The British Contemporary Diasporic Spaces: The Quest for Home and Identity in some Writings of Caryl Phillips, Amala Olukemi & Helen Oyeyemi

Abstract

Identity within the context of diaspora has always been rife with the feelings of bitterness and bewilderment that feature the lives of most diasporas due to the acknowledgement of the original land and the feelings of belonging nowhere. The principal concern of this thesis is to scrutinise the quest for identity and home in Black British diaspora writings. The mayhem of identity and the craving to create a home at the frontiers of other nations have been approached through the analysis of Caryl Phillips‟ The Lost Child (2015), Olukemi Amala‟s Under an Emerald Sky (2011) and Helen Oyeyemi‟s The Opposite House (2007). The authors have been selected on the basis of their mania for the narratives of home and roots-tracing despite the call for border-banning. In all the selected literary oeuvres, the writers have projected their interest to create a new cosmos wherein they can amalgamate their original culture and that of the recipient land. Adding to the dilemma of being positioned at marginal spaces, the authors point at how home and the painful memories of the past could excavate indecipherable craters for diaspora beings, and could be the main reason for the dearth of having practical conjectures as regards to identity. Mindful of the multifaceted nature of diaspora and the deficiency of any postulation apropos identity, the novelists create a cacophony of narratives with polycentric and diverse prototypes to fit into the diasporic position. In doing so, they neither deny the pronouncement of the homeland nor neglect the recipient one. Somewhat, they equate both realms and culture as equal partners. The novels analysed in this thesis visibly elucidate that past memories, home-desiring, and being positioned „somewhere‟ are the repositories that diaspora beings can refer to sense and rescue the self.