Multicultural Writing In Contemporary British Literature:Kazuo Ishiguro, Caryl Phillips, And Ben Okri

The end of the Second World War saw the restructuring of world power. Britain lost her superpower status and its imperial glory. Under the influence of the post-war movements of independence, former British colonies demanded independence and became sovereign states. As a result, the international territory of the British Empire shrank dramatically and Britain ceased to be the empire on which the sun never set. In1997, Britain lost its last colony when Hongkong returned to China.The decline of Britain’s influence in world affairs has greatly affected her cultural and literary milieu. Post-war British literature went through some changes. With the pioneering writers like Joyce and Woolf no longer on the scene, British literature lost its international outlook. One other major feature of the change was seen in the pronouncement of some critics and writers in the1960s and the1970s regarding "the death of the novel"(Childs1). Such a claim corresponded with the widespread view on the post-war literary scene across the Atlantic. When postmodernism gradually replaced realism as the predominating style, many people felt the loss of real literature. Of course, there was some form of rethinking and adjustment that took time, and soon the field of British fiction dazzled the reading public with its new outlook.British literature entered a new phase in the1980s, with many talented and promising young writers publishing a large number of first-class novels. Among these new-rising writers, the writers from the commonwealth countries and immigrant writers have played a pivotal role in reinvigorating British literature. Salman Rushdie, Hanif Kureishi, V.S. Naipaul, Kazuo Ishiguro, Caryl Phillips, Ben Okri, Chinua Achebe, Timothy Mo, and Zadie Smith are the representatives of the multicultural writers, and they introduced a new concept of ethnic literature into the history of British literature. This doctoral dissertation focuses on the study of three multicultural writers who were born in the1950s:Kazuo Ishiguro (1954-), Caryl Phillips (1958-) and Ben Okri (1959-) and makes a comparative analysis of their representative works to reveal the thematic and stylistic similarities and differences between them.Foreign scholars have made some critical studies on Ishiguro, Phillips and Okri. There are about nine monographs on Ishiguro, five on Phillips and five on Okri, in addition to the essays and papers on some particular novels. Chinese studies of the three writers are limited to introductions, with only a dozen papers on Ishiguro and two papers and one doctoral dissertation on Phillips, and two short papers on Okri. The introduction to all of the three writers can be found in Qu Shijing’s book Survey of Contemporary British Fiction.My survey of the current literary studies finds that scholars, both at home and abroad, have never made any comparative study on Ishiguro, Phillips and Okri. As regards the topic of historical narrative, the mainstream literary criticism in the West only briefly comments on Caryl Phillips, and few includes Ishiguro and Okri in the analysis of contemporary British historical fiction.This doctoral dissertation selects the historical novels of the three writers as the research topic and aims to illustrate how they represent historical events in literature, how their representation differs from the mainstream representation, how they incorporate history into fictional narratives, and how their historical narratives reflect the contemporary life and reality and portend future life.The body of the dissertation consists of five chapters. The framework of the first three chapters is roughly the same:each chapter is dedicated to the study of one individual writer. It first introduces briefly some facts on historical events, then explains the fictional description of the historical backgrounds to illustrate each writer’s historical consciousness, and makes a detailed textual analysis on each writer’s representative works to reveal the physical and psychological impacts of those dark events on individuals. The last two chapters offer a comparative study of the three writers. With a common topic as the thread, each chapter compares how the three writers from different cultural backgrounds represent history and how they link history with the present and the future.Chapter One discusses the historical consciousness of the Japanese-British writer Kazuo Ishiguro in four of his novels concerning the Second World War, mainly American atomic bombing in Nagasaki, Shanghai Battle and the post-war decline of the British Empire. These historical events come to the foreground through the protagonist’s recollection. Ishiguro ingeniously incorporates the historical episodes into the individual experiences to show the interrelatedness between personal life and its social context and depict the nondescript psychological trauma of the war in each character. Ishigurian protagonists are caught in their mental shuffling between the past and the present. They examine their past misdeeds in their recollections and reevaluate their life experiences. Therefore, the sense of grief, melancholy and loss permeates his fiction. Fortunately, these protagonists are able to redefine their self after introspection and confession and confront the reality and the future life with courage and hope. Through the protagonists’nostalgic reminiscences, Ishiguro attempts to reveal the need for self-examination for individual life and the need for historical awareness for social development.Chapter Two analyzes the historical consciousness of the Caribbean-British writer Caryl Phillips in his six novels, written before2000, all centering on some historical events:the slave trade, the Holocaust and the post-war Caribbean immigration. Most of Phillips’s fiction employs fragmented narratives to reflect the great damage that the inhumane slave trade and the Holocaust have done to the blacks and the Jews, disrupting their lives, imposing unbearable pains on their minds, uprooting them from their native soils and placing them in exile. In his novels on the slave trade, Phillips tries to present a panoramic view of the transatlantic trade and expose its impact on the black slaves, the white slave traders and plantation owners and vehemently attacks the cruelty of slavery. In his writings