Abstract
In Hanif Kureishi’s “Strangers When We Meet”, the colour has been made invisible. However, the wall, which has estranged the meeting lovers, remains visible in the allegedly colourless world. The protagonist, who comes from South London, is not handed the key to the multicultural London, but just stranded on the edges. The wall symbolizes the divide between London/city and South London/suburbia. The removal of the colour bar is far from enough. Only by removing the wall will the South Londoners be handed the key to the capital and have their “homes without walls”.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
James Proctor calls the black British an “imaginary community” in that black is politically contrived rather than culturally forged.
Among other things, scholars tend to interpret Othello as a tragedy of racial discrimination. Such an interpretation is problematic if we take the significant shift of place into consideration. If the tragedy happens in Venice, we may take it for granted that the tragedy results from racial prejudice. Unfortunately, the tragedy happens in Cyprus. What really counts seems to be social or sexual inequality rather than racial prejudice.
In Susan Brook’s article, “suburb” and “suburbia” are used interchangeably, especially when the modifier of suburb is lower-middle-class.
We can also find the binary opposition between the city and the suburbia in Martin Amis' London Fields (1989), Irvine Welsh's Trainspotting (1993) and etc.
References
Ball, J. C. (2004). Imagining London: Postcolonial fiction and the transnational metropolis. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
Bentley, N. (2005). Introduction: Mapping the millennium: Themes and trends in contemporary British fiction. In N. Bentley (Ed.), British fiction of the 1990s (pp. 1–18). London: Routledge.
Brook, S. (2005). Hegemony: Suburban space in The Buddha of Suburbia. In N. Bentley (Ed.), British fiction of the 1990s (pp. 209–225). London: Routledge.
Buchanan, B. (2007). Hanif Kureishi. Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan.
Childs, P. (2005). Contemporary novelists: British fiction since 1970. Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan.
Eade, J. (2000). Placing London: From imperial capital to global city. New York & Oxford: Berghahn Books.
Finney, B. (2006). British fiction since 1984. Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan.
Frost, R. (1951). The complete poems of Robert Frost. London: Jonathan Cape.
Huggan, G. (2001). The postcolonial exotic: Marketing the margins. London: Routledge.
Kureishi, H. (1990). The Buddha of suburbia. London: Faber and Faber.
Kureishi, H. (2001). Intimacy and midnight all day. New York: Simon and Schuster.
Kureishi, H. (2002). Dreaming and scheming: Reflections on writing and politics. London: Faber and Faber.
McLeod, J. (2004). Postcolonial London: Rewriting the metropolis. London: Routledge.
More-Gilbert, B. (2001). Hanif Kureishi. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Nasta, S. (2002). Home truths: Fictions of the South Asian diaspora in Britain. Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan.
Proctor, J. (2003). Dwelling places: Postwar black British writing. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Ranasinha, R. (2002). Hanif Kureishi. Horndon: Northcote House.
Thomas, S. (1999). Hanif Kureishi. Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan.
