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Essay on ‘The Fat Black Woman Goes Shopping’
Cultural Identity is an important point of focus in Sam Selvon’s ‘The Lonely Londoners’ and Grace Nichols’s’ ‘The Fat Black Woman’s Poems’ as both explore the experiences of West Indian Migrants in Postcolonial Britain. After World War Two (1945) black workers were invited and welcomed back to the ‘mother country’ between 1948 and 1973 to help reverse any environmental or economic damage however, the experiences of the characters in The Lonely Londoners and The Fat Black Woman’s Poems gives insight into how these circumstances would inevitably affect their cultural identities.
Racism is presented as a persistent problem for the Windrush generation in The Lonely Londoners due to the toll it takes on their views of their Caribbean roots. Dabydeen and Wilson-Tagoe observe that ‘The Lonely Londoners deals with the shattering of the illusion of belonging, the illusion of being English, and indeed the illusion about who the English are.’ As the Caribbean was part of the British commonwealth at the time of the ‘Empire Windrush’ ships’ arrival, those who arrived were automatically free to permanently live and work in the UK due to The British Nationality Act 1948. However, on account of romanticized depictions of Britain in history and the media, The Windrush generation didn’t expect to face the race-related hardships they did. On one occasion in The Lonely Londoners, Galahad is talking to Daisy, a white girl, while on a date when she says, ‘What did you say? You know it will take me some time to understand everything you say. The way you West Indians speak,’ discerning a distinction of his Caribbean origin based on his vernacular. On another occasion, Galahad encounters a white woman and her child and says good evening. Despite his attempt to start a friendly conversation, after a while, he notices her attempt to put distance between them. He later tells himself ‘Colour, are you that causing all this, you know,’ implying his awareness and acceptance of this reality. By talking to it, Galahad personifies his skin color. A technique Selvon uses to depict how the West Indian race was seen before their nationality and used as a point of judgment by the White British. Galahad’s casual reaction to this also suggests that experiencing subtle racism wasn’t an uncommon occurrence.
Due to Grace Nichols’ focus on Feminism, the standards of beauty, and being a black woman in Britain, The Fat Black Woman’s Poems gives examples of similar situations centered around these concepts. According to Sinead Caslin, ‘females were often subjected to what has been called a ‘double colonization’ whereby they were discriminated against not only for their position as colonized people but also as women.’ In ‘The Fat Black Woman Goes Shopping,’ Nichols also explores The Fat Black Woman’s negative feelings when shopping in winter due to a lack of ‘accommodating clothes.’ She experiences ‘sales gals exchanging slimming glances thinking she doesn’t notice’ creating a sense of alienation and possibly shame. Though worst of all, the act of shopping is described as ‘a drag’ when in reality, it’s supposed to be an easy task. This idea of The Fat Black Woman’s size and shape being judged reflects Galahad’s experience as both provoke similar self-perceptions. In an interview with Nichols, Kwame Dawes states ‘All of our cultural ‘things’ were degraded and looked down upon while the European ‘things’ were the ones celebrated in every way.’ Despite the Race Relations Acts 1965 and 1968 which made it illegal to discriminate against somebody because of the color of their skin, minor experiences like this of The Fat Black Woman do not cease to provoke feelings of otherness.
Alienation is one of the most largely focused ideas in both The Fat Black Woman’s Poems and The Lonely Londoners. As explored above, racism, sexism, and of course a lack of black representation, etcetera, are some of the largest causes of these feelings. The ‘lonely’ in the title suggests there is a longing for familiarity that London just doesn’t provide for the Windrush generation. The novel is set on a ‘grim winter evening: with the sky sleeping restlessly over the city.’ This use of pathetic fallacy and personification of the sky reflects Moses’ emotions and approach to London. However, after arriving at the station, the narrator states ‘a feeling of nostalgia hit him.’ It’s stated that some West Indians purposefully went to Waterloo whenever the boat train came in as ‘they like to see the familiar faces.’ This desire to feel a sense of home is indicative of a cultural disconnect. ‘Like A Beacon’ from The Fat Black Woman’s Poems reinforces these ideas with statements like ‘now and then, I get this Craving for my mother’s food,’ which suggests a mild dissatisfaction with London. In the statement ‘I need this link, I need this touch of home,’ Nichols creates a desperate tone through The Fat Black Woman’s repetitive use of the phrase ‘I need.’ She goes on to describe it to be ‘like a beacon from the cold’ drawing a connection between this poem and the beginning of The Lonely Londoners. Overall, the feelings expressed here can be explained by the concept of illusions.
