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CURATING BLACKNESS: MIXED-FAMILIES’ CENTRAL ROLE IN REDEFINING THE CONCEPT OF HOME IN POST-WWII ENGLAND

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Date Issued:
2022
Abstract/Description:
The aim of this thesis is to examine biracial family-building and the reimagination of the ideal home in post-WWII English literature using Hanif Kureishi’s The Buddha of Suburbia and Zadie Smith’s White Teeth. Focusing on biracial children of both the Caribbean and South Asian diasporas, this thesis explores the nuances with which black self-identification is curated and how blackness as both a racial and social category in the UK is prescribed and performed depending on the Black and Brown biracial characters’ social location to white characters and family units. Mark Christian’s Mulitracial Identity: An International Perspective and Zygmunt Bauman’s Modernity and Ambivalence operate as lenses to better understand the social classification of mixed-families individuals as strangers in England and how biracial individuals are strangers to their families and respective homelands. This thesis will also argue that Black biracial women’s identity-building is oftentimes more stifled in England than their South Asian male counterparts as it is dependent on a reconciliation with their family’s erased past.
Title: CURATING BLACKNESS: MIXED-FAMILIES’ CENTRAL ROLE IN REDEFINING THE CONCEPT OF HOME IN POST-WWII ENGLAND.
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Name(s): Prawl, Alyssa , author
Kini, Ashvin R. , Thesis advisor
Florida Atlantic University, Degree grantor
Department of English
Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters
Type of Resource: text
Genre: Electronic Thesis Or Dissertation
Date Created: 2022
Date Issued: 2022
Publisher: Florida Atlantic University
Place of Publication: Boca Raton, Fla.
Physical Form: application/pdf
Extent: 74 p.
Language(s): English
Abstract/Description: The aim of this thesis is to examine biracial family-building and the reimagination of the ideal home in post-WWII English literature using Hanif Kureishi’s The Buddha of Suburbia and Zadie Smith’s White Teeth. Focusing on biracial children of both the Caribbean and South Asian diasporas, this thesis explores the nuances with which black self-identification is curated and how blackness as both a racial and social category in the UK is prescribed and performed depending on the Black and Brown biracial characters’ social location to white characters and family units. Mark Christian’s Mulitracial Identity: An International Perspective and Zygmunt Bauman’s Modernity and Ambivalence operate as lenses to better understand the social classification of mixed-families individuals as strangers in England and how biracial individuals are strangers to their families and respective homelands. This thesis will also argue that Black biracial women’s identity-building is oftentimes more stifled in England than their South Asian male counterparts as it is dependent on a reconciliation with their family’s erased past.
Identifier: FA00013934 (IID)
Degree granted: Thesis (MA)--Florida Atlantic University, 2022.
Collection: FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection
Note(s): Includes bibliography.
Subject(s): Racially mixed people
Great Britain--History
Racially mixed families
Persistent Link to This Record: http://purl.flvc.org/fau/fd/FA00013934
Use and Reproduction: Copyright © is held by the author with permission granted to Florida Atlantic University to digitize, archive and distribute this item for non-profit research and educational purposes. Any reuse of this item in excess of fair use or other copyright exemptions requires permission of the copyright holder.
Use and Reproduction: http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/
Host Institution: FAU
Is Part of Series: Florida Atlantic University Digital Library Collections.