









































Communication, Society and Media 
ISSN 2576-5388 (Print) ISSN 2576-5396 (Online) 

Vol. 5, No. 2, 2022 
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1 
 

Original Paper 

A Study of Gurnah’s Memory Narrative and Diaspora Identity 
Yujin Du1& Dan Cui2* 

1 Graduate student of Jilin International Studies University, Changchun, China 
2 Postdoc of Literature of School of English, Beijing Foreign Studies University, Beijing, China; Doc of 

Literature, Professor, Dean of Institute of International Languages and Cultures, Leader of Comparative 

Literature and Cross-culture Discipline, Jilin International Studies University, Changchun, Jilin, China; 

Doc supervisor of Yanbian University, Yanji , Jilin, China 
* Dan Cui, Correspondence author, summerelephant@126.com 

 

Received: July 3, 2022          Accepted: July 15, 2022          Online Published: August 1, 2022 

doi:10.22158/csm.v5n2p1                         URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.22158/csm.v5n2p1 

 

Abstract 

The Nobel Prize for Literature has been won by 70-year-old Tanzanian novelist Abdulrazak Gurnah for 

“his uncompromising and compassionate penetration of the effects of colonialism and the fate of the 

refugees in the gulf between cultures and continents”. “Refugees” highlights the issue of identity, while 

the transferring of cultural continent highlights diaspora, and memory narrative is a characteristic of 

his writing, which can be adopted to explore the symptoms of identity exfoliation and diaspora. This 

paper, by focusing on the theories of memory and diaspora identity from the perspective of Gurnah’s 

memory narrative, aims to explore the racial identity, focusing on the antagonism and hatred between 

races in the post-colonial context, the hybrid identity in the context of family diaspora, the social 

identity in the context of group culture, and the female identity in the development of 

individuality.Memory is an important texture that underlines Gurnah’s writing and his perception and 

deep thinking on identity provides a multidimensional entry point for the international literary world 

with unique personal characteristics and humanistic care in the global context. Racial identity, 

focusing on the antagonism and hatred between races; hybrid identity, the impotence of immigrants, 

unable to establish their own identity; social identity, the alienation of marginalized people and the 

young generation’s powerless sense of colonial culture; female identity, women’s weightlessness under 

gender pressure. 

Keywords 

Abdulrazak Gurnah, memory narrative, diaspora, identity 
 

 



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1. Introduction 

The Nobel Prize for Literature was won by 70-year-old Tanzanian novelist Abdulrazak Gurnah. As a 

“dark horse”, a used-to-be unknown elected nominee, the news that Gurnah became the eventual 

star-picker caught everyone by surprise. The day after the announcement, internet was flooded with 

interviews and introduction to him. Gurnah’s works have been well received abroad, and have even 

been praised as “masterpiece” by many reviewers, though previously his novels used not to be sold as 

well as his editors had expected and his works were not popular with many readers. After the Nobel 

Prize announcement, publishers all over the world joined the battle fighting for the entitlements to 

publish Gurnah’s works. Simultaneously, the studies on African English literature in China again 

become prospering and flourishing. 

This thesis analyzes and discusses Gurnah’s writing style and artistic expressions by which his 

important themes are conveyed: from the perspective of his memory narrative, the thesis examines his 

profound thinking on the identity exfoliation and diaspora. This paper takes “memory” and “diaspora 

identity” as the central perspectives to explore Gurnah’s typical short stories and novels, especially 

Cage, Bossi and Dottie to investigate the post-colonial African key issues ranging from colonization, 

race, ethnicity, identity, immigration etc. 

 

2. Overview 

Before Gurnah won the prize, few readers and critics at home and abroad had appreciated himand less 

began to study some of his works. After he was nominated for the prize, both domestic and 

international critics flood to investigate into his writing, and several of his outstanding features have 

been discussed and researched in depth, including diaspora literature, refugee life and identity crisis. 

2.1 Brief Introduction to Gurnah and his Literary Writing Features 

Born in 1948 in Tanzania, Gurnah moved to Britain as a refugee in the 1960s. He received the Bachelor 

of Education from The University of London in 1976 and taught at Astor High School in Dover, Kent. 