While at the station, Moses was asked by a reporter ‘Why are so many Jamaicans immigrating to England?’ Though the British had invited the Caribeans to the ‘Mother Country’ in the late 1940s, his question only suggested that white Britons were growing weary of black immigrants in the city. On other occasions throughout The Lonely Londoners, statements such as ‘You people think the streets of London are paved with gold’ were directed at the West Indians implying they were ignorant. Dabydeen and Wilson-Tagoe describe how Britain presented a romantic sense of English history… The seduction of England is the illusion of its romantic or fabulous history, and the illusion that the West Indian could participate in that history.’ However, in The Lonely Londoners, it’s not long before a sense of tension presents itself. The poem ‘Fear’ starts with the phrase ‘Our culture rub skin Against your Bruising awkward as plums’ alluding to similar ideas in The Fat Black Woman’s Poems too. As the poem continues, white Britons ask ‘Are you going back some time’ which is almost a translation of the reporter’s questions in The Lonely Londoners. To these questions, The Fat Black Woman responds ‘Home is where the heart lies’ implying that she identifies with her Caribbean origin no matter where she is.
What’s interesting about Selvons approach to exploring these concepts in The Lonely Londoners is that he provides the reader with multiple perspectives. Consequently, it’s made easier to understand the diverse experiences of his characters. One of the characters introduced is Bart, a light-skinned Trinidadian man who tries to pass himself off as South American and is said to make statements such as ‘I here with these boys, but I not one of them, look at the color of my skin’ in unsuccessful attempts to distance himself from his racial identity. The narrator observes how ‘hany nights he think about how so many West Indians coming, and it gives him more fear than it gives the Englishman, for Bart frighten if they make things hard in Brit’n.’ suggesting he has this internalized idea that West Indians are the ones to blame for their hardships. In The Lonely Londoners, Bart represents the feelings of insecurity, shame, and possibly jealousy that may have been felt by some in these times. Linking back to The Fat Black Woman’s Poems again, ‘Fear’ is one of the few poems where an overtone of weakness and longing for better circumstances runs through a poem in its entirety. Similar to Bart, The Fat Black Woman fears the rising numbers of West Indians, specifically ‘young blacks.’ in Britain. Though not in the sense that she believes things will be made harder but for the sake of their safety. The poem hints at themes of race-related antagonism which links to events such as The Brixton Riots in 1981. A racial confrontation between the Metropolitan Police and protesters in Brixton. This event is often recounted to have been not only ‘exhilarating’ and ’empowering’ but also ‘frightening’ due to fears of getting caught by the police.
Though both The Lonely Londoners and The Fat Black Woman’s Poems present negative experiences of isolation and alienation, they also present concepts of hybridity. In Deborah McDowell’s words; ‘Although Nichols depicts The Fat Black Woman as culturally and racially distinct, this distinctiveness is one of hybridization. A hybrid or cross-cultural identity is created by the many strands of culture-African, Caribbean, and European–which combine to form the consciousness of The Fat Black Woman.’ In the poem ‘Skanking Englishman Between Trains,’ Nichols explores through The Fat Black Woman’s Eyes, a hybridized relationship between a white man who ‘had a lovely Jamaican wife,’ describing him as ‘alive’ and ‘full-o-Jive’ supposedly due to this relationship. It’s explained that ‘he couldn’t remember the taste of English food’ which links back to the poem ‘Like a Beacon’ and how it’s clear to see how a lot of Caribbean culture is reflected in West Indian food. The ‘Skanking Englishman’s’ extremely positive attitude reinforces why The Fat Black Woman longed for a cultural connection in this way.
