Abstract
Rita dream bout living in Hengland, wid it’s expanse a land - like de books she read - like she favourite Elizabeth Gaskell. She tink Hengland gone provide prospects ta give she a life dat stretches far wider dan Jamaica can give. When de insects come and mama dies, Rita is filled wid a guilt that follows her around like a shadow. Nearly a year later, with a baby strapped to she chest, Rita meets Tony and he has the same aspirations of Hengland, meaning it is no longer beyond she reach.Wings of a Swallowtail is a novel about one woman’s journey from Jamaica to England during the 1950s to 70s, from poverty to wealth and from childhood to motherhood, steeped in Jamaican culture and heritage. My novel draws on oral history interviews to story my grandmother’s journey, including her migration from Jamaica to England during the 1960s, and offers an original perspective on black motherhood based on my own family history. It is about one women’s love for her family, that examines the impacts of colonialism, capitalism and migration from the point of view of Rita (my protagonist) and her family and how she tries to maintain Jamaican traditions, cultures and values whist assimilating into their new life in Britain. Ultimately the novel is an exploration of black experiences in Britain, through the eyes of one family – my family. I interweave aspects of magical realism through this realist imagining of my grandmother’s journey to reveal tensions and pleasures that arise as Rita settles in England.
My practice-based research is inspired by my upbringing in my grandmother’s home in Croydon, where I grew up in the 1980s. My thesis seeks to dismantle oppressive stereotypical representations of black mothers in white discourse, by analysing black matriarchs in black fiction to inspire the development of an original black matriarchal protagonist in my novel. I will also be exploring how some black authors have leant on historical English literary forms and how others have weaved traditions, culture, vernacular and heritage from their countries of birth into their fiction, enabling me to create a story which explores Afro-Caribbean and British ways of being.
My research contributes to work that centres black women’s stories within British literature and culture, so that future generations can embrace black history and celebrate black women’s lives as part of our shared British history. Building on the oral history research that Beverly Bryan, Stella Dadzie and Suzanne Scafe began in the 1980s with their book, Heart of the Race: Black Women in Britain, which highlights how and why many Caribbean born people moved to the UK after the second world war as economic migrants to gain more opportunities for their children. My thesis is influenced by Renata Harden Ferdinand’s book An Autoethnography of African American Motherhood: Things I Tell My Daughter, which centres black women’s stories such as my grandmother’s, and asks for the lives of black women to be acknowledged, researched, valued and preserved, in order to celebrate black women’s histories – our history.
Embargo end date: 3/02/28
| Date of Award | Jan 2026 |
|---|---|
| Original language | English |
| Awarding Institution |
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| Supervisor | Jessica Moriarty (Supervisor) & Vedrana Velickovic (Supervisor) |
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