Introduction: Special Issue of FORUM on Identity

'Identity' is a word that we have learned - with good reason - to be wary of. Its suggestion of solidity and fixity makes it a dangerous and divisive concept that elides the flux and instability that characterizes selfhood. In academic discourses, identity has been theorized exhaustively and the idea of the subject as de-centred and constantly shifting is taken-for-granted. But still 'identity' won't go away. Indeed, in some arenas of public culture, 'identity' remains a necessary concept around which to consolidate ideas of selfhood that may not be so readily accommodated in prevailing definitions of the self

Introduction: Special Issue of FORUM on Identity

'Identity' is a word that we have learned - with good reason - to be wary of. Its suggestion of solidity and fixity makes it a dangerous and divisive concept that elides the flux and instability that characterizes selfhood. In academic discourses, identity has been theorized exhaustively and the idea of the subject as de-centred and constantly shifting is taken-for-granted. But still 'identity' won't go away. Indeed, in some arenas of public culture, 'identity' remains a necessary concept around which to consolidate ideas of selfhood that may not be so readily accommodated in prevailing definitions of the self

'Vernacular Voices: Black British Poetry'

ABSTRACT Black British poetry is the province of experimenting with voice and recording rhythms beyond the iambic pentameter. Not only in performance poetry and through the spoken word, but also on the page, black British poetry constitutes and preserves a sound archive of distinct linguistic varieties. In Slave Song (1984) and Coolie Odyssey (1988), David Dabydeen employs a form of Guyanese Creole in order to linguistically render and thus commemorate the experience of slaves and indentured labourers, respectively, with the earlier collection providing annotated translations into Standard English. James Berry, Louise Bennett, and Valerie Bloom adapt Jamaican Patois to celebrate Jamaican folk culture and at times to represent and record experiences and linguistic interactions in the postcolonial metropolis. Grace Nichols and John Agard use modified forms of Guyanese Creole, with Nichols frequently constructing gendered voices whilst Agard often celebrates linguistic playfulness. The borders between linguistic varieties are by no means absolute or static, as the emergence and marked growth of ‘London Jamaican’ (Mark Sebba) indicates. Asian British writer Daljit Nagra takes liberties with English for different reasons. Rather than having recourse to established Creole languages, and blending them with Standard English, his heteroglot poems frequently emulate ‘Punglish’, the English of migrants whose first language is Punjabi. Whilst it is the language prestige of London Jamaican that has been significantly enhanced since the 1990s, a fact not only confirmed by linguistic research but also by its transethnic uses both in the streets and on the page, Nagra’s substantial success and the mainstream attention he receives also indicate the clout of vernacular voices in poetry. They have the potential to connect with oral traditions and cultural memories, to record linguistic varieties, and to endow ‘street cred’ to authors and texts. In this chapter, these double-voiced poetic languages are also read as signs of resistance against residual monologic ideologies of Englishness. © Book proposal (02/2016): The Cambridge History of Black and Asian British Writing p. 27 of 4

Forging connections: anthologies, arts collectives, and the politics of inclusion

The changing social and political landscape of twentieth-century Britain catalysed a remarkable rise in collaborative activity by artists and activists of black and Asian heritage. Creative communities began to gather in both local and regional contexts, with the aim of sharing resources and securing an audience. This chapter records some of these many activities, tracing the groups’ genesis, manifest objectives, and key contributions. It argues that anthologising should be understood as a specifically motivated activity. Literary anthologies of poetry and fiction served to showcase the diversity of contemporary writing, while also suggesting its coherence. Drawing on the concept of “strategic essentialism” elucidated by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, I show that the anthology acts to ensure the visibility of a group, bannered as a unified and singly-titled selection of texts, while also insisting on the differences within: the heterogeneous multiplicity of black and Asian British experiences and creative practices

Dressing and addressing the self: Jean Rhys, Jamaica Kincaid and the cultural politics of self-fashioning

This essay explores Rhys and Kincaid’s shared interest in clothing, arguing that for both writers dressing and the performativity associated with it, are crucial to their respective engagements with self-making. Via close readings of Jean Rhys’s ‘Smile Please’ and Jamaica Kincaid’s ‘Biography of a Dress,’ I foreground the centrality of dress to their perception of their younger selves and to their reflections on themselves as writers. Shifting to a discussion of Jean Rhys’s ‘Let Them Call it Jazz’, the essay considers the intriguing ways that Rhys mediates her own experience of incarceration through the somewhat flamboyant performativity of her protagonist, Selina. By way of conclusion, the essay turns to Jamaica Kincaid’s ‘Putting Myself Together,’ in which she documents her attempts at self-fashioning as a young woman and would-be writer, foregrounding the resonances with Rhys’s work. Rhys and Kincaid’s engagement with dressing as a crucial dimension of self-making implies that it is a never-ending, painful, playful and laborious process of recovery and discovery, of expression and invention

Living in the spell of history: the novels of Jamaica Kincaid

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