about the Holocaust, Phillips juxtaposes the traumatic black history and Jewish history to illustrate that the two peoples feel empathic with each other on account of their similar victimization by European racism. The two novels concerning Caribbean immigration explore the European xenophobia in the face of immigrants, the relationships between the former colonies and their "mother" country, between the independent island states and America:Phillips hopes that his historical novels can help people combat historical amnesia and awaken people’s respect for history. Only with the knowledge of history in mind, can people understand the present and know where we are going in the future. Chapter Three explains the historical consciousness of Nigerian expatriate writer in Britain, Ben Okri, whose fiction mainly reveals the chaos and confusion in the contemporary history of Nigeria:the pre-independence days of Nigeria and the Nigerian Civil War. Centuries’slave trade and British colonial rule have severely damaged Nigerian economy and made her people suffer the pains of poverty. Besides, the complex social composite structure of Nigeria as a multi-ethnic, multi-lingual and multi-religious nation leads to the constant regional, tribal and political strife, and in consequence, Nigeria has failed to establish a stable powerful government in the decades following her independence. The political and tribal conflicts culminated in the Nigerian Civil War.Most of Okri’s novels can be termed as works of magical realism. Okri feels that realism alone is no longer enough for him to describe such an impoverished and chaotic life as facing Nigeria. So he adds magical elements in his writings, bringing ghosts and spirits into the portrayal of urban Nigerian ghetto life. Magical realism is most evidently and perfectly employed in his Azaro trilogy.Chapter Four explores the three writers’unanimous concern about the marginalized people’s experiences in their representation of history. This chapter applies the postcolonial theory on the "Other" in the analysis of the three writers’ subversion and revision of the Western mainstream writing about the "Other." Ishiguro touches upon the issue of Western misunderstanding of the Oriental people such as the Japanese and the Chinese and challenges the notion of the so-called "Oriental savagery," which originated from the Western concept of cultural hegemony. He also depicts the frustration of the Japanese and the British women about their gender identity and their agonies over their futile efforts at self-fulfillment because of the male oppression.The image of the black people in Phillips’s fiction completely undermines the stereotypical black image in Western mainstream literature. Each black character shows his or her distinctive personality, and as a people they all possess the beautiful qualities as forbearance, restraint, introspection, perseverance, wisdom and kindness. By contrast, the white slave traders and plantation owners are mostly impulsive, indifferent, merciless and violent. Another group of impressive character Phillips creates is the female characters. Though they have encountered different misfortunes in their lives, most of the female characters confront their hardships and disasters with courage, challenge patriarchal institutions, and strive to pursue a self-reliant life.Okri focuses on the characterization of the urban ghetto people and working women. By describing their experiences in the pre-independence days, Okri brings to light the contribution of the working class to Nigerian independence, which has been ignored by the ruling class. In his fiction, Okri not only expresses his sympathy for the anguish and agonies of the working class people but also points out their weaknesses and limitations. Okri’s attitude toward female liberation is ambivalent. On the one hand, he is compassionate about women’s suppressed life, and praises women’s benevolence, perseverance and kindness. On the other hand, he is worried about the female challenge to the male authority. His conflicting mind on women can be seen in his contradictory characterization of Madame Koto in the Azaro trilogy.Chapter Five offers some biographical information on the three writers’ multicultural experiences and examines how they view the contemporary trend of globalization and the accompanying multicultural life and how they reflect it in their historical narratives. Ishiguro and Phillips immigrated to Britain in their childhood, and Okri spent his childhood in Britain and then resettled down there after he came of age. The three writers all have experienced different cultures and have suffered to different extents racial discrimination in Britain. In the process of integrating themselves into British culture, they never give up their own native culture and their original cultural identity. They all think that when the phenomenon of globalization has made international migration an inevitable fact, those people with multicultural backgrounds should redefine their cultural identity. They should forsake the notion of the clear-cut cultural territory and build a heterogeneous and fluid cultural identity. When one is "homeless," one can make everywhere a home. This kind of new cultural identity is represented in the three images in their fictions:Ishiguro’s image of the "orphan," Phillips’s image of the "river-crosser" and Okri’s "abiku"(the "spirit child"). The three images bear some historical traces in them since they are created out of historical narratives, but the fluid nature of their identity speaks for contemporary life. They are all border-crossers, and can serve as the spokespersons of the cross-cultural life in the twenty-first century.In conclusion, Ishiguro, Phillips and Okri are all writers with a strong historical awareness. They do not, nonetheless, confine their writings to the mechanical representation of historical events. They reexamine history from the perspective of the marginalized people and illustrate how they are affected by history and give voice to the people who have been subjugated, silenced and misrepresented by the Western mainstream culture. Thus they display to the readers a new picture and a new version of history. At the same time, they orient their historical narratives toward the present and the future life, and remind people that history should serve as a mirror and a guide for a better future.