Inheritances of Identity: Shaping the Generational Diasporic Gap with Tangible Culture in Bernardine Evaristo’s Girl, Woman, Other.

Abstract

This research paper examines the role of the material culture, such as artefacts, traditional garments and inherited spaces, in bridging the so-called diasporic gap in Girl, Woman, Other by Bernardine Evaristo. To the Africans who have migrated to Britain this rift is usually manifested in the form of an indifferences between their past and the contemporary western lifestyle. One can observe the importance of physical things through the multilayered narrative by Evaristo in the process of recovery of the past which has been lost or transformed or even altered by the migratory experience. Objects such as traditional Nigerian textiles, family souvenirs, even the tangibility of the British landscape (such as the farm that Hattie is on) are examined in terms of how they can be used as memory anchors. These objects assist the characters in bargaining their identities with a touch, not just a group notion of the definition of home, but a more tangible sense of belongingness. In this paper, the researcher will examine the relationship between material culture and the Black British identity. It states that physical heritage can unite the generations of people together by making them feel the reality of silence of the past. Ultimately, Evaristo argues that collecting physical history is not merely a nostalgic exercise of the people who have traversed a lot; it is an assertive move of establishing continuity and self-identification when the world is no longer colonised.