Between 1980 and 1982, Gurnah returned to Africa to teach at Bayer University in Nigeria while 

studying for a doctorate at the University of Kent. He received the degree in 1982 and served as the 

professor of English and postcolonial literature at the university of Kent in Canterbury in 1985 until his 

retirement. He has been teaching “Colonial and Postcolonial Discourse” and studying postcolonial 

literature related to Africa, the Caribbean, India and other regions (Wang, 2021).He is a patient and 

calm teacher. He motivates his students and encourages them to explore new ideas and search for better 

forms of expression in writing. 

Gurnah has been a contributing editor of Wasafiri Magazine since 1987(Wang, 2021).He edited two 

volumes of Essays on African Writingin1993and 1995 and published a series of essays on 

contemporary postcolonial writers and their works, including Naipaul, Soynka, Rushdie, Tiango and 



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other immigrant writers, they are all his research objects, and his research has led to global recognition 

in literary circle of their “diaspora writing”. He viewed Naipaul critically and argued Naipaul’s views 

on Africa, Islam, Iran, Pakistan and other Muslim countries are not so much entirely accurate that 

Naipaul’s writings lack analysis and his understanding of Islamic issues remains stagnant (Wang, 

2021). 

Perhaps it was due to his identity as the critic that he is more critically while observing issues. Gurnah 

did not intend to be a writer initially, but it was the exile in Britain that prompted him to put his 

thoughts into writing. From then on, homesickness and the anguish of being alone in the foreign land 

made him reflect over a series of issues that he hadn't touch upon before. He found himself on a 

mission to record what he had seen and experienced, and some grievances and regrets needed to be 

appealed. Through his writing, he endeavored to bring awareness of the diaspora life to the people and 

to exposes the colonization to the public. In 1987 Gurnah published his first novel Memory of 

Departure, and since then, he has published nine novels, including Pilgrim Ways, Dottie, Paradise, 

Admiring Silence, By the Sea, Desertion, The Last Gift, Afterlives, etc. One of the most representative 

works is Paradise. In his works, Gurnah cares much of Africa, especially the negative impact of 

colonial history on African people, and his dissatisfaction with the reality of Africa is reflected in his 

crusade against colonial evilness. Most of his works centered on refugees, and focuses on identity, 

ethnic conflicts and history writing, and his portrayal of living is considered to possess the social 

significance to a great extent. Having experienced colonial ruling, the socialist revolution in Zanzibar, 

and exile in a foreign lands, Gurnah’s literary works are closely related to his own experiences 

(Lucinda, 2015). His works revolve around the legacy of colonial ruling, mainly focusing on refugee 

identity and cultural distortion, with particular emphasis on identity and the living conditions of people. 

Most of his works are descriptions of stories based on a memory, just as the official comment of the 

Nobel Prize for Literature: “Memory is always an important theme in Gurnah’s writings”. 

2.2 Research Status and Representative Ideas 

A certain number of studies on Gurnah in English and American literary circles have been conducted at 

home and abroad and naturally most of researches focus on his typical writing of identities.  

2.2.1 The Studies at Abroad 

Foreign studies on Gurnah’s literature are more timely advanced and updated since the initial studies 

can be traced back to the 1990s. Furthermore, the research perspectives are broader, the paradigms 

more diversified, and the results more abundant. 

Researches have been concentrating on Gurnah’s works in view of refugee diaspora, post-colonial 

identity construction and other issues, cosmopolitanism, homogeneity and his narrative method etc. 

Firstly, in view of refugee diaspora, Sissy Helff published Illegal Diasporas and African Refugees in 

Abulrazak Gurnah’s By the Sea in The Journal of Commonwealth Literature in 2009, which reproduced 



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the suffering of the African refugees and the illegal refugees in Gurnah’s typical novel By the Sea. This 

article adopts Kauss’s concepts of the illegally separated person and unconditional hospitality. As for 

post-colonialism, some scholars focus on the colonialism and racist ideology of gender oppression and 

racial discrimination against women. Esther Pujolras-Noguer proposed Gurnah resisted Western 

colonialism through gender writing and revealed the nature of imperial colonization and racial 

discrimination. “Abandonment” subverts the white and male imperial duality and counteracts the ideal 

imperial masculinity inspired by colonial literature. As for cosmopolitanism, the researchers examine 

imperial evilness and colonial legacy from a global context. Using relational theories developed by 

