Contemporary European Contemporary European DiasporasDiasporas

Dr John McLeodDr John McLeodReader in Postcolonial and Diaspora LiteraturesReader in Postcolonial and Diaspora Literatures

School of English, University of Leeds, UKSchool of English, University of Leeds, UK

‘We’ll all be eating more pizzas, downing more lager, spraying more French perfumes, driving more German cars and exchanging more footballers. My limited and symbolic experience of immigration controls makes me fear that British blacks, the original New World folk, will be largely excluded from the New World jamboree. [...] Perhaps West Indians will eventually slip their cultural moorings and get lost in the swamps of New World Europe. Or perhaps we will be able to adapt, modify and enrich our culture in the new environments. Perhaps new excitements will arise when we encounter the Dutch blacks, the French blacks, the German blacks, and discover what we share that transcends colonial boundaries.’

(David Dabydeen, ‘On Cultural Diversity’, in Fisher, M. and Owen, U. (eds) Whose Cities?, London: Penguin, 97-106 [105-6])

Caryl Phillips,Caryl Phillips,The European TribeThe European Tribe (1987) (1987)

‘You justify your Empire, your actions, your thought with your “civilisation”, forgetting that in this century, in the Congo, Belgians chopped off black hands and feet as legal punishment for under-production. [...] Your eyesight is defective. Europe is blinded by her past, and does not understand the high price of her churches, art galleries, and architecture.’ (The European Tribe, 128)

‘ “I am a black man”, he said. This was all the English he knew. “I am a black man.” And then he added “Je suis un petit bois” as an afterthought.’ (63)

‘All that would happen was I would learn a new language to tackle old problems.’ (57)

Mike Phillips, Mike Phillips, London London CrossingsCrossings (2001) (2001)

‘London, a place whose habit was to make and remake itself with each new generation, was the arena of our transformation, and in its turn became a hybrid of styles and cultures. Within Britain its influence is irresistible, and its heterogeneous population has become to redefine the nature and content of Britishness. In the present day, the ferment which marks the centre of London makes it possible to imagine identities which are mobile and adaptable, formed by a variety of circumstances in which ethnicity is only one of a list of priorities. Right now, if there’s hope for a continent struggling to come to terms with clash between modernity and tradition, it may rest in London’s diversity and adaptability ....’ (203-4)

‘[Prague] had the same sense [as 1950s London] of reflecting something old yet incomplete, the same sense of drabness and nostalgia, the same indifference to my presence. English friends who knew these places tend to come up with same question over and over again: ‘How do they treat you? What about racism?’ The answer is that for anyone who lived in England during the 1950s and 1960s, there is nothing remarkable about most forms of racist abuse or harassment. Short of physical attack, any form of racism I encountered in the region seemed more or less routine.’ (London Crossings, 197)

Bernardine Evaristo,Bernardine Evaristo,Soul TouristsSoul Tourists (2005) (2005)

‘Behind are the oil refineries of Iraq, the endless fields of Turkey and, further back, the vacillating topography of Europe: the A-roads, autoroutes, autostrada, the freeway that has led me here to this rasping beach, these waves littered with casually flung diamonds, the blow torch on my back, turning me a madder red and all else blazing glitter.

I cannot return home. Perhaps not ever. The mammoth ocean-going junks are anchored way off. They are waiting for me. Weighed down with the desert’s siphoned blood supply. They know how to steer down the side of the world without falling off it.’ (Soul Tourists: 280)