Contemporary Black British Women's Writing: Experiments in Literary Form

If Black British literature was still invisible in 1990, over the past thirty years, women writers especially have pushed this field into the limelight, prompting critics rightly to observe that “contemporary black writing of Britain [is] characterised more and more by the work of women writers” and that these women’s literary endeavors are far “removed from the purview of ‘Black British writing’ as it has been predominantly understood.” In a field that has been primarily appreciated for its exploration of lived Black experience, we want to pay attention to the innovations in writing that, from a literary perspective, are no less significant. In fact, we suggest that their experiments with language, style, and genre put Black British women at the vanguard of the British literary scene more broadly. This recognition raises critical questions about the extent to which precedence has been given to the politics over the aesthetics of their writing and the manner in which they have been siloed into a “minority” literature by way of their gender and race.