Abstract
The literature of ‘Windrush Generation’ authors invariably (and perhaps necessarily) found themselves engaged in debates regarding race, class and their articulation in the postwar Caribbean migrant experience. In this respect, an analysis of their narrative strategies serves as useful indicator for authorial attitudes towards contemporary black working-class politico-cultural tendencies. Applying concepts originating with Mikhail Bakhtin and Valentin Vološinov to authors ER Braithwaite, Sam Selvon and George Lamming highlights the ways in which language exists as a site of struggle. Bringing their analyses into Caribbean London shows how such struggle must be conceived as inherently intersectional and reveals how these writers’ narrative strategies function as methods of navigating the structures of class and race in Britain and their manifestations in language.
Keywords
- Migration
- Caribbean literature
- Heteroglossia
- Polyphony
- Multiaccentuality
- Intersectionality
- ER Braithwaite
- George Lamming
- Sam Selvon
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Ron, M. (2018). The Bakhtin Circle in Caribbean London: Race, Class and Narrative Strategy. In: Clarke, B., Hubble, N. (eds) Working-Class Writing. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-96310-5_7
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