Reflection
Scholar Nancy M. Grace explains the phenomenon of identification and identity well: “The individual is the compilation of concentric circles, centers fluctuating, boundaries expanding and contracting with the telling of each new story” (“Snapshots” 149). While she makes these remarks in regard to Beat Generation women, this statement is applicable to life and postcolonial literature. In our postcolonial literature class, I have found the many aspects of the world are touching, changing, and forever fluid. My center has been shifted through reading the works we have, my boundaries have been further expanded into reaches of the world that I had not anticipated, and all of this has been done with each new work we have read.
We have discussed gender, racial, and economic issues extensively in this class; however, the most resounding aspect of the class has been the perpetual human quest for identity. While it is difficult enough to discover identity in general, I cannot fathom the challenges at hand if I had been an immigrant or victim of colonization. This issue has resonated in my heart the loudest through studying the novel, Small Island by Andrea Levy. The primary four characters of the novel suffer, just as David Dabydeen's character in The Intended did, discovering identity in the metropolis of London. However, they are also dealing with a war-damaged nation, intensifying the gender and racial inequalities already at stake.
The character Queenie finds her roots shaken to the point she feels walled-in with decision making, given her social circumstances, at the end of the novel. Her baby at the end symbolizes the future for Britain as a multicultural, multiethnic nation. Yet with her indecisiveness and confusion, Queenie proves that this future will not be simple or effortless. Through this character and story, my identity and its boundaries have been shifted. What do I stand for? What do I care most about? And, how much power does society and social norms hold over me? I cannot say the answers are easy, but I do know that through our class, I know that no decision or question is an easy answer. There are always multiple questions beneath the surface of a single question. There are always multiple people affected by a single decision.
Grace, Nancy. “Snapshots, Sand Paintings, and Celluloid: Formal Considerations in the Life Writing of Women Writers from the Beat Generation.” Girls Who
Wore Black: Women Writing the Beat Generation. Ed. Ronna Johnson and Nancy Grace. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers U P, 2002. 141-78. Print.
We have discussed gender, racial, and economic issues extensively in this class; however, the most resounding aspect of the class has been the perpetual human quest for identity. While it is difficult enough to discover identity in general, I cannot fathom the challenges at hand if I had been an immigrant or victim of colonization. This issue has resonated in my heart the loudest through studying the novel, Small Island by Andrea Levy. The primary four characters of the novel suffer, just as David Dabydeen's character in The Intended did, discovering identity in the metropolis of London. However, they are also dealing with a war-damaged nation, intensifying the gender and racial inequalities already at stake.
The character Queenie finds her roots shaken to the point she feels walled-in with decision making, given her social circumstances, at the end of the novel. Her baby at the end symbolizes the future for Britain as a multicultural, multiethnic nation. Yet with her indecisiveness and confusion, Queenie proves that this future will not be simple or effortless. Through this character and story, my identity and its boundaries have been shifted. What do I stand for? What do I care most about? And, how much power does society and social norms hold over me? I cannot say the answers are easy, but I do know that through our class, I know that no decision or question is an easy answer. There are always multiple questions beneath the surface of a single question. There are always multiple people affected by a single decision.
Grace, Nancy. “Snapshots, Sand Paintings, and Celluloid: Formal Considerations in the Life Writing of Women Writers from the Beat Generation.” Girls Who
Wore Black: Women Writing the Beat Generation. Ed. Ronna Johnson and Nancy Grace. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers U P, 2002. 141-78. Print.
