Dwelling Places: Postwar Black British Writing

Explores some of the key venues of black British literary and cultural production across the postwar period: bedsits and basements; streets and cafes; train stations and tourist landscapes; the suburbs and the city; the north and south. Pursues a 'devolving' landscape in order to consider what an analysis of 'dwelling' might contribute to the travelling theories of diaspora discourse and asks what happens when we 'situate' literatures of movement and migration. Offers fresh readings of work by some of the key literary figures of the postwar years, for example, Salman Rushdie, Hanif Kureishi, Meera Syal, Linton Kwesi Johnson. Contextualises writings alongside photography, painting, and film to consider their relationship to broader shifts in the politics of black representation over the past fifty years. Offers sustained anaysis of many of the texts reproduced in Procter's anthology Writing black Britain 1948-98 ( MUP, 2000) making an ideal companion to the earlier book.