ABSTRACT

Homing the Metropole presents a new approach to diasporic fiction that reorients postcolonial readings of migration away from processes of displacement and rupture towards those of placement and homemaking. While notions of home have frequently been associated with essentialist understandings of nation and race, an uncritical investment in tropes of homelessness can prove equally hegemonic. By synthesising postcolonial and intersectional feminist theory, this work establishes the migrant domestic space as a central location of resistance, countering notions of the private sphere as static, uncreative and apolitical. Through close readings of fiction emerging from the African, Caribbean and South Asian diasporas, it reassesses our conception of home in light of contemporary realities of globalisation and forced migration, providing a valuable critique of the celebration of unfixed subject positions that has been a central tenet of postcolonial studies.

chapter 1|22 pages

Introduction

Homing in on Migration

part I|50 pages

Rereading Black Domesticity

chapter 2|28 pages

Mothering in the Diaspora

Creative (Re)Production in Buchi Emecheta’s Early London Novels

chapter 3|22 pages

Clean Bodies, Clean Homes

Decolonizing Domesticity in Andrea Levy’s Small Island

part II|43 pages

Islam at Home

chapter 4|24 pages

“The Real Thing”

Performing Home in Monica Ali’s Brick Lane

chapter 5|19 pages

Domestic Fiction and the Islamic Female Subject

Leila Aboulela’s The Translator

part III|48 pages

Precarious Domesticities

chapter 6|20 pages

Homelessness and the Refugee

Abdulrazak Gurnah’s By the Sea 1

chapter 7|21 pages

Reorienting Home

Queer Domesticity in Bernardine Evaristo’s Mr Loverman

chapter 8|7 pages

Conclusion

Homing the Metropole