Martin Buber and Édouard Glissant, Tina Steiner emphasized the importance of crossing borders, It is 

argued that Gurnah’s novel attempts to redefine “Africa” by focusing on the relational space in order to 

get rid of dystopian rejection of politics and violence caused by nationalism and ethnic ideology” 

(Hand, 2010, p. 124); And Shanti Moorthy surveyed current thinking in regard to cosmopolitanism in 

Indian Ocean studies and examined how Gurnah contests depictions by Indian Ocean scholars of 

apparently idyllic pre-modern East African societies (Shanti, 2009). Next, in view of homogeneity, 

Kate Houlden published in English Studies in African 2013 “It Worked in a Different Way”: Male 

Same-Sex Desire in the Novels of Abdulrazak Gurnah’s” and after close reading of Paradise and By the 

Sea, Houlden found a pattern of sophisticated old men hunting innocent young boys, and pointed out 

Gurnah emphasizes the corrosive influence of trade and colonization on east African sex economy. 

Lastly, in view of Gurnah’s narrative, Charne Lavery studied Gurnah’s works and found he used the 

exploration of space to express literature. His novel depicts a unique east African coastal space that 

connects the shores of the Indian Ocean through travel, trade and culture (Charne, 2013). While 

Felicity Hand focuses on the role of cultural modes in shaping identity in colonial countries, Hand 

explored the tension between individual perception of history and collective consciousness by studying 

the characteristic of Gurnah’s writing: memory influences historical stories (Hand, 2010, p. 124). 

His popularity skyrocketed after he won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2021. By 2022, almost a 

dozen of academic papers have been published, and most centered on the post-colonialism and identity, 

“Rejection of Victimhood in Literature: by Abdulrazak Gurnah, Viet Thanh Nguyen, and Luis Alberto 

Urrea” compares and analyzes the commonalities of several writers who have been increasingly 

opposed to adopting refugees, exiles, immigrants and their descendants as symbols of victims (Lucinda, 

2015). “Askari, colonial encounters, and postcolonial war commemoration in Afterlives by Abdulrazak” 

published by Anna Branach-Kallas discusses that the war and colonialism as interconnected factors 

(Anna, 2022).Foreign scholars will dig Gurnah’s works deeper on the basis of the previous. 

 

 

 



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2.2.2 The Studies at Home 

Domestic researches on Gurnah’s works have been increasingly conducted in view of translation of 

Gurnah’s major works. Among his10 published novels, several short stories and essays, Bossi and 

Cagehave been translated into Chinese as representatives of East Africa in the Anthology of African 

Short Stories. Before Abdulrazak’s award, only two published studies could be found in China: Walking 

between Center and Edge—Abdulrazak’s Concept of Diaspora Writing (Zhang, 2012) and Review and 

Prospect of the Study of AbdulrazakGurnah(Jiang&Sun, 2017).Zhang Fenganalyzes the relation 

between Gurnah’s diaspora experience and his works, and the diaspora literature styleruns throughout 

his 8 typical novels. Jiang Xueshan began studying Gurnah’s works in 2016, joking the time she spent 

studying Gurnah as a graduate student was the closest to winning the Nobel Prize for Literature 

(Jiang& Sun, 2017). In her report in 2017 she summarized the research status of Gurnah at home and 

abroad, and found Gurnah had attracted certain attention abroad at that time, due to his uniqueness, 

novelty of writing and diversity of topics. In the end, it is concluded Gurnah’s perspective and diverse 

themes have made great contribution to both African literature and immigrant literature.  

After the prize winning, Gurnah’s works were finally brought to the world’s view, and domestic 

research ideas were gradually expanded.  

