Dwelling Places: Postwar Black British Writing

“Dwelling Places” 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. Extending from central London to the outskirts of Glasgow, the book pursues a “devolving” landscape in order to consider what an analysis of “dwelling” might contribute to the travelling theories of diaspora discourse. What happens, for example, when we “situate” literatures of movement and migration? This text pursues such questions in order to produce fresh readings of work by some of the key literary figures of the postwar years, including Sam Selvon, George Lamming, Linton Kwesi Johnson, Farrukh Dhondy, Hanif Kureishi, Salman Rushdie, Meera Syal and Jackie Kay. These writings are explored alongside a range of non-literary material, including photography, painting and film, in order to consider their relation to broader shifts in the politics of black representation since the 1950s.A complement to James Procter’s edited collection “Writing Black Britain”, this text should appeal to students of British and postcolonial literature.