ENG 321 Multicultural British Literature
While Britain’s most popular cultural exports like Downton Abbey portray a society that is preoccupied with horse-riding and high tea, this picture of Britain as largely White and upper-class is deeply at odds with the reality of a multicultural society. This course will examine the literary productions of this world, combining historical analysis with this study of literature. While people of color have always lived in Britain, their current substantial demographic presence is the result of several major geopolitical shifts in the twentieth century, specifically, decolonization, World War II, and subsequent mass immigration from the colonies. The rich and varied literary tradition that resulted from this will be our object of analysis in this class. We will read this literature while considering the historically fraught relationship between the British state and its non-White populations. We will look at several evolving concerns: memory and homesickness, racism in the “mother country,” finding a place in Britain’s deeply entrenched class structure, integration versus multiculturalism, and the different positionalities of first and second-generation immigrants. One of our main objectives in this class will be to examine the unique preoccupations of each author while, at the same time, mapping the larger contours of multicultural Britain. We will look at a variety of texts—autobiographical non-fiction, short stories, and novels—by authors like Sam Selvon, Monica Ali, Hanif Kureishi, and Candice Carty-Williams.