Black Feminism in a Twentieth-Century British Play

Abstract

This paper attempts to explore black women in search of identity in Winsome Pinnock's play Leave Taking (1986).Winsome Pinnock is a playwright who was born in London to parents who are both migrants from Jamaica. The play traces the lives of a mother, Enid and her two daughters, Del and Viv, who have migrated from the Caribbean to England for an improved existence. These women characters are signifiers of second generation immigrants; they are stereotypical migrants in psychological exile, disconnected transplants attempting to re-root. Black feminism in Britain sheds light on the rejection of old constructions, as womanhood/motherhood, laid on women’s life, and establishing equal rights for black women. The search for self-identity and the struggle to gain equality with the whites or to obtain access to positions of power is the main issue the paper articulates. The black women suffer in the domestic sphere where the white women claim their dominance over them. They treat the black women as passive, voiceless victims and the portrayal of white women as modern, educated and empowered. The black women suffer from the double colonization which not only against their race, but also their gender. As a result of this harsh and oppressed treatment, the black women express their own experiences of marginalization and empowered black identity in the white society. However, black Feminist playwrights want to build a new world where everyone would be free from the bonds of race and oppression. It discusses also the meaning of home in the context of location and dislocation, migration and identity, belonging and displacement. In this respect, the paper aims to shed light on the black women who contemplate to establish a certain black identity questioning the place of the black characters within British society in addition to documenting their struggle to empower their black identity.