New Publication – Domestic Intersections in Contemporary Migration Fiction: Homing the Metropole

Domestic Intersections in Contemporary Migration Fiction: Homing the Metropole (Routledge, 2019) by Lucinda Newns

Domestic Intersections in Contemporary Migration Fiction responds to the need for a more materialist perspective on migration by reorienting the focus on domesticity and the everyday practices of homemaking and away from a celebratory and aestheticized reading of displacement. Centering on Britain as the location of arrival, its readings of canonical and underexplored works of diasporic fiction emanating from Africa, South Asia and the Caribbean foreground the significance of discourses of domesticity in supporting as well as resisting colonialism, racism and xenophobia. Applying an intersectional feminist approach, this book challenges the tendency to view the private sphere as a static, apolitical and uncreative space. Rather, Newns argues, we should regard the domestic home as a key site for contesting the terms of belonging within larger spaces and collectivities, such as the city and the nation. Ultimately, by demonstrating the material importance of homely spaces for non-privileged migrants like women, refugees and LGBTQ+ people, Domestic Intersections problematizes the critical suspicion towards home and placement in feminist, postcolonial and queer theory.

Table of Contents

1. Introduction: Homing in on Migration
   • Part I Re-Reading Black Domesticity
2. Mothering in the Diaspora: Creative (Re)Production in Buchi Emecheta’s Early London Novels
3. Clean Bodies, Clean Homes: Decolonizing Domesticity in Andrea Levy’s Small Island
   • Part II Islam at Home
4. “The Real Thing”: Performing Home in Monica Ali’s Brick Lane
5. Domestic Fiction and the Islamic Female Subject: Leila Aboulela’s The Translator
   • Part III Precarious Domesticities
6. Homelessness and the Refugee: Abdulrazak Gurnah’s By the Sea
7. Re-Orienting Home: Queer Domesticity in Bernardine Evaristo’s Mr Loverman
8. Conclusion: Homing the Metropole

https://www.routledge.com/Domestic-Intersections-in-Contemporary-Migration-Fiction-Homing-the-Metropole/Newns/p/book/9781138308114