Accessibility Tools

  • Content scaling 100%
  • Font size 100%
  • Line height 100%
  • Letter spacing 100%

Black British by Hebe de Souza

by
November 2016, no. 386

Black British by Hebe de Souza

Ventura Press $32.99 pb, 277 pp, 9781925384901

Black British by Hebe de Souza

by
November 2016, no. 386

Set against the milieu of India’s recent emancipation from British rule and the indelible scars left by the country’s 1947 partition with Pakistan, Black British subverts the classic migrant tale. Instead of detailing a middling family uprooting their lives in search of economic opportunities on foreign shores, it features an affluent Goan family at its centre. They are looking to leave India because their wealth, language, and British-led traditions have grown incongruous with that of the larger population. This sense of privilege is acknowledged throughout the novel, with occasionally heavy-handed passages dedicated to contextualising the discrepancy between the Indians consigned to occupy the lower strata of society and the ‘black British’ with vestiges of the colonial rulers stamped on their beliefs and values system.

From the New Issue

You May Also Like

Leave a comment

If you are an ABR subscriber, you will need to sign in to post a comment.

If you have forgotten your sign in details, or if you receive an error message when trying to submit your comment, please email your comment (and the name of the article to which it relates) to ABR Comments. We will review your comment and, subject to approval, we will post it under your name.

Please note that all comments must be approved by ABR and comply with our Terms & Conditions.