A Feminist Countergenealogy of Black Female Subjects in Europe - An Analysis of Helen Oyeyemi's works 'Gingerbread' and 'The Icarus Girl'

Abstract

Feminism has proved to be a resourceful source in the critique of the discourse of ‘identity politics’, which led to much debate. Similarly, blackness has always been a contested ground calling for a unifying definition. This work will analyze two of Helen Oyeyemi's works, 'The Icarus Girl' and 'Gingerbread', focusing on their young black female protagonists, Jess and Perdita, as much as on the mother of the latter, Harriet, the other co-protagonist of the novel. Foregrounding Europe and Britain as the common sociocultural backgrounds, this work will draw ideas and theories around the topics of blackness and female subjectivities and identities from several fields, such as black feminism. Both the two young characters prove how much convoluted could be to define oneself today – being a young black girl born and raised in Europe - grading it against certain fixed social, cultural and historical frames. Their journey unfolds along the themes of diaspora, return and mother and daughter nexus. As a result, this Master thesis remarks that identity has always been but a slippery terrain, on which power has been constructed in terms of structural, vertical relationships. Consequently, this work considers the examined novels as a direct result of the latter statement and as attempts of subversion in drawing new models of black female subjectivities, as much as contributions towards a black European feminist genealogy, carving out spaces for creativity and criticism for this project.