Rewriting ‘white’ genres in search of Afro-European identities
Travel and crime fiction by Bernardine Evaristo and Mike Phillips
Janine Hauthal | Vrije Universiteit Brussel
Presuming that both travel and crime fiction can be described as traditionally ‘white’ genres, this article
investigates how contemporary Black British authors appropriate these genres. Focusing on Mike Phillips’s A Shadow of
Myself and Bernardine Evaristo’s Soul Tourists, the article examines how the two novels redeem and suspend the
traditional racial and national coding of travel writing and crime fiction by rehabilitating black mixed-race characters. In both novels,
moreover, the rethinking of traditional popular genres coincides with, and is partly enabled by, a transnational shift in focus from Britain
to Europe. A closer look at the novels’ respective endings, finally, reveals how each conceptualises the relationship between Britain and
Europe differently, and how this difference can be explained by the impact of genre.
Keywords: appropriation, crime fiction, imagining (Afro-)Europe, transculturality, travel writing
This article is currently available as a sample
article.
Published online: 15 June 2017
https://doi.org/10.1075/etc.10.1.03hau
https://doi.org/10.1075/etc.10.1.03hau
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References
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