Reading to Resist

Contemporary Black British Women's Writing

Suzanne Scafe

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2025
• eBook ISBN: 9781040393567
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: English Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

This is the first book to focus on writing by black British women writers, using an approach that highlights the potential of this fiction to intervene into discourses that shape the worlds in which it is situated.

Reading to Resist: Contemporary Black British Women's Writing undertakes a close, innovative reading of the novels selected, one that focuses on the texts' aesthetics as well as their thematic engagement with the worlds of their readers and the worlds the texts themselves construct. Each chapter examines themes such as freedom and agency, moral understanding, and history, while also exploring issues of importance to the contemporary period such as well-being, success, and achievement. Reading to Resist: Contemporary Black British Women's Writing covers a broad range of texts including the work of internationally acclaimed writers such as Nadifa Mohamed, Zadie Smith, Diana Evans and Buchi Emecheta, as well as work by much less well-known writers such as Jacqueline Walker, Yvvette Edwards, and Jacqueline Roy.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 Resisting Voicelessness: Contemporary Black British Women’s Autobiography
• 2 Wrongdoing and Repair in the Work of Yvvette Edwards, Zadie Smith, and Nadifa Mohamed
• 3 “Saying Madness”: Jacqueline Roy’s The Fat Lady Sings and the Fiction of Diana Evans
• 4 Parting the Veil, Re-writing, and Re-purposing the Past: Laura Fish’s Strange Music and Sara Collins’s The Confessions of Frannie Langton
• 5 Mobility, Achievement, and Failure: Buchi Emecheta’s Head above Water, Zadie Smith’s NW, Swing Time, and Natasha Brown’s Assembly
• 6 Conclusion
• Index