraps of the past” which she would piece together like a game of

Consequences .. “fold the paper and pass it on” until she had a story that seemed to make sense (4-5). Her mother briefly talked about her life in Jamaica, her meeting Faith’s Dad, their migration to Britain and the life thereafter.

For Faith’s parents, their life in post-war England was dreadful and unimaginable. Wade and Mildred lived in “one room in a large dark house” with Wade’s brother. The housing condition is similar to Hortense’ and Gilbert’s in The Small Island. This was the condition of most of the Caribbeans who migrated to England. Mildred says: “I never thought I’d end up living like that in England”. Mildred was trained to be a nurse in Jamaica, where in England she got a job as an orderly in the hospital. She was disappointed, “I wanted to go home”, she says. They struggled to survive in England. She had to train as a nurse to qualify for a job in

England. After the birth of Carl, Mildred and Carl moved to a “halfway house” from the council when Wade stayed in a hostel. Later they moved to a small flat from the council,

“The flat was on a small estate and inside the tiny flat every wall was painted dark brown” Thomas 71

(10). It reflected the dreary and dull post-war England. Wade, but, revamped the whole place with pink and blue paints and hand-tinted photographs, which made it “lovely inside”, according to Mildred (11). The council housing from the British government provided the immigrants accomodations due to the impending need for better living conditions. Andrea

Levy herself grew up in a council estate in Highbury, London.

This mere act of stripping down the brown walls and painting them pink and blue subtly suggests that they are not ready to break ties with their home, Jamaica and not completely integrate into the British society. Her mum continues about their life which by and by improved with her getting a job as a district nurse and her father worked by himself and not under anyone, which helped them buy a house. The first generation immigrants had to go through the pain of setting up a home in England which many second generation immigrants were unaware of, like Faith and her brother. Therefore their idea of identity and belonging differs from that of the latter.

Being a second generation immigrant who was born and brought up in England, Faith considers herself British and do not see herself as different. She shares a flat with her friends who are all white. According to her brother Carl, she doesn’t hang out with blacks. This concerns her father, he asks Faith: “Faith – your friends, any of them your own kind?...... Coloured?” (29). Her father wants her to mingle among other Caribbean immigrants where she could identify with them. Faith, but has no interest in her black identity. Faith intentionally ignores her father’s concern which shows that she does not want to acknowledge herself as different from her friends. She is trying to assimilate into the mainstream British culture, which at times alienate her. Faith wanted to belong among her white friends, wanted to be acknowledged in the dominated white society, ignoring her

Jamaican identity. Thomas 72

Parekh, in his Rethinking multiculturalism, explains the meaning and idea of national identity. He says, that it “is about whether we identify with a community, see it as ours, are attached to it, and feel bonded to our fellow-members in a way in which we are not bonded to outsiders” (40). When looked at the novel in the light of this thought, Faith, unlike her parents, are connected to the native white British community as she identify herself as

British. This is evident from the attitude of Faith’s parents where they disconnect themselves from the natives by dividing the people of the British society they live in as the whites and

‘our kind’. But, for Faith, the division is not according to race or ethnicity, but education and class. This is one of the major differences in the outlook of the first generation and second generation Caribbean immigrants in Britain. For Faith’s parents, Jamaica is their homeland and they have never felt at home in England. They are always the outsider, the ‘other’.

Her life with her white friends makes her forget her black identity, which made her see her brother as a stranger among her white friends. She says:

He stood large and dark in the doorway to the room...For a brief moment as he

stood looking around the room at my friends I saw my brother as a stranger. A

tall man in faded jeans and a brown scuffed leather jacket. A big man – with a

brown complexion that was pock-marked round the temples from adolescent

acne. A black man with a round head of afro hair that was too long so the back

ended in a hard wedge on his shirt collar instead of tapering into his neck (53).

Faith’s constant association with her white friends has made her look at her brother as a strange black man. His presence reminds her of her own blackness, which she doesn’t want to accept. Faith’s sentiments of assimilation can be associated with Caryl

Phillips’ idea of “high anxiety of belonging”, the double existence of being black and

British is an anxious state for Phillips. Thomas 73

On the other hand, unlike Faith, her brother Carl and his girlfriend Ruth voices out against the atrocities against the blacks in England. Being second generation immigrants in England, they do not try to integrate into the British society like Faith. Carl tells his mother, “we are

Black” and should act accordingly (143). When his mother tries to assimilate and be like the

British, Carl reminds her of their black identity. Ruth, being a child of a white mother and a

Guyanese student, with a family of a white mother, white stepfather and two white half brothers, holds on to her black identity. She identifies herself as black and that is her choice.

