Immigrants Identity Crisis in The Lonely Londoners

Abstract

This paper looks into the novel The Lonely Londoner by Samuel Selvon that is reviewed as a postcolonial novel. The paper examines the plight of the Caribbean migrants who traveled to England hoping that the fairytales they had been fed on by the colonizers were realistic and confined to England. The study considers the predicament that these migrants went through in their colonizer's homeland where they felt despised and derelict against their immense hope that they had when they were leaving their native islands. The paper also looks into the theme of mimicry as posted by Homi Bhabha in his postcolonial theory. By considering the view of Bhabha, the paper looks deeply into the theory advanced and how it is consequently used in the novel. Thus, the paper investigates how mimicry and hybridity have been portrayed in the novel The Lonely Londoner, and at the same time looks into how Samuel Selvon typically applied them to express his postcolonial discourse in his work.