Reflections in ‘Broken Mirrors’: Transnational Women’s Narratives Published in Britain in the 2000s

Abstract

In this thesis I investigate the literary work of three women writers published in Britain in the 2000s. The authors under consideration are Jackie Kay, a Scottish poet, novelist, and playwright; Nikita Lalwani who was born in India and raised in Cardiff, Wales; and Chinese-British novelist and filmmaker Xiaolu Guo. I argue that the critical and public celebration of writers like Zadie Smith, Monica Ali, and Andrea Levy in the 2000s has generated a rather narrow conception of women’s writing by Black and Asian writers in Britain that has tended to concentrate on Afro-Caribbean or South Asian perspectives. Thus, I seek to complicate the dominant critical accounts of Black and Asian British writings in the 2000s by shifting attention from well-known writers like Smith, Levy, and Ali. Through this reorientation, I seek to intervene in debates about multiculturalism and Britishness. The analysis of my chosen writers, Kay, Lalwani, and Guo, opens the way for a consideration of Black and Asian British writers in a post-devolution context that attends to how writers explore Englishness, Welshness, and Scottishness. It also allows an exploration of mobility, the cultural politics of language, and the complex ways in which these writers explore identity. By discussing these writers together, I aim to reconsider the 2000s by focusing on shifting notions of identity, changing concepts of Britishness and belonging, and how they are constantly redefined and challenged across different genres: the novel, memoir, and short story.