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" Mental Distress and the African and Caribbean Diasporas in Twentieth-Century British Fiction "
Sanyal, Aparna
Hepburn, Allan William
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Latin Dissertation
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| Language of Document
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English
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| Record Number
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1058876
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| Doc. No
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TL57993
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| Main Entry
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Sanyal, Aparna
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| Title & Author
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Mental Distress and the African and Caribbean Diasporas in Twentieth-Century British Fiction\ Sanyal, AparnaHepburn, Allan William
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| College
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McGill University (Canada)
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| Date
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2020
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| Degree
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M.A.
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| student score
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2020
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| Note
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98 p.
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| Abstract
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The history of twentieth-century immigration by the African and Caribbean Diasporas to Britain is a history of mental distress. This thesis focusses on the social elements—conditioned by racism, gender inequities, and colonialism—that cause mental distress in the protagonists of three British novels. The first, Sam Selvon's The Lonely Londoners, published in 1956, explores the struggles of single, working-class men of Caribbean and African origin in a hostile, postwar, British environment. The second, Buchi Emecheta's Second-Class Citizen, appeared in 1974, at the height of Black Power and amid military rule in Nigeria, the heroine's country of origin; this novel portrays the stress faced by a middle-class, educated woman and mother, in London, within a disintegrating traditional marriage. Caryl Phillips' Foreigners, published in 2007, details the depression of three men from three eras of emigration to Britain. The three texts provide a cinematic view into the protagonists' social contexts, including racially problematic housing, jobs, policing, childcare, emotional support, neighbourhoods, and language. Noting that "linking racism to mental health has multiple, inter-related connections" (Chakraborty 131), the authors of a "relatively new approach in deterring the health effects of racial discrimination" find that the "most common outcomes of these studies have been mental health (e.g. depression, psychological distress" (Chakraborty 127). The causes of mental distress may be fully understood in these novels by following the mental health of the protagonists in their changing environments and timelines.
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| Descriptor
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African literature
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Anti-Semitism
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Culture
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Diaspora
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Editors
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Gender
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Immigration
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International relations
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Mental disorders
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Mental health
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Psychiatry
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Schizophrenia
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Womens literature
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Writers
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Hepburn, Allan William
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McGill University (Canada)
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