
19/08/2025
Mariam Muwanga
Modeling the African Diaspora. Narrative Representations of Diasporic Blackness in Black British Fiction
Combining narratology, diaspora studies, and critical race theory, this study contributes to the emerging field of critical race narratology and advances Black British literary scholarship. It reconsiders the politics of representation by demonstrating that social conventions regarding race are constitutive of narrative form. Proposing a race-conscious approach, the study applies key tenets of critical race theory to strategies such as the semanticization of space, focalization, and characterization, revealing how the agency of Black diasporic subjects is discursively produced. This book introduces three new concepts: wiggle space, focalization privilege, and White allies. Readings of novels by Sam Selvon ("The Lonely Londoners"), Bernadine Evaristo ("The Emperor’s Babe" and "Girl, Woman, Other"), Andrea Levy ("Small Island"), Zadie Smith ("White Teeth" and "Swing Time"), and Diran Adebayo ("Some Kind of Black") explore how Black protagonists manage to not only exist and survive but also thrive in a society shaped by racial conventions tied to colonialism and the gravitational pull of Whiteness.
ISBN 978-3-98940-077-1, 196 S., kt., € 34,50 (2025)
(ELCH - Studies in English Literary and Cultural History, Bd. 90)
https://www.wvttrier.de/p/modeling-the-african-diaspora