OUR WORDS ARE BRICK AND MORTAR: MASCULINE RECONSTRUCTIONS OF HOME AND COMMUNITY IN WINDRUSH ERA WEST INDIAN MIGRANT LITERATURE

Abstract

This thesis examines the concept of home in West Indian migrant literature of the Windrush Era. The analysis focuses on home as a series of reference points which construct inclusions and exclusions in a given society. I postulate that the non-white, male West Indian migrant’s idea of home endures a double disruption (in the shift from the colonial patriarchal paradigm within the West Indies and in the act of migration to England) which forces him to reconstruct a notion of home within England. In the investigation, I discover that West Indian men must learn to adapt to the concomitant societal pressures of racism, imperialism, colonialism and nationalism in England, in order to build a sense of home which can withstand such pressures. In the process of this investigation, I also discover that use of the West Indian language and the pursuit of male community building is indispensable to creating new forms of masculinity which can exist in a diasporic community without necessarily reaffirming the previous colonial patriarchal paradigm.