Chinese academic studies turned their attention to the thematic analysis of By the Sea (Zhu, 2022), 

identity construction and cosmopolitanism (Huang, 2022). After 2021, many more studies coming out 

focusing on memory writing. Memory, Language, Heterogeneity, and Locality in Postcolonial 

Literature: A Review of Abdulrazak Gurnah’s Thought on Writing and Criticism (Zhang, 2022) 

discusses the unique value and contribution of Gurnah’ s ideas in the context of post-colonial literature 

studies from memory narrative and reshaping history, post-colonial writing, African cultural 

nationalism and reflection and transcendence of post-colonial and world literature. 

2.3 Research Issues and Ideas 

To sum up, we can see presently both domestic and foreign studies have focused on Gurnah’s literature 

to a great extent and have deeply analyzed and discussed several of his prominent characteristics. 

However, deeper examination of his memory narrative and identity is still the center of academic 

concern. As we can see from his ten works, he has been concerned with the identity of Africans in 

diaspora. It is also the profound influence of contemporary society on Gurnah’s works. Based on the 

study of memory narrative, this thesis aims to analyze Gurnah’s reflection on immigration identity, and 

taking memory as the approach to interpret the elements of different dimensions in Gurnah’s 

articles—race, society and gender, as well as his concern for the fate of refugees and his 

uncompromising firmness in the current of the times. 

 

 



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3. Memory Narrative and Diaspora Identity Theory 

Memory narrative is not only the narrative mode and literary theme, but also possesses the aesthetic 

significance and cultural connotation. This chapter adopts the memory carrier in memory writing to 

deeply understand the uniqueness and artistic charm of the writer’s memory writing by analyzing the 

present Gurnah’s memory narrative and diaspora identity. 

3.1 Theory of Memory 

The memory concept can date back to Plato in 4th Century B. C. He compared our mind to a wax tablet, 

everything we see, hear, feel, and realize is imprinted on wax, leaving an imprint, as if with a seal ring 

(Theaetetus, 1992). Then Aristotle came up with a more scientific concept at the end of the 4th century 

BC. He argued that few of the functions of the brain that we think of today were thought of primarily as 

functions of the heart, which he realized were pertinent to blood and memory is based on the blood 

flow. In fact, Amnesia occurs mainly as a result of reduced blood flow. In the middle of the 17thCentury, 

the “associationism” school of psychology represented by Hobbes and Locke appeared in Britain. The 

first systematic experiment on memory in the history of psychology is the famous German psychologist 

Ebbinghaus.  

The research on memory cognition theory has been gradually improved over time. In the 20th century, it 

is considered that memory is the recognition, retention and reproduction (recall and recognition) of an 

individual’s experience. As people’s cognition of the world becomes more and more profound, 

philosophy advocates to see the world from the perspective of dialectics and diversity rather than from 

a single, one-sided and systematic perspective. Therefore, the theory of multiple memory structure 

emerges at the historic moment.  

Later, after the theory of collective memory was put forward, memory involved not only psychology 

and pedagogy but also social, religious and cultural environment. Habwah’s On Collective Memory 

also presents his thoughts on this. In his opinion, memory is collective, and the generation, awakening, 

inheritance and continuation of memory all occur in groups. Moreover, group culture and religion are 

collective consciousness, which is an external dominant feature of the crowd. When the concept of 

collective was put forward, many scholars criticized the singleness and one-sidedness of individual 

memory, and even completely denied individual memory, believing that the development direction of 

individual memory is determined by collective memory. But we can't separate collective memory from 

individual memory. 

3.2 Theory of Diaspora 

The word “diaspora” originated from Greece that refers to the dispersal of seeds by the wind. In the 

Old Testament, it specifically designates the diaspora of the Jewish people who had no place to settle. 

Therefore, “diaspora” refers to people who have been persecuted and scattered to different parts of the 

world (William, 1991). In the mid-1960s, “diaspora” was gradually adopted by western academic 



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circles to refer to contemporary international immigrants who cross national boundaries and maintain 

ties with their ancestral countries. 

