Reading to Resist (Routledge Literary Studies in Social Justice)

This is the first book to focus on writing by black British women writers, using an approach that highlights the potential of this fiction to intervene into discourses that shape the worlds in which it is situated.

Reading to Resist: Contemporary Black British Women's Writing undertakes a close, innovative reading of the novels selected, one that focuses on the texts’ aesthetics as well as their thematic engagement with the worlds of their readers and the worlds the texts themselves construct. Each chapter examines themes such as freedom and agency, moral understanding, and history, while also exploring issues of importance to the contemporary period such as well-being, success, and achievement. Reading to Resist: Contemporary Black British Women's Writing covers a broad range of texts including the work of internationally acclaimed writers such as Nadifa Mohamed, Zadie Smith, Diana Evans and Buchi Emecheta, as well as work by much less well-known writers such as Jacqueline Walker, Yvvette Edwards, and Jacqueline Roy.

Suzanne Scafe is Visiting Professor at Vrije University, Brussels. She has taught at several Universities in Europe and in London, UK and written several journal articles and book chapters on the work of a wide range of African-diasporic writers. She is the author of Teaching Black Literature and co-author of The Heart of the Race: Black Women’s Lives in Britain.