Home Truths: Regional Fiction

Abstract

Contemporary theory declares that there is no centre. What that means in terms of Commonwealth literature is that ‘home’ is changed beyond recognition. Our tongues and dialects have mothered different cultures and politics, and entirely new literatures in English: what I’m here calling ‘home truths’. The literature which I’ll look at in this essay further suggests that all of us, by definition from the edges of that former empire, have only recently been able to articulate just what ‘home’ was. It’s not that things have changed so utterly — it’s just that we’ve learned to look and to read differently, more historically perhaps and less innocently at other literatures and self-representations of other places and peoples who are no longer alien or inaccessible. As a direct result, we discover commonality and a shared history.