Due to the changes of politics, economy, culture, war and other factors in the history of human society, 

the word “diaspora” will not always be the exclusive appellation of the state of Jewish wandering and 

diaspora (Li, 2008). The conquest of war, the change of dynasties, the advancement of science and 

technology, and the exploration of the unknown world by human beings will all lead to the migration 

and exchange of different races, the concept of diaspora is no longer a single plane, but a more diverse 

one with more factors and perspectives. The migration trend caused by various reasons, such as the 

great nautical discovery, the African slave trade, the overseas export of Chinese workers, and the 

process of globalization, have greatly expanded the living space of the global diaspora and increased 

the number of diaspora groups. The concept “diaspora” refers to the status of various immigrant groups, 

and it has been changed from specific to general. Diaspora phenomenon has become a focus that 

cannot be ignored. Diaspora goes from proper noun “Diaspora” to “diaspora”, and the lower-case word 

diaspora has changed from a specific reference to the Jewish diaspora to a group of people globally. 

Diaspora is a derogatory word at the beginning, and later transformed into a neutral word. 

With the increasing number of diaspora groups in the world, attracting academic attention, the 

translation of the word “diaspora” in China has also undergone a complex process. The concept of 

science, anthropology and other disciplines, the process of expanding from a narrow sense to a broad 

sense, which also refers to the internal reason for the diaspora’s translation diversification, and the four 

translation methods and usages of “live scattered”, “dissociation”, “diaspora”, “fly apart” occupy the 

vast majority (Yang , 2016). 

Diaspora literature has gradually become popular with the emergence of diaspora phenomenon. 

Diaspora writers leaving away from their native land have taken up their pens to write about the exotic 

customs and sentiment of missing of their homeland. Simultaneously, they also adopt their own special 

marginal identity to reflect over their diaspora experience. Their special writing group communicate 

with the local culture at the cultural level depends on the location of the foreign diaspora, and analyzes 

the cultural identity, identity anxiety and culture shock from the third perspective. 

3.3 Conceptual Interpretation of Identity 

Erikson is the founder of the theory of self-identity and a key figure in introducing identity theory into 

the field of psychological research. He believes that the formation of self—identity is to confirm a 

psychological process. As the essence of personality, self—identity includes commitment to ideology, 

role and values. 

Social psychologist Teifer believes that identity is a part of an individual’s self-concept, including 

knowledge, values and emotional meanings that derived from his/her membership in the social group to 

which he/she belongs. Individuals improve self-esteem by gaining and maintaining positive social 



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approval. Much of this positive identification comes from comparisons between in-groups and relevant 

out-groups. 

To sum up, identity is a person’s cognition of his or her own identity. People’s identification with 

themselves, dependence on family, belief in religion, confidence in culture, continuation of tradition 

and identification with the country constitute identity in various aspects.  

But once set in the colonial background where the social system is challenged, the social structure is 

reconstructed, the collective subject identity changes with the chance of the social collective 

consciousness, so individuals in the group will suffer from a great spiritual tribulation and ideological 

division in pain and confusion for existence and their own value. 

Exactly as emigrants leave their homeland to live in a foreign country, the change of geographical 

space and the living environment, the strangeness of cultural traditions will make people feel at a loss. 

When they encounter with these problems, they will have identity anxiety and identity confusion. 

Therefore, diasporas are often associated with issues of identity. 

3.4 Gurnah’s Memory Narrative and Diaspora Identity 

Memory, whether explored from the individual’s perspective or collective level, ultimately forms the 

capacity for self-awareness (identity). Identity, in turn, is related to both time and memory. Human self 

is a diachronic identity established through the “time object”. Past memories stitch together and form a 

complete image of a person, and people’s cognition of themselves comes from this memory. Writers 

record these memories, weave real reflection and time-consumed memory together to write in the 

article, trace back those historical stories, and perpetuate these memories in the form of paper, such a 

special narrative is memory narrative. 

Memory narrative always focuses on the vivid experience of individuals or groups in historical time 

and space, conveys an invisible voice and breaks the monopoly of grand historical narration. Literature 

should not only focus on the facts seen by people, but also take the responsibility to dig out the facts 

that are thought not to exist because they are hidden. It provides readers with “multiple memories” of a 

single historical narrative through language description. Simultaneously, the literary writing of 

individual or collective memory in the oppression of historical events also makes researchers reflect on 

the possibility of studying memory beyond the paradigm of sociology, which may be a new research 

path from collective memory and individual memory provided by literary creation for memory theory. 