This surety is also seen in Carl who is proud of his black identity.

Caryl Phillips, one of the prominent Black British writers from Caribbean diaspora notes his experience in his A New World Order that the second generation Caribbean immigrants were being subjected to the prejudices experienced by their parents when they arrived in

Britain. He says that their parents suffered the humiliation and atrocity because they held on to that dream of going back home to the Caribbean one day. But in their case, for the second generation black immigrants, they were already at home. England was their home and nowhere else (Kato 10). The second generation immigrants had to fight back to stay in their own home, which resulted in the Notting hill riots.

Here, Phillips points out the difference in attitude of the first and second generation

Caribbean immigrants in the British society. For most first generation Caribbean immigrants, Jamaica was still their home, they had the thought of returning home always like Faith’s parents, Wade and Mildred, in the novel. While for the second generation Britain was their home, and not anywhere else. But they also couldn’t put up with the discrimination and prejudice they had to face in the British society. The

Notting Hill riots Phillips refers to here was a race rebellion happened between the black Caribbean immigrant youth and the whites. The rebellions happened in the proud multicultural nation, where they boasted of the many cultures existing together. This Thomas 74 riot explains the relationship between the natives and the immigrants, particularly the

West Indian or Caribbean community. The position of the Caribbean immigrants in the

British society was uncertain.

Carl and Ruth in the novel is representative of the second generation Caribbean youths who wanted to mark their position in Britain, their home and not succumbing to the whites. Ruth questions the discrimination at Faith’s workplace. When she hears that

Faith could probably be the first black dresser they’ve had, she says: “They shouldn’t be allowed to get away with something like that. They think – these white men – that just because we’re black, we’re stupid. They think they can treat us like dirt” (140).

This shows the strong will of hers to fight back and claim ownership to her home,

England. She also asks Faith if she has complained about this to the higher authority.

When Faith says that eventually she got the job, Ruth says that it is tokenism where she was employed to shut her up and so they could say that they have a black person and continue the discrimination. Ruth is like an activist who questions the unjustifiable actions against the blacks, she says: “It’s racism, you were the victim of racism, Faith.

Those white men have not done you a favour” (141). Even at this point, Faith doesn’t make an effort to understand the discrimination faced by her and other blacks.

For Faith, her “anxiety of belonging” is holding her back. She is unable to confront this fact that she is a victim of racism and that she has been discriminated all along. She suffers from the fear of not belonging. All her friends and colleagues being whites, she fears being excluded from them. This is one of the realities of a second generation immigrant who grew up believing this is his/her home and eventually being ostracized for not belonging to this same ‘home’. Thomas 75

Faith’s parents are planning to move back to Jamaica. For them, home is Jamaica and not

Britain. Unlike Faith, for whom Britain is home. Faith is shocked at their desire to return home. She thinks: “..why Jamaica? Why is Jamaica home?” (45). Jamaica has never come into their lives until now, which surprised her. Levy here shows the disparity in the idea of

‘home’ for the first generation immigrants and the second generation immigrants.

Stuart Hall, in his Cultural Identity and Diaspora notes that “for most diasporans the return to the homeland is metaphorical, existing in what Edward Said perceives as the ‘imaginative geography and history’” (qtd. in Ramraj 215). The “diasporans may not want actually to return home, wherever the dispersal has left them they retain a conscious or subconscious attachment to traditions, customs, values, religions, and languages of the ancestral home “

(Ramraj 215). For those in the diaspora, that dream of going back home is always there that gives them strength to survive the difficulties in the diaspora. Yet, here, Faith’s parents have decided to go back home to Jamaica, where they are trying to realise this imagination or dream of returning home.

3.3 Questioning Identity and Culture: In search of roots

There is an instance in the novel where Faith, when among her white friends at a pub, sees a black poet and becomes conscious of her black identity. She says:

He was black. Marion looked at me and winked...I became aware that the poet

and me were the only black people in the room. I looked around again – it was

now a room of white people...The poet became my dad, my brother, he was the

unknown black faces in our photo album, he was the old man on the bus who

called me sister, the man in the bank with the strong Trinidadian accent who

could not make himself understood. He was every black man – ever (91). Thomas 76

As seen in the novel, this sudden reflection of Faith on the commonality and shared experience with the black man based on their race comes as a new experience for her.

She perceives the poet as the representative of ‘every black man’, where she reflects on her identity as a black. This experience can be seen as one of the trigger elements that led her to the conscious feeling that she is different from her friends.