Similarly, In The Lonely Londoners, hybridity is seen a lot between the characters and white Britons. During summer while in a park, nearer the end of The Lonely Londoners, Moses is approached by a white man who says ‘You’re just the man I’m looking for’ despite them never having met. He states he’ll pay Moses to sleep with a white woman while he watches to which Moses says yes implying this offer wasn’t unusual to him. At previous points in the novel, hybridity is also presented through ideas of entrepreneurship in the sense of West Indians being a key demographic for some companies too. Furthermore, in terms of party life, it’s explained that some people ‘feel they can’t get big thrills’ at parties ‘unless they have a black man in the company.’ Though there are characters like Captain and Bart who long to reap the benefits of being with white women, this idea of hybridity can quickly turn into a sort of fetishization both ways as well as the sexualization of black people. Particularly black males.
In The Fat Black Woman’s Poems, however, Nichols embraces the sexualization forced upon women with the poem ‘Invitation’. The poem starts with the phrase ‘If my fat was too much for me,’ instantly alluding to the pride to be shown throughout. As it goes on, she states ‘As it is, I’m feeling fine, felt no need to change my lines,’ again showcasing her confidence. Melissa Johnson observes that ‘The Fat Black Woman, defined and marginalized in terms of race, gender, size, and post-colonial status, becomes-through Nichols’s satire: a powerful and hopeful figure.’ Though there are examples of characters in The Lonely Londoners who metaphorically run away from their cultural origins, The Fat Black Woman ‘reclaims the heritage and pride imperialism has attempted to deny her and the Caribbean people and at the same time celebrates a syncretic multicultural existence.’ The imperative ‘Come up and see me sometime,’ repeated four times carries an active, sexual overtone that contradicts the passive nature stereotyped as fundamentally feminine which reinforces The Fat Black Woman’s powerful nature. As a young Guyanese poet who had lived in Sussex since 1977, Nichols thought it important to explore her personal experiences in terms of bigger ideas. Melissa Johnson states ‘The ‘truth’ which ‘The Fat Black Woman’s Poems’ breaks up is that a fat, black, Caribbean woman in London is a victim of sexism, sizeism, racism, and imperialism Rather than focusing on the binaries,’ (male-female, fat thin, black white, British Caribbean,) she ‘creates a space where beauty is redefined.’ By doing this, as said in the poem ‘Trap Evasions,’ she is ‘refusing to be a model of her affliction.’
A similar embracive approach is taken by both Selvon and Nichols despite the abundance of negative effects on cultural identity explored in The Lonely Londoners in how they create a sense of pride and loyalty to the Caribbean parts of their cultural identity in the form and language of their writing. Selvon himself states that ‘manipulation of linguistic forms is an important means by which Caribbean writers, for example, proclaim their sense of place (and displacement), and construct a distinct identity in terms of difference to a dominant construction of Englishness. In literary texts, this alternative is often negotiated through a manipulation of, and experimentation with, ‘Standard’ English.’ In using a creolized voice, both authors turned these concepts into an expression of their ‘diverse otherness’ and provided the readers with a chance to understand the contexts from which they evolved.
In conclusion, empowerment is engraved in both texts and presented through the development of the characters and their reactions to the things they experienced as Caribbean immigrants. The poem ‘Epilogue’ depicts The Fat Black Woman crossing an ocean and losing her tongue but is uplifted by how ‘from the root of the old one a new one has sprung,’ suggesting a positive attitude to this experience. Similarly, at the end of The Lonely Londoners, the narrator describes how sometimes Moses ‘thinks he sees some sort of profound realization in his life as if all that happens to him was an experience that makes him a better man.’ All in all, the concepts explored in The Lonely Londoners and The Fat Black Woman’s Poems are collectively shown to enrich the Caribbean’s sense of cultural identity in a multitude of ways.
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