DeepDyve eBooks - A Black British Canon?

Introduction

Low, Gail; Wynne-Davies, Marion

Pages: 1 –12

[The 1980s and 1990s saw the emergence and consolidation of an important body of creative writing, visual and performing arts that circulates under the sign of ‘Black British’. Despite the problems associated with, what Kobena Mercer has called, an ‘authenticating myth of origins’ in the history...

Available

Foreword: Migration, Modernity and English Writing — Reflections on Migrant Identity and Canon Formation

Phillips, Mike

Pages: 13 –31

[My name is Mike Phillips and I’m a novelist among other things. You may not know that I am a United Kingdom citizen, and you may not know that I do not think of myself as a Caribbean writer, or an African writer, or an African American writer, or a diasporic writer, or even as a writer with an...

Available

‘The Ghost of Other Stories’: Salman Rushdie and the Question of Canonicity?

Procter, James

Pages: 35 –49

[In a piece first published in the New Statesman in 1990, Paul Gilroy compares the diverging fortunes of two heavyweights of the British media during the late 1980s: Salman Rushdie and Frank Bruno. Gilroy argues that, at the time of his first World Championship fight against Mike Tyson, Bruno...

Available

Not Good Enough or Not Man Enough? Beryl Gilroy as the Anomaly in the Evolving ‘Black British Canon’

Courtman, Sandra

Pages: 50 –73

[As a Guyanese writer, Beryl Gilroy may be considered anomalous because, during the period of the 1960s and 1970s when she first began to seek publication, black women writers were largely invisible both in Britain and in her native Caribbean. The ‘Anomaly’ in the title of this essay is a...

Available

In the Eyes of the Beholder: Diversity and Cultural Politics of Canon Reformation in Britain

Low, Gail; Wynne-Davies, Marion

Pages: 74 –90

[[GL and MWD] We thought we would start by contextualizing this discussion and ask you about your relationship with the Scottish Arts Council. Can you say something about what you do and the role that you presently occupy?]

Available

Fantasy Relationships: Black British Canons in a Transnational World

McLeod, John

Pages: 93 –104

[In a recent essay on the vitality and variety of contemporary black British poetry, Lauri Ramey attempts to focus her discussion with recourse to the debate about the cultural visibility and impact of black British writing on British writing as a whole. It is a debate shaped by crucial recurring...

Available

‘New Forms’: Towards a Critical Dialogue with Black British ‘Popular’ Fictions

Wood, Andy

Pages: 105 –125

[The term ‘street culture’ has become shorthand for an urban, black or black influenced culture — raw, uncompromising and ‘authentic’. That a white Brummie, Mike Skinner, could name his act The Streets and rap his way to critical acclaim and success in 2002 without being accused of wanting to be...

Available

Texts of Cultural Practice: Black Theatre and Performance in the UK

McMillan, Michael

Pages: 129 –142

[The above quote taken from my new play, Master Juba, describes the makeup process white performers used to become a blackface minstrel and thus grotesquely caricature black culture. It was one of the most popular forms of entertainment during the nineteenth century, yet race was not allowed to...

Available

Canon Questions: Art in ‘Black Britain’

Wainwright, Leon

Pages: 143 –167

[Any discussion relevant to art history, its canon and black identities in contemporary Britain has to begin by thinking at least as far back as the start of the 1980s. It was the time of the emergence and formal assemblage of artists of the first and second generations of migrants mainly from...

Available

‘Shaping Connections’: From West Indian to Black British

Low, Gail

Pages: 168 –188

[Central to the debates surrounding the construction of black British expressive cultures are questions regarding nationality, canonicity and tradition. How ‘black’ modifies British (and vice versa) adds a layer of complexity: how to preserve the specificity of black history in Britain and yet...

Get 20M+ Full-Text Papers For Less Than $1.50/day. Start a 14-Day Trial for You or Your Team.

Learn More →

A Black British Canon?

Advanced Search

Get 20M+ Full-Text Papers For Less Than $1.50/day. Start a 14-Day Trial for You or Your Team.

Learn More →

A Black British Canon?

Our policy towards the use of cookies