In the novel, Faith is desperately trying to belong to the mainstream society by not admitting to the discrimination she faces. She was not given any work for weeks from the time she started her job as a dresser, from which it was understood that the reason was she being a black. Faith pretends that is not the reason:

I had to stop myself from thinking that the reason I was not in the studio dressing

rooms, prodding and poking actors into their costumes, was because... ‘Let me

assure you now, Faith, that there is no absolutely no question of racial or any

other prejudice going on here.’ ....I had to stop myself from thinking before I

heard the voice that said, ‘They should not be allowed to get away with this, Faith

– these white people...You are a black person – you must fight it.’ (148).

Faith is starting to feel uneasy about her position in England, her home. Her efforts to ignore the racist attitudes and discrimination do not succeed. That one incident was enough for her to collapse. She witnessed a race hate attack, where a black woman was attacked mercilessly by the National Front party members who were against the migration of people to Britain. The incident happened in a book shop owned by the woman, of which they made a mess. Faith says: “...the black and Third World fiction was spray-painted with ‘Wog’” (152), which essentially meant that it was a race hate crime. Thomas 77

The incident in the novel shows that Britain, a multicultural nation with the presence of several races, ethnicities, and cultures, is unable to co-exist with the sentiments of equality. The intensity of the issue of racism in Britain during the 1970s is apparent here.

Simon, her white friend who was present at the scene and helped the woman, retold the story to their friends as an attack on someone because they didn’t like them. Faith, but interrupted this twice by emphasizing the fact that she was a black woman and hatred for blacks was the reason for the crime. But they didn’t seem to care about that fact, which was of serious concern to Faith. The response of her white friends was quite alarming to Faith. Her friend Marion was busy taking care of Simon when she ignored

Faith who was also in great shock from the incident. Faith was taken aback at her best friend Marion’s response when she was deeply concerned of Simon whom she hates and did not even care to ask her if she was alright.

Charles Taylor’s Politics of Recognition, which examines the impact of “recognition or misrecognition” on “identity” of an individual or a community in a multicultural space could attest to Faith’s breakdown. Taylor is of the opinion that, identity, which is subjected to change, is shaped by the recognition or misrecognition of others. The immigrants, here in this context, when treated with contempt and indifference by the mainstream society, suffers the damage of a fractured identity. He argues that

“Nonrecognition or misrecognition can inflict harm, can be a form of oppression, imprisoning someone in a false, distorted, and reduced mode of being” (25).

As evident here in the novel, when the shocking realization that she is alone and different among her friends shatters Faith. She reminisces what Ruth said about the white attitude of ‘othering’ towards blacks, “Ruth was right. Ruth was absolutely right. Thomas 78

What it all comes down to in the end is black against white. It was simple. It was so simple.” (159). Her friends ultimately are their own kind and she is an outsider in the group. The multicultural idea of a harmonious existence of every race and ethnicity is absent here. Instead, the whites constructs other races and ethnicities as the ‘other’ by isolating and discriminating them.

Faith, here, being ‘othered’ by her white friends questions her identity as a British citizen.

She tried to ignore her black identity by mingling with all-white groups, but in the end she realizes that it is something that cannot be ignored and neglected. Everyone sees her as a black immigrant in Britain. “And I wanted to be wanted. I liked to be liked” (161), she reflects. She wanted to belong in the white dominated British society.

This could be attested with Caryl Phillips’ idea of “high anxiety of belonging”, as stated by

Cinkova in her thesis, where he says in his The European Tribe, “The fundamental problem was, if I was going to continue to live in Britain, how was I to reconcile the contradiction of feeling British, while being constantly told in many subtle and unsubtle ways that I did not belong” (qtd. in Cinkova 53) This uncertainity and anxiousness of belonging arise from the idea of “double consciousness” of W.E.B. Du Bois and Paul Gilroy, where Phillips calls it the

“high anxiety of belonging” (Cinkova 53).

Faith, in the novel undergoes this “high anxiety of belonging”, where the anxiety and ambiguity of her belonging in the white Britain cause her to be with the whites, which she thought would make her British. That was the solution she found in order to be not isolated from the society. Her fear of being not accepted in the British society, being a black, led her to choose her white friends as a safe haven. But she finds out that it was not really a safe haven, indeed an unsafe one. Thomas 79

The unpleasant thought that she could have been the woman who was attacked for being a black immigrant terrified Faith. Afraid and unable to accept her identity as a black, she breaks down.

