Introduction

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Acknowledgements

Deirdre Osborne wishes to thank the editors of Women: a cultural review for supporting this Special Issue and to extend acknowledgements and thanks to Maria Lima, Tracey L. Walters and Kadija Sesay.

Notes

¹In relation to the eclipsing of women writers in retrospective Australian literary histories, Joy Hooton identifies two disciplinary approaches in operation, terming them ‘the so-called literary historical tradition and the actual tradition created by the cultural network’ (Hooton 1990: 314).

²Women have played a prominent pioneering role in creating and sustaining opportunities for black women's writing through publishing: Margaret Busby (Allison and Busby 1966), Jessica Huntley (Bogle L'Overture 1969), Verna Annette Wilkins (Tamarind 1987), Joan Anim-Addo (Mango Press 1995); in founding influential journals and literary networks: Susheila Nasta (Wasafiri), Kadija Sesay (SABLE and SAKS Media), Joan Anin-Addo (Mango Season); and through their involvement in mentoring and activist contexts such as university teaching, PEN, Arvon Foundation, Caribbean Women Writers Network—to name but a few examples. The tradition continues: ‘the drive and commitment that black women seem to have in preserving and nurturing African and Caribbean history through the written word is very likely to remain undeterred’ (Sesay 2009a: 15).

³This usage of forging evokes its multiple OED definitions: ‘manufacture’, ‘make’; ‘to frame or fashion’; ‘to fabricate’, ‘invent’; ‘to counterfeit’ (The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles, 1973, 3rd edn, Oxford: Clarendon Press, pp. 790–91).

⁴Lynette Goddard observes a tendency by white women academics to endow the work of black British women theatre practitioners as inherently feminist; one where ‘such assumptions of automatic feminist intentions and effect do not correlate with the practitioners’ own sense of their work’ (Goddard 2007: 3).

⁵Mason-John: ‘Black lesbian groups were all a response to the years of struggling to be recognised as women in the Black political movement, as lesbians in the Black feminist movement and as Black in the women's liberation movement and the lesbian and gay community’ (1995: 6); a personal example is given of the pressure of reductive identification: ‘When I'm asked by white lesbians, what is more important, my race or my sexuality, I say, how can I deny my racial identity, when aged six, white ladies came running up to my white house mother in the high street, screaming how disgusting she was for having a mongrel?’ (Mason-John 1999: 96). Amos and Parmar argue, ‘As Black women … We cannot simply prioritize one aspect of our oppression to the exclusion of others, as the realities of our day-to-day lives make it imperative for us to consider the simultaneous nature of our oppression and exploitation’ (Amos and Parmar 1997: 58). Pilgrim draws attention to an interview with Jackie Kay, where Kay stated, ‘[m]y writing contributes to changing people's consciousness about racism, sexism, and prejudice. Black women writers in Britain are exploring identity, sexuality, status and our position here’ (Pilgrim 1995: 178).

⁶Suzanne Scafe, ‘Re: returned’. Email to author, 10 November 2008.

⁷Molly Thompson highlighted an earlier example of feminist heritage-making and cultural mapping at the University of Exeter's Third Wave Feminism conference (2002) where, she notes, ‘the percentage of black women amongst the delegates was only about 2%’ (Thompson 2003: 40).

⁸The range of early critical attention to black British writing tends to prove the point of ‘making a case’ for recognition and inclusion, and justifiably so, when confronted with assessments such as those of A. S. Byatt, who excluded any work by black British writers in the Oxford Book of English Short Stories on the grounds that they did not possess ‘pure English national credentials’ (1999: xv); Getachew quotes Harold Bloom's refusal to admit Black British writers to the canon as he felt their work did not possess a ‘mode of originality that either cannot be assimilated, or that so assimilates us that we cease to see it as strange’ (2005: 342); Godiwala (2006: 6) points out that Richard Eyre and Nicolas Wright make no mention of black British dramatists in their Changing Stages: A View of British Theatre in the Twentieth Century (2000); Ruth Padel's 52 Ways of Looking at a Poem: A Poem for Every Week of the Year has one poem each by Patience Agbabi and Jackie Kay and the shortlist for the Next Generation Poets (2006) did not contain a single black poet.

⁹Anim-Addo and Back have noted ‘the persistent pattern of white interpreters “speaking for” and about, and seldom in dialogue with Black people’ (Anim-Addo and Back 2008: 12). At the ‘On Whose Terms?’ conference, specialist panellist SuAndi commented that black people often seemed to be left as observers and onlookers during some sessions for papers centring black people's creativity and experiences.

¹⁰May Joseph noted that until recently there was a marked ‘absence of Black women as subjects with agency’ in British theatre (Joseph 1998: 198).

¹¹Runnymede Trust (2000), The Future of Multi-ethnic Britain: The Parekh Report London: Profile, p. 39.

¹²My own experience concurs with Shannon's in both drama and English literature. In five years of teaching a course, ‘Voicing the Margins’ (final year drama undergraduates, 90–100% white female student demographic), 90 per cent of students write their final extended essay on Black British and Asian writers’ works, although it comprises 50 per cent of the course content. Similarly, in teaching for the Open University's ‘Post-colonial Literature’ fourth-level course over six years, I found an increasing number of students either pursued a pre-course interest in contemporary black British writers or else undertook their research project in this field, even though the teaching materials focused upon immigrant/arriviste writers such as Sam Selvon and George Lamming.

¹³A non-exhaustive indication of some of the omissions of contemporary British-born women writers of African descent (broadly grouped under their main genre of work) includes the following: novelists Malorie Blackman, Judith Bryan, Barbara Burford, Donna Daley-Clarke, Bernadine Evaristo, Aminatta Forna, Leone Ross, Joanna Traynor; auto/biographers Constance Briscoe, Charlotte Williams; dramatists Mojisola Adebayo, Valerie Mason-John, Winsome Pinnock; poets Malika Booker, Zena Edwards, Dorothea Smartt and Maud Sulter.

¹⁴Tradaptation is a neologism coined by Canadian playwright Michel Garneau, which refers to a traditional or canonical work that is adapted to accommodate contemporary or revisionary relevances (artistic and socio-cultural) to ‘preserve the linguistic heritage of the past and assert cultural autonomy in the present’ (http://www.canadianshakespeares.ca/a_garneau.cfm).