The Bildungsroman and Building a Hybrid Identity in the Postcolonial Context: Migration as Formative Experience in Monica Ali’s Brick Lane
The Bildungsroman and Building a Hybrid Identity in the Postcolonial Context: Migration as Formative Experience in Monica Ali’s Brick Lane

Author(s): Petru Golban, Derya Benli
Subject(s): Studies of Literature, Migration Studies, Identity of Collectives
Published by: Transnational Press London
Keywords: migration; Bildungsroman; hybrid identity; postcolonial context; Monica Ali; Brick Lane;
Summary/Abstract: Focusing on Monica Ali’s novel Brick Lane, and with regard to its major protagonists Nazneen, Chanu, and Karim, the present study reveals the ways in which the author creates characters who face difficulties and are subjected to crises caused by their alienation from their native country, culture and identity, which would lead in turn to their cultural ambiguity, transformation into hybrid individuals, and eventually to experiences of identity crisis in an environment represented by the Bangladeshi community in east London. Monica Ali reveals that identity is under threat within the East End immigrant community; in this respect, she appears to materialize in her fictional discourse various concepts and concerns – such as identity, identity crisis, identity formation, individual subject, developing consciousness, hybridity, ambiguity, mimicry, individual and society – just as Wordsworth would reify in his literary practice his own principles of poetic composition, or as Lawrence would express in his novels the Freudian principles.

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