I got into the bed. But as my eyes adjusted to the dark I could see my reflection

in the wardrobe mirror. A black girl lying in a bed. I covered the mirror with a

bath towel. I didn’t want to be black anymore. I just wanted to live. The other

mirror in the room I covered with a tee-shirt. Voila! I was no longer black (160).

The black experience has come to Faith, where her consciousness points towards her blackness as terrifying. For her, her black identity was dormant where she could not accept it. Saez, in her article notes that “Faith aspires to universal identity, she just wants to live, but such a move is implicitly self destructive because this universal is

“not-black” and Faith endeavors to erase herself in order to fit into the privileged invisibility of whiteness” (8). Faith yearns to fit in among the majority, she “wanted to be wanted” (161). Her blackness is causing her to stand out as an outsider, and not letting her be a part of the privileged majority. When the situation arises where she has to face her fear of being black, she is conflicted.

Bhabha, in his Introduction to Location of Culture brings in the discussion of the liminal space or inbetweenness. He, referring to Renne Greene’s idea of stairwell as a liminal space between the blackness and whiteness says that this liminal space “in-between the designations of identity” becomes the process of symbolic interaction between “upper and lower, black and white” (4). He continues:

The hither and thither of the stairwell, the temporal movement and passage that it

allows, prevents identities at either end of it from settling into primordial Thomas 80

polarities. This interstitial passage between fixed up the possibility of a cultural

hybridity that entertains difference without an assumed or imposed hierarchy (4).

Bhabha, hence, is of the opinion that the in-between space serves as a place of free interaction of the blackness and whiteness without a hierarchy. Here, in the novel, Faith is in an identity crisis where she is unable to identify herself as a Briton or a Jamaican.

All along she thought of herself as a Briton and neglected her Jamaican identity, where now she is devastated on confronting the ambiguousness of her existence. This therefore is the moment for her to resolve this state of inbetweenness.

It was Faith’s parents’ suggestion that she visit Jamaica. Her mum said: “Child, everyone should know where they come from” (162). Faith’s ignorance of Jamaica and her ancestry is revealed in her conversation with Simon’s mother. She herself feels ridiculous when she had to answer ‘no’ to every question on her Family in Jamaica- grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins. In her much distressed state of alienation and rootedlessness in the place she called home she sets out to discover her roots, to discover her ‘self’.

Identity crisis is one of the significant themes that run through in Andrea Levy’s novels and short stories. She says that the increased migration of people of different nationalities made her comfortable and took interest in the ‘country of her parents’. She later gives account of her visit to Kingston to her family and trying to trace her geneology by asking her family members. This autobiographical element is present in

Fruit of the Lemon, where Faith visits Jamaica to trace her past.

Jamaica was a new and strange experience to Faith, the difference she felt coming from a metropolitan to a third world country. Faith, who is in a distressed state of being unable to accept her ‘blackness’ first notices the colour ‘black’ everywhere as she lands in Jamaica. Thomas 81

She who is used to seeing white faces and less of black faces back in England is shocked at the many black faces around her and the mayhem that is creating. She finds it uncivilized as opposed to her home England where an airport is more of an elegant and disciplined place where people do not “screech” or “shout”. She says: “I felt out of place – everything was a little familiar but not quite. Like a dream. Culture shock is how the feeling is described”

(169). Jamaica and England are two different nations both of which could be placed at extreme opposite ends. One is a third world nation, while the other is a developed country, which once was an empire; and thus the differences in the people, culture, traditions, customs, language, and the everyday life. For Faith, who grew up in the British metropolitan culture where everything is readily available and easily accessible, Jamaica was a strange place with strange people, bad roads and unclean shack like shops. She wonders if she could survive here in Jamaica.

Initially, Faith looks at Jamaica from the eyes of a developed nation citizen; for her, it is a

Third World country full of poverty, dirt, and ‘black’ people. But this was the land of her parents’ and the land of her origin. Little did she know about the place. She had misconceptions about it too. Her thoughts of Jamaica as an impoverished land with mud houses, she realized was an illusion. Her aunt lived in a bungalow with good amenities and they talked creole English.

Her aunt’s words reflected on Faith’s rootedlessness: “You can’t leave England and come all the way without losing some bit of you” (185). Faith was in a distressed state which was caused by her disapproval of her black identity in Britain. She was here in Jamaica to find her roots and thereby to redefine her black-British identity.