Memory narrative is not only the composition of the plot content of the novel, but also the approach of 

the author's self-expression and ethical thinking. The French critic Maurice Blanchot believes that 

memory has a certain positive power on the writer’s creation, and Chinese writer and critic Yu Dafu 

believes all novels come out of the author’s “autobiography”. From a certain point of view, writers’ 

writing records what happened and so that it is the summary of “absence”. Gurnah’s memory narrative 

exerted an important internal connection on his life experience. 



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Memory is an essential element of identity, and identity is an external manifestation of memory. It is 

precise because memory narrative makes those memories continue that collective memory will also be 

superimposed, memory narrative connects the past with the present, and directly participates in people's 

identity construction. Gurnah’s special identity and personal experience give him the ability to look 

back onto the past and compare the pain of reality in his warm memory. It can be said that memory 

narrative is a way and channel to acquire identity, and he records his sense of wandering loneliness and 

weightlessness. Gurnah uses memory writing to extend external experience and performance, and uses 

the family memory framework to reflect the inheritance of memory, psychology and behavior against 

the background of colonial inter-generational influence; and his personal memory description reflects 

the sense of weightlessness and wandering from a personal perspective. 

Born in Tanzania but educated in Britain and brought up in an English-speaking environment, Gurnah, 

as an immigrant writer, is more sensitive to refugee issues and more attuned to the identity conflicts of 

the diaspora. As a wandering individual, he writes about his own hardships and pain. As a bystander of 

his hometown, he used words to express his reflection and helplessness on colonial issues. He saw the 

exclusion and hatred between different races, the separation of identities that could not establish their 

own identity, the social nobodies drifting on the edge, and the tininess and fear of women in the 

patriarchal society. He passed down these memories and feelings into his own writing. 

 

4. Memory in the Historical Background—Racial Identity 

Most of Gurnah’s stories take place in the post-colonial period, an indelible historical memory passed 

down from generation to generation, and its consequences are brutal and profound, and one of the most 

prominent problems is hatred and exclusion between different races. 

4.1 Hatred and Exclusion between White and Other Races 

“Identity” is formed by individuals in the continuous development of society, and it is an indispensable 

part of individual spiritual construction (Zhang, 2021). When black Africans were a relatively closed 

society, they had few opportunities to communicate with the outside world due to their dependence on 

groups with natural conditions, and they also did not need complex social labor system. However, when 

western society breaks their peace, the internal tranquility of the original ethnic group was broken, and 

they had to contact with the external social relations, and gradually became a part of the formation of 

this relationship. 

Whether black or white, when different ethnic groups come into contact, ethnicity will show its 

exclusivity. In Dottie, people of all races meet together in Britain, and contradictions between the black 

and the white exist everywhere. White Britons regard colored people as dirty “rubbish”, and gratuitous 

discrimination and humiliation are intolerable. Therefore, hatred between races is endless and 



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comprehensive, but the ideology of binary opposition will eventually be reflected on everyone, which 

exerts a great impact on individual life. 

The animosity between them took the form of racial hatred. Like Taymor’s experience, he settled in 

Cardiff, a community of colored people, where he felt relatively safe. Actually, he still underestimated 

the anger of New Yorkers against blacks, who were picking quarrels, rioting, beating color people. 

Such acts of violence and injustice are motivated by racial hatred. This phenomenon, as a collective 

memory, runs through colonialism and racism, inflicting double racial trauma on both white 

perpetrators and African victims. 

4.2 The Identity and Status Gap between Black and White 

Accompanied by xenophobia, white people think themselves the most superior race, so the status of 

black people is naturally low. In Hall Stuart’s opinion, cultural identity is “not permanently fixed in a 

certain essential past, but subject to the constant ‘play’ of history, culture and power”. It is a kind of 

“production” that never ends and is always in process (Hall, 1996). In Britain, it is due to race, family, 

cultural background etc. that the black people cannot obtain the legitimate social status.Under such 

long-term strong oppression and violence, black people could hardly resist. They lost their identity 

recognition in such a wide gap of identity status, and gradually split and lost themselves under the force 

of cruel social environment.  

