Writing Black Scotland: Race, Nation and the Devolution of Black Britain - Paperback

by Joseph H. Jackson (Author)

A critical approach to blackness in devolutionary Scottish writing

Writing Black Scotland examines race and racism in devolutionary Scottish literature, with a focus on the critical significance of blackness. The book reads blackness in Scottish writing from the 1970s to the early 2000s, a period of history defined by post-imperial adjustment. Critiquing a unifying Britishness at work in black British criticism, Jackson argues for the importance of black politics in Scottish writing, and for a literary registration of race and racism which signals a necessary negotiation for national Scotland both before and after 1997.

Back Jacket

'Writing Black Scotland is a most needed intervention into twenty-first century understanding of Scottish literature through time, raising questions about 'otherness' and 'othering' as well as purposive colonialism, subjugation and exploitation. The book is lucid, compassionate, discriminating and admirably sensitive to discrete historical moments, illuminating and engaged at every level.' Alan Riach, University of Glasgow A critical approach to blackness in devolutionary Scottish writing Writing Black Scotland examines race and racism in devolutionary Scottish literature, with a focus on the critical significance of blackness. The book reads blackness in Scottish writing from the 1970s to the early 2000s, a period of history defined by post-imperial adjustment. Critiquing a unifying Britishness at work in black British criticism, Jackson argues for the importance of black politics in Scottish writing, and for a literary registration of race and racism which signals a necessary negotiation for national Scotland both before and after 1997. Joseph H. Jackson is Assistant Professor in Twentieth-Century and Contemporary Literature in the School of English at the University of Nottingham. Cover image: (c) Estate of Maud Sulter. All rights reserved, DACS/Artimage 2020. Image courtesy of Street Level Photoworks, Glasgow Cover design: [EUP logo] edinburghuniversitypress.com ISBN 978-1-4744-6144-3 Barcode

Author Biography

Joseph Jackson is Assistant Professor in Twentieth-Century and Contemporary English Literature, Faculty of Arts. His publications include English Brother or No? British State-National Critiques and the Moment of Pressure, in: Malchi McIntosh, ed., Re-reading Sam Selvon. Kingston: Ian Randle. (In Press), Joseph H. Jackson and I. Gramaglia, 2012. The Broad Breast of the Land: Indo-Caribbean Eco-Feminism and Mahadai Das. In: Joy Mahabir and Mariam Pirbhai, eds., Critical Perspectives on Indo-Caribbean Women's Literature, (New York: Routledge), Captain Thistlewood's Jacobite: Reading the Caribbean in Scotland's Historiography of Slavery in Michael Gardiner, Graeme Macdonald and Niall O'gallagher, eds., Scottish Literature and Postcolonial Literature: Comparative Texts and Critical Perspectives (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2010), Lutchmee and Dilloo, Caribbean Classics (Georgetown: Caribbean Press) and A Bird Is Not A Stone - Palestinian Poetry in Scottish Translation: An Interview with Henry Bell and Sarah Irving. Scottish Literary Review (In Press.)