The stories of Aunt Coral evidently reveal Faith’s family history, but also exposes the then colonial Jamaica, the culture and traditions and the ways of life of the people. The shocking Thomas 82 realization of class system based on the colour of one’s skin as being prevalent in Jamaica is one such thing that we come to know of. In Jamaica, the shades of blackness from the light to dark determine your class in the society, i.e. people with lighter shaded skin belonged to the higher class and vice versa. The colonial mentality of superior ranking based on the colour of one’s skin got filtered into the lives of the people of Jamaica. This discrimination began during the colonial period, where the slave owners graded their slaves according to the lightness and darkness of their skin. The lighter skinned slaves were given preference and were considered superior to the darker skinned slaves. They were all Black yet, divided within themselves. The lighter skin colour as a factor that determines superiority began with colonization, where the colonizer glorified whiteness as symbolizing purity and everything that is good, while blackness as evil and barbaric. This is ingrained in the minds of the people still which leads to such discrimination.

3.4 Negotiation of Identity

Oral history plays an important role in the novel. The second part ‘Jamaica’ in the novel deals with her aunt Coral’s and her son Vincent’s narrations of the history of her Jamaican lineage. She learns about her grandparents, her aunts, uncles, and cousins from these stories.

Faith is introduced to a whole different life, of which she is a part of.

In Jamaica, Faith realizes that it is not an ideal place. It has its good and bad sides.

For instance, the classism based on the colour of one’s skin is present in Jamaica as well, which is an after effect of colonialism. Class division based on the skin colour of an individual is not just confined to a space where colonizer/colonized is present.

Faith blends in the community in Jamaica, where she recognizes that she is one among them. She identifies her ‘blackness’ within her. She says: Thomas 83

Let those bully boys walk behind me in the playground. Let them tell me, ‘You’re

a darkie. Faith’s a darkie.’ Iam the granddaughter of Grace and William

Campbell. Iam the great-grandchild of Cecelia Hilton. Iam descended from

Katherine whose mother was a slave. Iam the cousin of Afria. Iam the niece of

Coral Thompson and the daughter of Wade and Mildred Jackson. Let them say

what they like. Because I am the bastard child of the Empire and I will have my

day (327).

Faith is proud of her Jamaican heritage and the slave ancestry. She is confident of her rich culture which lets her accept her Caribbean black identity wholeheartedly. Faith accepts her hyphenated identity of Caribbean- British, where she celebrates both her

Caribbean and British identity. But Britain is her ‘home’. She wants to live with her

Jamaican identity in Britain. She’s partly Jamaican and partly British. She is glad that she’s a part of Jamaica and its history.

Radhakrishnan explains the diasporic location as “the space of the hyphen that tries to co-ordinate, within an evolving relationship, the identity politics of one’s place of origin with that of one’s present home…” (qtd. in Raghunanthan). This centres around the fact that in today’s world of transnationalism and increased immigration, many people embrace multiple identities – cultural as well as national identities to position themselves by accepting that different ethnicities, cultures, and nationalities can exist together. ‘Hyphenated identity’ is a term that was introduced among this growing inclination towards multiple identities which is mainly relevant to the second generation and third generation immigrants. As Caglar says, “the term is also part of the recognition in sociology and postcolonial studies that common assumptions about culture as an enclosed and self-contained construct are increasingly inadequate ways to examine emerging identities in an everglobalising world” (qtd. in Raghunanthan). Thomas 84

In her essay This is My England, Andrea Levy asserts on England being her home, when she and her community is treated differently in the country. Levy notes:

Saying that I'm English doesn't mean I want to be assimilated; to take on the

majority white culture to the exclusion of all other. I cannot live without rice and

peas. I now dance like a lunatic when Jamaica wins anything. And I will always

make a noise when moved by emotion. I will not take up a flag and wave it to

intimidate. And being English will not stop me from fighting to live in a country

free from racism and social divisiveness.

Home is a main idea in the novel. For Faith, England is home but she also accepts her Jamaican identity, like Levy. The ending lines of the novel upon her return to

England says it all: “I was coming home. I was coming home to tell everyone...My mum and dad came to England on a banana boat” (339). She has become a part of her parents’ Caribbean migration, which she knowingly ignored before. Thus Faith resolves her identity crisis as she chooses to possess a hyphenated identity of Caribbean- Birtish.

Though it is not mentioned in the novel the reader could expect that Faith would try to mingle among her ‘own’ kind in Britain.

Multiculturalism that was introduced to create ‘unity in diversity’ has failed in

Britain, which curbs the immigrants from being equal in the society. This therefore forces them to place themselves in this hyphenated space, which is a ‘third space’ where they possess the characteristics of both the sides.

