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My study examines three female Black British bildungsromane: Monica Ali’s Brick Lane, Joan Riley’s Waiting in the Twilight, and Buchi Emecheta’s Second-Class Citizen. By combining a study of a relatively established novel form with contemporary female diasporic fictions, my work looks at how gender, race and location complicate the tropes of the genre, while still adhering to many of its parameters. I explore ways in which the existential states of loneliness, isolation, and solitude faced by the female protagonists in England assist or inhibit the formation of collectivity and subjectivity. This study pays particular attention to ways that community formation and friendship, as well as work and affective labor, serve as means to find/create a sense of home in diasporic conditions, as in Brick Lane and Second-Class Citizen. I also study how a sense of community falters because of a disconnection from productive work in Waiting in the Twilight. / Department of English

This essay focuses on the topics of sexism and the function of gender and oppression in Monica Ali’s Brick Lane. Instances in the novel are related to real world incidents in order to show how Ali, in spite of her Western upbringing and perspective, has accurately depicted several problematical cases of injustice in Muslim culture. Even though Ali has been criticized for her, supposedly, incorrect portrayal of Bangladeshis in London, this essay will argue that the topics of the novel remain relevant in the larger scheme of Muslim society.

Through a comparative literary study of Monica Ali’s Brick Lane and Olga Grjasnova’s Der Russe ist einer, der Birken liebt, this thesis concludes that although the migrant experience is heterogeneous and that integration is a difficult process that varies through the diversity of experiences, these experiences can be unified by the common way in which migrants learn to “belong” by connecting with voices of the past and present and by building and maintaining relationships that extend beyond the limits of place. In defending this argument, the thesis draws upon themes of Bakhtinian heteroglossia, nationalism and transnationalism, space, globalism, and migration. / Includes bibliography. / Thesis (M.A.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2015 / FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection

In dieser Dissertation werden die Repräsentationen von Kulturtransfer in zeitgenössischen britischen Romanen untersucht (Monica Ali: Brick Lane (2003), Nadeem Aslam: Maps For Lost Lovers (2004), Gautam Malkani: Londonstani (2007) und Maggie Gee: The White Family (2002)). Für die Analyse der Begegnungen und Kulturtransferprozesse werden narratologische Analysekategorien mit denen der Kulturtransferanalyse verknüpft. Neben den textimmanenten Aspekten werden außerdem die Produktions- und Rezeptionskontexte der Romane mitberücksichtigt. Dazu gehören u.a. auch das Buchmarketing und Buchumschlagdesign sowie Rezensionen und öffentliche Reaktionen auf die Romane. Mit diesem Instrumentarium werden z.B. folgende Fragen untersucht: Wie werden Begegnungen und Austauschprozesse repräsentiert und bewertet? Welche Gründe für Aneignung oder Abschottung werden formuliert? In diesem Kontext konzentriert sich die Arbeit auf die Repräsentation von Mediatorinnen und Mediatoren, Kontaktzonen und -situationen, Machtstrukturen sowie Selektions- und Ablehnungsprozesse. Außerdem wird untersucht, mit welchen ästhetischen Mitteln die Austauschprozesse gestaltet werden, beispielsweise durch die Untersuchung der Plotmuster und der Charakterisierungen auf Stereotype hin. und welche Effekte dies bewirkt. Die Analysen haben ergeben, dass Kulturtransfer als erstrebenswert bewertet wird. Gleichzeitig findet aber oft nur Assimilierung statt und kein reziproker Austausch auf Augenhöhe. Die ausgewählten Romane setzen sich vorwiegend mit Hindernissen des interkulturellen Austauschs auseinander. Besonders häufig werden in diesem Kontext Gründe wie mangelnde Bereitschaft, mangelnde Bildung und extremistische (religiöse) Ansichten der Einwandererfamilien angeführt. Die Romane verstetigen Stereotype, die dem Lesepublikum bereits aus vielen Massenmedien vertraut sind, u.a. durch entwicklungsresistente Charaktere, typisiert als ungebildete und unverbesserliche Migranten, die Parallelgesellschaften entwerfen. / This thesis analyses representations of cultural exchange in contemporary British novels in the context of migration and the British literary field. It offers a multilayered approach: the combination of cultural exchange theory and its categories with narratological tools do justice to the aesthetic side of the novels as well as their socio-political and historical contexts that are particularly relevant for novels dealing with migration. Cultural exchange theory analyses appropriation and transformation processes, i.e. how the concepts, cultural practices as well as representations change when they are transferred into a different cultural context. Furthermore, this thesis takes into consideration that all novels exist as material objects within a literary field that is affected by editors, marketing people, reviewers, and other agents. The results support the following theses: Contact and exchange are implicitly and explicitly depicted as something positive, with two of the novels emphasising the virtues of selective appropriation. However, the exchange processes mainly work in one direction only and contact between (British) Asian and (white) British characters is limited. The blame for this is often put on the immigrants and their families. The selected texts focus on obstacles and conflicts in exchange processes without offering solutions to the conflicts. In this context, religion or religious fervour along with a lack of education are most often depicted as the main obstacle for reciprocal cultural exchange. The aesthetic means employed are analysed as well as their effects, e.g. whether form and content reinforce each other or produce contradictions. Finally, the thesis shows which novels deconstruct and contradict existing stereotypes and which ones are complicit in reproducing them. Primary texts: Monica Ali’s Brick Lane (2003), Nadeem Aslam’s Maps for Lost Lovers (2004), Gautam Malkani’s Londonstani (2006) and Maggie Gee’s The White Family (2002).