Postcolonial literature in English - Appunti

THE SHOPS: Appropriating London through the selling of goods

Another feature of the relationship between the people who have just arrived and people living there for some time can be seen in another part of the novel, when we have a description of shops. It is very interesting to see how shops are one of the very first places in which there is a negotiation of the presence of these people. At the very beginning, shops sold goods needed by the white people of London, but people coming from different areas with different customs eat and need different things. At the very beginning, the sense of extraneity in a city is given by the fact that they do not find the food, that is what makes them comfortable, because when you are away from home you try to reconstruct something familiar.

As time passes, some of the areas become inhabited by communities of people coming from different countries, and also shops try to adapt to the new situation. It is interesting to see how they adapt their knowledge of London.

also be seen as a way to describe the impact and influence of Jamaican culture on London. The term "invader" suggests a sense of invasion or infiltration, highlighting the significant presence and influence of Jamaican people in the city. This can be seen in various aspects of London life, including the availability of Jamaican goods in shops and the adaptation of British customs to accommodate the diversity brought by the Jamaican community. The use of the term "invader" may be controversial, as it can perpetuate stereotypes, but it also reflects the complex dynamics of cultural integration and appropriation in a diverse city like London.

also be used in more ironically sense, when you are proud of being an invader. Salt fish, typical of Jamaican cooking, or garlic, or pepper or some spices can be found in few shops. Shopkeepers recognize that new customers need other needs, such us tropical fruits, food which is familiar to other people and completely unfamiliar to London shopkeeper. But business requires it: it's a way that shows there is a process of some integration. Living together need find to understanding each other. The city has transformed: in the early time you couldn't find anything, now there is the perception of the layers of immigrants in time.

This Jew feller knows how to deal with immigrants, has his own marketing strategies and knows that if he gives free cigarettes (or cigar) to people coming from Caribbean he will become more popular. He assumes that on Saturday people want to go there because they would spend more money. Things go by word of mouth, things spread, and a person is open to accept.

people who are not white. It is not only with houses that people find difficulties, but also in shops and when they go for a job and sometime the clerk just marks the request with the letter, so that is clear that the person is not white. When jobs are suggested to people is often known that they know how it works: a better job is offered to white people. When they find shops in which the shopkeeper is trying to make they feel comfortable in this situation is a pleasure for them.

Tanty and the introduction of credit

The protagonist of the next episode is Tanty, the old mother or aunt of one of the characters. She has arrived in London together with the family, unexpectedly. Some people decide to live in London and start making a sort of a family life in the basements, it is not anymore the young man alone surviving in the city, but a family which comes over and tries to find a new dimension. She is a very humble person, and she is a brilliant energetic woman, who spends time doing more of the

habits which she had in the Caribbean in this new situation, especially when she goes shopping. In doing shopping, English people are not particularly friendly, so they just buy and are not interested in creating a relationship with shopkeepers. But this is not Tanty. The shop is full of Spade housewives, women from the Caribbean, who are performing all together. For them, shopping is a way to spend time together and to find a relation with the person who sells. They all behave in this shop as they would behave in the market, which is more informal than shops, so they import their way of behaving to London. They talk all together to the shopkeeper in a very familiar term, reversing the usual hierarchy when we have white people and black people. Multiple conversations are going on: women talking about community lives, and at the same time shopping and giving orders to the other one. Tanty is very talkative. The shop is not just the place to buy things, but also the place where

Social life goes on. She became a familiar figure to everybody, and also English people call her Tanty. English people are contaminated by the kind of climax which is contaminating the shop: the consequence is producing an interesting change in the way shop works. Usually, when you go to shop you are supposed to have money for what you want to buy, and this is the way English people do also if they are very poor. The owner was not going to give credit and you had to go there with all the money you need.

Tanty introduces the credit: she asks the shop keeper if he knows about trust. Tanty tried to convince the shop keeper to trust her and to introduce credit: she tried to introduce the way of paying everything on Friday as they did where they came from. This implies reciprocal trust and to be able to stick to one's work. She introduces a completely different model which implies the relation between two person who don't know each other and do not trust each other. She spread the word,

the direction of assimilation, but they resist and try to maintain their own identity. The novel also explores the theme of prejudice and discrimination, as the shopkeepers face hostility and suspicion from the local community. Despite these challenges, they persevere and find ways to adapt and survive in their new environment. The story ultimately highlights the resilience and strength of the characters, as they navigate the complexities of cultural integration.

The condition of feeling as different, as a sort of second-class citizens.

GENDER RELATION BETWEEN BLACK AND WHITE

Hypocrisy discrimination

There is a short episode of one of the characters, Galahad, who meets a woman in the street, near Piccadilly, in the center of London, and there is a very short conversation between Galahad and a woman with a child. From the point of view of a young man, living in London means finding some security feeling that he is in the heart of London and not in a remote island in the periphery of the world, but that he will going to be part of the earth of London. What makes he happy is that he has a date with a woman, he has some saving in the bank, he has paid the rent, he has a house, a job. It seems the beginning of, in the end, being part of something.

Galahad is one of the characters described as the one who dress very well, to be very knit, very integrate and knows how to speak with a British accent. In this situation, Galahad is not doing anything aggressive.

at all, he is kind with a child, but we see the usual reaction of the mother and the child: the child is afraid of the person, which is normal because is not accustomed to see colored people; at the same time he is afraid and curious of him. The mother is the one who wants to teach the child to be polite, so tells him that he shouldn't address person mentioning the color of the skin, he should pretend that there is no difference. But we learn that the same mother doesn't really want to talk to Galahad, not because she is afraid of him, but out of hypocrisy, she is afraid about what other white people would have thought of her if she had talked to a colored person.

Even if there are no rules that convey discrimination, the society discriminates in behaviors. We see why these people should feel lonely: in the street, just because you want to be kind, the white people gaze is conditioning the white woman behavior, preventing her to be more spontaneous, to be kind. If this had happened

years ago, he would be shocked by that, but by now he is accustomed to that. In earlier times he would have asked himself why they are discriminating him, but he is not doing it anymore.

In this scene we see an immigrant looking at his hand and saying that he is just a person, and everyone had qualities and bad intentions, but it shouldn't be color to make trouble. People stop at the color of his skin, and this changes everything. We see that these characters have feelings and being from another culture or ethnic group doesn't prevent them to have the same feelings and worries as everybody has and color is still a bit obstacle.

On one hand, we have something optimistic as with the shop keeper, but at the same time we have hypocrisy and hostility from Londoners. Living in London is also facing Londoners.

The process of stereotyping

There is an episode that shows about the fact that these young men only rarely have a family, a wife or a whole family. Very often they try to have

relationship or adventures with girls, especially English girls. The process of stereotyping is something which concerns both white Londoners and Caribbean/black Londoners, the new inhabitants of the city, not only in the 40s but also later on. The process of stereotyping implies that there is an idea of exoticism: on one hand, for English girls Caribbean people may be attractive because they are exotic and sometimes less under a kind of education which rules relationship between sex and put marriage as target to the relation. On the other hand, these young men think about English girls in terms of someone with who have adventures that tells more about an idea of masculinity than speaking about real relationship.

Some people are more seriously looking for a job, while others are cheating and borrowing money from friends. There are many characters and behave each according to their own standards, and here we have a picture of different attitudes. Someone gets a job and tries to get payment from

the state, cheating the welfare state; at the same time, other behave according to the English standard. At the end of the novel, we have the idea of relationship with British people because British people are very much in the background, they are people who