Thomas 85

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Thomas 88

Chapter 4

Conclusion

The research paper titled Reading Multiculturalism: Ironies in Andrea Levy’s The Small

Island and Fruit of the Lemon has given a deep understanding of the faultlines and thereby the ironies of multiculturalism in Britain and as presented in the two novels of Andrea Levy.

The study discusses the effect of this false multiculturalism on the identity of the Caribbean immigrant characters in the novel.

The study intended to identify how the Caribbean immigrant characters in The Small

Island and Fruit of the Lemon negotiate the conflicts in culture and identity in the ulticultural Britain. Through an in-depth analysis of the two novels, the study concludes that the immigrant characters, in spite of the continuous rejection from the mother country, reconcile with their conflicting identity of being in the in-between and accepts a hyphenated identity as the Caribbean – British. In The Small Island, the Caribbean immigrant characters

Hortense and Gilbert has a change of attitude towards Britain. Initially, they were in praise of the mother country and were very loyal towards her. But intolerable experiences in England force them to maintain a detached relationship with Britain. They are no longer blinded by the false image of Britain they had. However, they choose to stay in England and succeed.

The adoption of Queenie’s biracial child shows that the blacks and the whites are different and them living together is unacceptable. This shows the very nature of the British society that it refuses to adhere to the basic tenets of multiculturalism that is coexistence. Hortense and Gilbert towards the end of the novel take a step closer towards a better life by moving out of Queenie’s one room rental. Whereas, in Fruit of the Lemon, Faith, a second generation immigrant in Britain, deals with the discrimination and negotiates her identity through a different approach. In her distressed state, she visits Jamaica, her parents’ home which is Thomas 89 barely known to her. She understands Jamaica, its people, its culture, and most importantly her family history which liberates her from her conflicted state. For her England is home, but she also possess a Jamaica within her. In both the cases, the immigrant characters resolve to continue living in Britain despite the unfavourable circumstances around them.

Andrea Levy has evolved in subjects and treatment of the novels while trying to bring to light the connection between the Caribbean and the Britain through her realistic narratives.

This includes the discussion of slavery in the Caribbean in Levy’s Long Song, the post-war migration to Britain in The Small Island and the life of immigrants in the Caribbean diaspora in Britain as seen in her Every Light in the House Burnin’, Never Far from Nowhere, and

Fruit of the Lemon. The two primary texts in concern, The Small Island and Fruit of the

Lemon therefore explore the lives of the first generation Caribbean immigrants and the second generation Caribbean immigrants in post-war and multicultural Britain.

On a careful analysis of the two novels, it is understood that Levy reveals that the policy of multiculturalism in effect was unwelcomed by the native white population. The insolent acts of racism and othering towards the immigrants are found to be the major reasons for the failure of multiculturalism. The Caribbean immigrant characters in the novels face discrimination based on the colour of their skin. This results in the conflicted identities of the immigrants, whether they are Caribbean or British. The novels show the evolution of the characters where they resolve this identity conflict by accepting their position as Caribbean-

British in the diaspora. The study thus comes to the realization that identity is fluid and that one can have a dual identity. Through many instances in the novels the study tries to establish this understanding.

The novels were chosen for certain points of similarities. The two primary texts are in a chronological order where the first one, The Small Island explores the post-war immigration Thomas 90 and the experiences of the first generation immigrants, while Fruit of the Lemon examines mainly the second generation immigrant Faith and her parents belonging to the first generation immigrant community. For this reason the novels could be read in a continuous fashion where the historical details and differences in the experiences of the first generation immigrants and second generation immigrants are dealt with. For the first generation immigrants, Hortense and Gilbert in the Small Island, England is not home. They are devastated by the way they are treated in here. The mother country of Britain is no more the mother for them. They but stay in England, suffering the discrimination and racism, with the desire to live a better life. This similar kind of attitude is seen in Wade Jackson and Mildred

Jackson, Faith’s parents, who struggled to make a living and finally buy a house in England.

In spite of the discrimination they had to suffer, they continued to stay in England for an improved life. They wanted their children to live as Britishers for they didn’t want them to be looked at as Caribbeans. But we see in the novel that they are planning to return back to

Jamaica, their homeland. This shows how Britain is still not home for them after spending all good years of their life there. Regardless of not revealing much about their past life and

Jamaica to their children, Jamaica is home for them. Whereas for Faith, England is home.

The intolerable racial attitudes and discrimination towards her in her own country devastates her, yet she chooses England as her home and with her dual identity as a Caribbean – British.

