Narratives of Migration, Immigration, and Interconnection

Vadde, Aarthi

doi:10.1017/cco9781139628754.006

Cited by 3 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 64 publications

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“…Although obviously marked by individual differences, the Windrush generation produced a body of work of particular cultural and political significance. Taken as a distinct set of writings, they could be seen as working ‘towards the goal of cultural and political autonomy of the Caribbean’ (Brown 2013, 16; see also Vadde 2015, 63). They were ‘intensely concerned with questions of identity and ideology’ (Brown 2013, 39), and expressed ‘a contestatory ideological critique that … [sought] to inspire a reconsideration of common assumptions about race, equality, and the residual effects of empire’ (40).…”

Section: The Adventurous and The Funny Side Of Life In The Caribbean:mentioning

confidence: 99%

‘Books written by the so-called colonials or half-bloods’: Italian publishers’ reception of novels by the Windrush writers in the 1950s and 1960s

Pennacchietti

2018

Mod. Italy

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This article contributes to the expanding body of scholarship investigating the problematic correlations between racism, the legacy of colonialism, and configurations of national and cultural identity in post-war Italy. It does so through a yet unexplored perspective: that of the attitude of Italian publishing towards literature from former colonies. More specifically, it examines the reception of anglophone Caribbean novels written by ‘Windrush writers’ in the 1950s and 1960s. The article provides evidence of how Italian agents and publishers – belonging to the country’s intellectual elite, and many of whom publicly espoused anticolonial positions – not only proved to be more interested in the exotic, picturesque contents of Caribbean literature than in its historical, ideological, and political significance, but sometimes actively opposed the circulation of texts containing anticolonial or pro-Black identity claims. Some of their comments demonstrate the persistence of racist and derogatory assumptions of an imagined black and colonial Other, and a negation of their identity as both political subjects and cultural producers, if they failed to conform to dominant expectations. The expectations and the evaluation criteria active in the reception of Caribbean novels allow for an assessment of the ambiguous attitude of Italian publishing agents towards colonialism, race, and alterity.

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Section: The Adventurous and The Funny Side Of Life In The Caribbean:mentioning

confidence: 99%

‘Books written by the so-called colonials or half-bloods’: Italian publishers’ reception of novels by the Windrush writers in the 1950s and 1960s

Pennacchietti

2018

Mod. Italy

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“…Although The Maestro, the Magistrate and the Mathematician engages (and transcends) the concerns of global African immigrant fiction, this essay will locate it predominantly within a British migritude context as a narrower point of departure. Aarthi Vadde summarizes the themes in successive generations of British immigrant fiction as “centred on the experience of exclusion, conflicts over the meaning of national traditions, and reflection upon the significance of national identity in a multiracial, international society” (2015: 61). Sam Selvon’s The Lonely Londoners (1985/1956), to be referred to again more specifically in the context of city mobility, is identified in many studies as a key archetype of subsequent black British fiction (Ball, 2004: 23; Batra, 2016: 159; Nasta, 2016: 29; Procter, 2016: 129; Vadde, 2015: 61).…”

Section: Routed Identities: Mobilities Hybrid Being and Networked Belonging In Edinburgh City-spacementioning

confidence: 99%

“…Aarthi Vadde summarizes the themes in successive generations of British immigrant fiction as “centred on the experience of exclusion, conflicts over the meaning of national traditions, and reflection upon the significance of national identity in a multiracial, international society” (2015: 61). Sam Selvon’s The Lonely Londoners (1985/1956), to be referred to again more specifically in the context of city mobility, is identified in many studies as a key archetype of subsequent black British fiction (Ball, 2004: 23; Batra, 2016: 159; Nasta, 2016: 29; Procter, 2016: 129; Vadde, 2015: 61). Huchu’s novel, we shall see, alludes to the general trends in black British fiction, but finally opts out of any ideological position by destabilizing the concepts of inclusion and exclusion, national and racial identity, and the location of home through collapsing spatial frameworks.…”

Section: Routed Identities: Mobilities Hybrid Being and Networked Belonging In Edinburgh City-spacementioning

confidence: 99%

Travelling home: Diasporic dis-locations of space and place in Tendai Huchu’s The Maestro, the Magistrate and the Mathematician

Moolla

2018

The Journal of Commonwealth Literature

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The Maestro, The Magistrate & The Mathematician, a novel by Zimbabwean diasporic writer Tendai Huchu, adds to a growing body of global immigrant fiction. Huchu's novel concerning Zimbabwean émigrés in the United Kingdom displays a heightened spatial consciousness that self-reflexively complicates the spatial tropes and trends of much migrant literature. The Maestro, The Magistrate & The Mathematician generates an unrelenting dialectic in which the national home, both for migrants and citizens, is often unhomely, while host spaces yield to various forms of place-making and belonging. City space, in this case the city of Edinburgh, is shown through the unique mobilities of the three protagonists to produce different senses of identity. However, the forms of identity that emerge ultimately succumb to the spatial implosion represented by the death (in contained spaces) of two of the principal characters, whose city perambulations are thus brought to a halt. The reader discovers, furthermore, that the third character is not the cartographer of his reorienting mental map of the host city, but that his itinerary has been directed all along by a sinister, somewhat ubuesque Zimbabwean expatriate, to whom the third character, fooled by this regime spy's clownish conduct, condescends and mistakenly patronizes. [The Maestro, The Magistrate & The Mathematician is a story] about three men living in Edinburgh, trying to find a place for themselves in the city. It's a novel about ideas, music, memory, love, that kind of shit. (Huchu interview. Gyasi, 2015: n.p.) There's a great Spike Milligan line: "Everybody has to be somewhere." (Huchu interview. Cousins and Dodgson-Katiyo, 2016: 201) Tendai Huchu is one of a growing number of African diasporic writers with a significant international literary profile joining the circle of, most notably and in no particular order,

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Voyage Out, Voyage Up?

Becker

2024

Interventions

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Narratives of Migration, Immigration, and Interconnection

Cited by 3 publications

References 64 publications

‘Books written by the so-called colonials or half-bloods’: Italian publishers’ reception of novels by the Windrush writers in the 1950s and 1960s

‘Books written by the so-called colonials or half-bloods’: Italian publishers’ reception of novels by the Windrush writers in the 1950s and 1960s

Travelling home: Diasporic dis-locations of space and place in Tendai Huchu’s The Maestro, the Magistrate and the Mathematician

Voyage Out, Voyage Up?

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