Book contents
- The Cambridge History of Black and Asian British Writing
- The Cambridge History of Black and Asian British Writing
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Notes on Contributors
- Preface and Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- Part I New Formations
- Part II Uneven Histories
- Part III Writing the Contemporary
- (I) Looking Back, Looking Forward
- (II) Framing New Visions
- 32 Through a Different Lens
- 33 Children’s Literature and the Construction of Contemporary Multicultures
- 34 Redefining the Boundaries
- 35 Prizing Otherness
- 36 Frontline Fictions
- 37 Reimagining Africa
- 38 Post-Secular Perspectives
- 39 Post-Ethnicity and the Politics of Positionality
- Select Bibliography
- Index
36 - Frontline Fictions
Popular Forms from Crime to Grime
from (II) - Framing New Visions
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 19 December 2019
- The Cambridge History of Black and Asian British Writing
- The Cambridge History of Black and Asian British Writing
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Notes on Contributors
- Preface and Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- Part I New Formations
- Part II Uneven Histories
- Part III Writing the Contemporary
- (I) Looking Back, Looking Forward
- (II) Framing New Visions
- 32 Through a Different Lens
- 33 Children’s Literature and the Construction of Contemporary Multicultures
- 34 Redefining the Boundaries
- 35 Prizing Otherness
- 36 Frontline Fictions
- 37 Reimagining Africa
- 38 Post-Secular Perspectives
- 39 Post-Ethnicity and the Politics of Positionality
- Select Bibliography
- Index
Summary
This chapter engages a range of texts that, for over thirty years, have shaped understandings of black and Asian British popular fictions through numerous forms and genres. In reading, among others, crime and detective fictions, female erotica, and The X-Press’s inner-city novels, and also music and popular film, the chapter suggests two theoretical trajectories: On the one hand, it explores the liminal space of the frontline as a framework for charting the politics of popular texts. On the other, it shows how these texts often negotiate their own positionalities through a self-reflexive ‘nobrow’ aesthetics. As it moves from the late 1980s to the 1990s, the first section revisits texts by, among others, Mike Phillips, Victor Headley, Sheri Campbell, Alex Wheatle, and Courttia Newland, whose work in part surfaced as a counter-movement to a highbrow literary aesthetics. Reaching into the twenty-first century, the second part addresses more recent popular textualities, like Wiley’s or Stormzy’s grime music, contemporary estate novels by Guy Gunaratne, Olumide Popoola, and Nikesh Shukla, as well as the films of Noel Clarke and Menhaj Huda.
- Type
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- Information
- The Cambridge History of Black and Asian British Writing , pp. 598 - 619Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2020