Space, Production, and Identity: Monica Ali’s Brick Lane, Hanif Kureishi’s My Beautiful Laundrette, and Powellite Englishness

Abstract

In my previous chapter I argued that Irvine Welsh’s Trainspotting and Ballard’s High-Rise represent the spaces of tower blocks as dialectically engaged in abject identity formations. In this chapter I look to the way that Monica Ali’s Brick Lane (2003) and Hanif Kureishi’s My Beautiful Laundrette (1986) represent marginalized immigrant identities as they form in and through the domestic and urban spaces of Thatcher’s London. While Ali’s representation of the East End differs from the spaces that Iain Sinclair excavates in Lights Out for the Territory, Brick Lane nevertheless similarly approaches the ‘pedestrian narrative’ (de Certeau) as a way of knowing oneself in the city. As Claire Alexander argues, the spaces Ali portrays in Brick Lane represent ‘contested and porous boundaries of both material and imagined spaces’ in a way that ‘recognizes the role of the agency and subjectivity of individuals and groups within those spaces’ (204).KeywordsIdentity FormationNational IdentityUrban SpaceWealth AccumulationDomestic SpaceThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.