Between Transgression and Conviviality: Everyday Urban Space and the Carnivalesque Strategies in The Lonely Londoners

Abstract

This article examines how the everyday space of postwar London in Sam Selvon’s The Lonely Londoners is reimagined by Caribbean migrants, whose resilience generates comedy and the spirit of the carnival. I argue that Selvon uses his depictions of the city to show his Black Londoners at play as culturally assertive and sexually eccentric types who counter the adversity in the host society. While discussing how the novel’s portrayal of the carnivalesque allows for the expression of immigrant agency, I stress the convivial nature of sex and comedy as a central model of their cultural negotiation.