Identity Formation in AFro British Women literature

Over the span of three centuries, the Afro-British tradition has managed to establish itself as a distinguished voice in Britain's literary and cultural scene. While unearthing its first attempts at self-definition, this dissertation first engages with the slave tradition in the particular context of eighteenth century Enlightenment England, and explores how its emergence initiated the reinscription of the black race within humankind after years of exclusion. By adopting a feminist and cultural framework, this essay spotlights the female contribution; it also examines the extent to which the double discrimination of race and gender further complicates the female identity formation project. Significantly, Second Class Citizen, In The Ditch and Head Above Water stand as typical Afro-British texts that strongly resonate with earlier voices of the tradition, while promoting strategies of resistance ultimately disturbing constructions of womanhood and subjectivity. Through these narratives, Buchi Emecheta inscribes herself as a true heiress of an Afro-British female textuality inaugurated two centuries earlier by a pioneering figure as prestigious as Mary Prince.