ALIENATION, IDENTITY CRISIS AND RACIAL MEMORY: THE REALITIES OF BLACKS IN DIASPORA IN ANDREA LEVY’S FRUIT OF THE LEMON

In Andrea Levy’s Fruit of the Lemon, with a pensive commentary on history and racism, lies the deep question of existence: the import of knowing who one is, and the process for the acquisition of the intellectual equipment that is needed to define whom one is. Like most postcolonial novels, this one opens up the issues of the ambivalence, chaos, and confusion that result from the lacuna created in the distance between humans and places which stands as a bane to family and social harmony. This paper will focus on the nexus that joins alienation, identity crisis and racial memory together as the manifestation of the dislocation of the blacks in Diaspora; the disillusionment; and the socio-economic exclusion that the blacks in Europe face. The trajectory here will show how place, identity and social relation in post World War II England jointly shape the consciousness of the Windrush immigrants, whom the adoption of the prevailing ideology and social values of England becomes an inevitable option if they would survive the post World War II hard times. The essay therefore takes a tripartite nature; hence the discourse will be historical, theoretical and analytical as it explores the fictional personages (Faith, Wade, Mildred, and so on), struggling to make sense of their environment, as a microcosm of many other blacks in Diaspora.