The “Black” Side of the Story: History Rewriting in Andrea Levy’s Small Island

Abstract

The attempt to recover the history of Black people and integrate it into the narratives on Britain has underscored black British writing since the 1990s. Andrea Levy’s novel Small Island retells the British history during and after the Second World War by inscribing the previously marginalized or obliterated stories of the Afro-Caribbean servicemen and the various black-white encounters and interactions. By recuperating the experience of the black diaspora and integrating it into an otherwise homogeneously white British history, Levy participates in the general effort of the black British writers to redefine Britishness to claim a place in it. Thus it helps construct a more inclusive and relational version of British history, challenging and transforming the exclusively-white configuration of Britishness.