The other similarity in the novels is the setting of the novels which alternates between

England and Jamaica. The texts have equally prioritized the stories from the Caribbean and

Britain. As mentioned in the earlier chapters, The Small Island is told in a multiple narrative structure where four characters are narrating their experiences in the post war Britain, of immigration, in their own perspectives. The sections in the narrative are divided as ‘Before’ and ‘1948’, narrating their past and present lives respectively. Hortense and Gilbert, the two main Caribbean immigrant characters in the novel consequently narrates their life in Jamaica, Thomas 91 the migration to Britain and the life in Britain in their sections. While in Fruit of the Lemon,

Faith, the protagonist around whom the narrative revolves, in the second section, visits

Jamaica to discover her roots and ancestry. This is a life-transforming event in Faith’s life where she comes to terms with her Caribbean identity.

Owing to the similarities the primary texts hold, they are both analysed in the light of multiculturalism, in which the factors pointing towards the failure of multiculturalism is stressed upon. Racism and Othering are the two factors that are highlighted in both the texts to bring forth the ironies of multiculturalism in the British society. Racism based on the colour of the skin, discrimination at work and housing, and violent hatred towards the coloured immigrants are some of the few acts of racism foregrounded in the texts. Racism is filtered down to every nook and corner of the society as presented in the texts. It is present evidently as well as subtly in the British society as portrayed throughout the texts.

In The Small Island, Hortense and Gilbert are subjected to such racism and discrimination where they are treated in inhumane manner. Several instances from the narratives of Hortense and Gilbert ascertain it. This shatters their ideal outlook of Britain as the mother country. The colonization has had a major impact on the life of these Caribbean immigrants where they looked up to Britain as their mother, and learned its culture and ways. But coming to Britain, they experience the superior attitude of the British towards them. Upon which, as seen in the novel, they are left with no sense of belonging.

Levy carefully implements the interactions of the immigrants and the native population in the context of multiculturalism. There are both favourable and unfavourable occurrences as a result of this interaction in both the novels. Queenie in The Small Island is a white native of

England who is in favour of the immigrants. She provides a place to stay for the immigrants and do not care much for her neighbours’ remarks against them. She also gets into a Thomas 92 relationship with Michael, Hortense’ cousin, who is a Jamaican as well and gives birth to his son. Here we see a different face of the native who treats the immigrant as another human being. While in Fruit of the Lemon, it is Faith’s friends who treats her well. They live and laugh together with no prejudice against her. But these natives from both the novels do not consider the coloured immigrants as their own equal. At the back of their mind, they are the

‘other’. Towards the end of the novel, Queenie begs Hortense and Gilbert to adopt her biracial child for the fear of living in a society which doesn’t accept a black among the whites. Also, Faith’s friends do not understand or console her when she breaks down upon witnessing the race hate crime against the girl in the bookshop. This therefore shows that not anyone in entirety accepts the immigrants to their society, but there are certain positive elements of recognition or acknowledgement.

Racism based on the colour of one’s skin is one of the unfavourable aftermaths of this immigrant-native interaction. Gilbert in The Small Island is an Ex-RAF personnel who served for the British in the war. Yet, once he comes back to England, he is met with rejections and unfairness. He is refused rental houses by the landlords, he is not even allowed to enter the houses. The children are scared for the black colour of his skin. Queenie’s neighbours are seen to be infuriated by the mere presence of the coloured immigrants in the neighbourhood.

Once in the novel when Gilbert and Queenie goes to a restaurant, we see that the waitress refuses to serve food for Gilbert. While in the Fruit of the Lemon, Faith is bullied being called ‘darkie’ at school. The race-hate crime is one of the critical events in the text where a coloured girl is attacked badly by a group of extremist whites who was against the immigrants in the country. A conscious aversion for the colour of one’s skin is present from the time of colonization. As discussed by Frantz Fanon and Said, the white colour associated with the west stood for purity and all that is good while, the black colour associated with the orient or non-west stood for evil and barbaric. This thought of black as evil and white as good Thomas 93 is ingrained in the minds that the native white people of Britain looks at the coloured immigrants in their country with contempt and disregard.

Frantz Fanon’s ideas on racism due to the colour of one’s skin is very much relevant in both the texts where the black Caribbean immigrants are discriminated based on the colour of their skin. They are addressed as ‘coloured’, based on the colour of their skin which is an insult to the immigrants. Their differences are not celebrated here as opposed to the features of multiculturalism.

