Nah cha man! What am I to look for here?” Exploring National Identity in Andrea Levy’s Small Island

Abstract

Buchi Emecheta's Second-Class Citizen and Andrea Levy's Small Island tell the stories of a Nigerian and a Jamaican migrant couple which move to the United Kingdom. Instead of a perfect society, they find racism, disillusion and discrimination. In my thesis I investigate the evolution of the national identities of the four protagonists. I hypothesise that the Nigerian couple will feel the rejection by white British society to a lesser extent because they still have a native African language and culture to fall back on. Since the Jamaican couple has only ever known a British identity, their displacement will be greater. This evolution is thematically investigated through the three pillars of national identity: language, race and location (home).

Date of Award	2012
Original language	English
Supervisor	Elisabeth Bekers (Promotor)