Gender and Racial Others in Post-war Britain

Article


Nava, M. 2006. Gender and Racial Others in Post-war Britain. Third Text. 20 (6).
AuthorsNava, M.
Abstract

Caryl Phillips, the respected black British Caribbean novelist and political essayist, argued in 2004 that most white British writers of fiction and drama of the 1950s and early 1960s ignored questions of race and the growing presence in the UK of new migrants from the colonies and the Commonwealth. Even where the newcomers were acknowledged, it was difficult, according to Phillips, for a white English writer to engage imaginatively with a black character, particularly male, without 'thinking sexually'. This article suggests that black people were not as absent from the white cultural landscape as Phillips claimed, nor as narrowly depicted. It investigates the different ways men and women as authors represented racial alterity in the literary and cinematic texts of the period and argues that sexual thinking tended to be more a product of the male imagination than the white imagination during those years.

Keywordsracial difference; Commonwealth; post war britain; British Caribbean novelist; racial alterity; Lynne Reid Banks; 1950s migrants; gender; post war demographic; Shelagh Delaney; Caryl Phillips; Doris Lessing
JournalThird Text
Journal citation20 (6)
ISSN0952-8822
Year2006
Accepted author manuscript
License
CC BY-ND
Web address (URL)http://hdl.handle.net/10552/136
Publication dates
Print2006
Publication process dates
Deposited06 Apr 2009
Additional information

Citation:
Mica, N. (2006) 'Gender and Racial Others in Postwar Britain' Third Text, 20 (6) 671 — 682.

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