Discrimination at workplace is another form of racism where the immigrants are declined jobs that are well suited for their qualifications. They are but offered menial jobs with no prospect of a promotion. Gilbert is rejected at interviews for his race. Once an interviewer told him outrightly in the face that he cannot be given the job because if he is seen talking to white women, he will lose his job. While serving in the RAF, Gilbert, like other coloureds, were always given menial jobs like working in the coalmine or as a driver and never a job as an a soldier. Hortense also faces similar situation in Britain when she is rejected the position of a teacher which she has been trained for in Jamaica. In spite of the qualifications she has, the school administration told her qualifications are not valid and has to take another training in Britain to be qualified as a teacher.

Fruit of the Lemon also discusses the issue of discrimination at workplace. The authorities in her company refuses to give her the job as a dresser in the broadcasting station that she is over qualified for, because she is a coloured immigrant. Eventually she gets the job when she confronts them about it. But she is not given any work because no celebrity wants a ‘black’ dresser. Faith is discriminated at her workplace which she initially ignores. This shows her inability to accept the fact that she is being discriminated in her own country. She cannot admit that she is different. For her, England is her home as it is to her white friends and Thomas 94 colleagues. She has been there all her life like them. Thus, being different from others scares her; she is insecure in her black identity.

‘Othering’ is another way of discriminating a group of people from another group.

“The creation of otherness (also called Othering) consists of applying a principle

that allows individuals to be classified into two hierarchial groups: them and us.

The out-group is only coherent as a group as a result of its opposition to the in-

group and its lack of identity. This lack is based upon stereotypes that are largely

stigmatizing and obviously simplistic. The in-group constructs one or more

others, setting itself apart and giving itself an identity. Otherness and identity are

two inseparable sides of the same coin” (Staszak 3)

This is evident in both the texts where the Caribbean immigrants are the ‘other’ in the British society. Faith is the ‘other’ among her white friends. Though they are together, certain situations reveals that she is still not one among them. Despite being a

British citizen, she is not accepted as one.

These instances show the intolerance of the natives where they negate the history connecting Britain and the Caribbean and the existence of the immigrants.

Multiculturalism as a policy urges to have tolerance for every culture, ethnicity, and religion. However, it is not complied with as evident from the above mentioned instances. This attitude of the natives creates alienation and a sense of non-belonging in the immigrants. Resultantly, there arises a clash in the self of the immigrant. The identity conflict of ‘being in the place, but not of the place’ (Gilroy 58) disconcert their existence. Their individual identity as a British citizen is no longer valid when they are constantly reminded of their difference. This as evident, is a direct outcome of the failure of multiculturalism. Thomas 95

Constructing a Hyphenated Identity

Identity is therefore another central concern of the texts. Racism and Othering has its effects on the individual identity of the immigrants. Hortense and Gilbert in The Small Island regardless of the innumerable rejections and suffering decides to stay in England. They still have the dream and hope of building a prosperous life there in Britain. Faith in Fruit of the

Lemon unable to position her black identity along with her British identity in the multicultural

Britain, resolves this through her visit to Jamaica. In Jamaica, she comes to terms with her black identity and comes back to Britain, her home, with pride and confidence in her

Jamaican identity.

It can therefore be concluded that the immigrant characters in the texts confirms to a hyphenated identity where they are both Caribbean and British. They thus possess a dual nationality, belonging to two nations. Hortense and Gilbert asserts their hyphenated identity of Caribbean- British by detaching themselves from the mainstream society to build a life on their own. While Faith, embraces both her Caribbean and British Identity by being at home in

Britain with her inherent Caribbeanness.

Failure of Multiculturalism

Co-existence of ethnicities and cultures is the centrality of multiculturalism.

Multiculturalism in Britain therefore is a failure where every aspect of it is violated in the society. In reality, racism and othering are unacceptable factors in a multicultural setup. But the texts show their inevitable presence throughout. This is the irony of multiculturalism where, the policy that was introduced to fight the acts of racism and discrimination itself has increased those and has created again a sense of difference. The fractured identity of the immigrants due to this is not cared for by the native white population in the texts. The Thomas 96 immigrants themselves resolve to fight against it and live in a place where they are still the

‘other’.

The study is limited to analyzing the failure of multiculturalism in the two texts. For future directions, the treatment and significance of history and roots in both the novels can be explored. Andrea Levy has given much importance to history in her writings where she tries to bring to light the connection between British history and Caribbean history which is unknown to many. Also, Andrea Levy’s technique of humour in dealing with serious topics of immigration and racism could be an interesting topic to focus on.

Thomas 97

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Thomas 98

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