Postcolonial Youth in Contemporary British Fiction: Introduction

Abstract

Youth and the postcolonial are united in that both inhabit a liminal locus where new ways of being in the world are rehearsed and struggle for recognition against the impositions of dominant power structures. Departing from this premise, the present volume focuses on the experience of postcolonial youngsters in contemporary Britain as rendered in fiction, thus envisioning the postcolonial as a site of fruitful and potentially transformative friction between different identitary variables or sociocultural interpellations. In so doing, this volume provides varied evidence of the ability of literature—and of the short story genre, in particular—to represent and swiftly respond to a rapidly changing world as well as to the new socio-cultural realities and conflicts affecting our current global order and the generations to come.