Small Island<\/em><\/a><\/p>\nAbstract:
\nAndrea Levy’s Small Island<\/em> (2004) presents a counter-history of the period before and\u00c2\u00a0after World War II (1939-1945) when men and women from the Caribbean volunteered\u00c2\u00a0for all branches of the British armed services and many eventually immigrated to London\u00c2\u00a0after the war officially ended in 1945. Her historical novel moves back and forth between\u00c2\u00a01924 and 1948 as well as across national borders and cultures. Levy\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s novel, written\u00c2\u00a0more than fifty years after the first Windrush<\/em> arrival, creates a common narrative of nation\u00c2\u00a0and identity in order to understand the experiences of Black people in Britain. Small\u00c2\u00a0Island<\/em>\u00e2\u20ac\u201dstructured around four competing voices whose claims of textual, personal and\u00c2\u00a0historical truth must be acknowledged\u00e2\u20ac\u201drefuses to establish a singular articulation of the\u00c2\u00a0experience of migration and empire. In this essay, I focus on discrete moments in the\u00c2\u00a0\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Prologue\u00e2\u20ac\u009d in Levy\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Small Island<\/em> in order to think through the formation of discursive\u00c2\u00a0identity through the encounter with others and the necessity of accommodating\u00c2\u00a0difference. Small Island<\/em> forecloses the possibility of addressing modern multiculturalism\u00c2\u00a0as a purported \u00e2\u20ac\u02dchappy ending\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 in light of Levy\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s formulation of the Windrush<\/em> moment as\u00c2\u00a0disruptive, violent, and overwhelmed by flawed characters. Yet, through the space of\u00c2\u00a0writing, she also invites the reader to experience moments of encounter and negotiate the\u00c2\u00a0often competing claims on nationhood, citizenship, and culture.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n
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This is an article that was published in 2012 after a truly rigorous peer review process. Identity as Cultural Production in Andrea Levy’s Small Island Abstract: Andrea Levy’s Small Island (2004) presents a counter-history of the period before and\u00c2\u00a0after World War II (1939-1945) when men and women from the Caribbean volunteered\u00c2\u00a0for all branches of the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24,15,21,17,22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-62","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-colonialpostcolonial","category-literature","category-modernity","category-nation","category-unhomed"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/windingsheet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/windingsheet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/windingsheet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/windingsheet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/windingsheet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=62"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/windingsheet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":66,"href":"http:\/\/windingsheet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62\/revisions\/66"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/windingsheet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=62"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/windingsheet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=62"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/windingsheet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=62"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}