Exploring the Silent Outcry: "The Family" by Buchi Emecheta
10th KTUDELL Conference: Language, Literature and Translation, Trabzon, Türkiye, 29 - 30 Mayıs 2025, cilt.1, sa.1, ss.1-111, (Tam Metin Bildiri)
- Yayın Türü: Bildiri / Tam Metin Bildiri
- Cilt numarası: 1
- Basıldığı Şehir: Trabzon
- Basıldığı Ülke: Türkiye
- Sayfa Sayıları: ss.1-111
- Maltepe Üniversitesi Adresli: Evet
Özet
In The Family (1990), Nigerian-British author Buchi Emecheta’s focus is on a Jamaican family, the Brilliantons, and particularly on Gwendolen, whose plight as a poor girl is worsened after her parents move to Britain when she is 7 in the late 1960s as she feels rejected, cheated and lost. In the absence of parental care and guidance, despite her grandmother’s efforts, she is abused, raped, blamed, ostracised, and silenced by her people, and her personal and emotional growth is hindered and delayed. The aim of this paper is to show that Gwendolen’s hopes to heal and to rid of her problems wane when she is finally summoned to ‘Moder Kontry’ as she faces abuse, neglect and incestuous rape again from her parents who are also portrayed to be struggling with the difficulties of living on the fringes of the British society. This paper also seeks to display that the far-reaching effects of colonialism, which are manifest with alienation, dialect differences, cultural differences, and internalisation of racism, procrastinate Gwendolen’s development as a person, who, in the end, manages to make a living with her baby despite familial, class, financial, and social predicaments.