In such a social situation, there is a huge gap between the status of black and white people. One of 

Gurnah’s masterly ways of dealing with the plot is that in handling Bilkisu’s problems with her off 

springs, he deliberately allows Bilkisu to conceal the family memory, since “she did not want her 

children to worry about such things”. She lived with the name Sharon, denying all memories of the past. 

The distortion of an individual’s memory does not affect the collective memory and may even lead to 

family tragedy. The children never know their origin, and they suffered both psychological and physical 

torture at the bottom of the society. Where there’s no family memory, there is no home and no anchor. 

When Sharon died of a serious illness, the children had no support, suffered from mental pain, and they 

had to find a place to live immediately. They suffered from the discrimination of white people, and any 

action they took was wrong in the eyes of white people. In this inferior status, their identity cognition 

was severely distorted. 

The younger brother, Hudson, began to interact with white teenagers and distance himself from his 

sisters. In order to resist the shackles of status, Hudson’s many practices: skipping classes, fighting, 

taking risks, being misled into drug addiction, forced to sell their own body... All of these actions are 

the reactions against his unconscious loss of self in the midst of the huge status gap. Hudson finally 

died in the Hudson River in the United States, which proves that his way of defiance and resistance to 

the society is unworkable and symbolizes the complete collapse of a Utopia. 

 



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5. Diaspora Memory—Hybrid Identity 

The diaspora groups in a foreign country are like the boats floating over the sea without a lighthouse. 

Filled with fear, they try to find their own spiritual shelter in the crevices of their own country and other 

cultures, expecting their wandering soul to reach the shore. Being deeply influenced by the memories 

of their parents and families, it becomes a big problem for the vagrants to choose and deal with their 

identities in the face of the motherland culture and the foreign culture. 

5.1 Identity Confusion as Immigrants 

Charles Taylor once pointed out in the Politics of Recognition that “one’s identity is to some extent 

created by the recognition of others. If it is not acknowledged by others, or acknowledged by others in 

a gentle way, it can affect one’s identity” (Zhao, 2009). This is to say that lack of recognition or just 

distorted recognition can be harmful. It can be a form of oppression, which can keep people imprisoned 

in a false, distorted and derogatory way of being. 

Dottie’s confusion of self-identity recognition is caused by the diaspora of the whole family. Dottie’s 

family history is a process of constant migration, which started with her grandfather’s settlement in the 

UK. Later her mother left home to live alone, deliberately blurring out her memories of her family. 

Dottie has no clear idea of who she is or where she comes from. 

Dottie’s alienation from the African race in time and space as well as her indifference to British culture 

in consciousness and reality are two emotions that confused her in the dual identity and dual 

consciousness, wandering in the gulf between the two races. Dottie is not clear about her own identity 

and genus. Such confusion of self-identity recognition is caused by the diaspora of the whole family. 

In establishing Dottie’s “past”, Gurnah adopts a nonlinear narrative strategy of fragmentation and 

disorganization, which is actually in line with the development of individual memory. Specifically, 

there are two main sources of Dottie’s memory fragments: one is the narration of her mother Bilkisu, 

and the other is the arrangement and construction of her own memories. 

Dottie was christened Dottie Badoura Fatma Balfour. This name came from a Chinese princess, and 

this story is taken from “One Thousand and One Nights”. Dottie’s mother, Bilkisu, liked the story so 

much that she added it to her daughter’s name to express her longing for love, and her best wishes for 

her daughter. But Bilkisu spent most of his days in sickness and confusion, and Dottie did not know 

why her name was so long, how it had been acquired, or what it meant.  

Clearly, Dottie loved the beautiful, unusual, exotic name, and often dreamed of romantic stories to 

explain it. As Dottie became curious about her name and began to search for its meaning, she gradually 

got a certain picture of her birth and family behind her name. The glorious history of her maternal 

grandfather, the cultural background of her immigrant family, and the memories passed down from 

generation to generation all enabled her to have a deeper understanding of the black culture and 

traditions rooted in her own. 



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Gurnah adopts the name as an image to carry the weight of memory, from personal memory to family 

memory, which truly reflects the feeling of powerlessness and weightlessness standing in the flood of 

time under the colonial background. 

5.2 The Sense of Crisis in Multiple Identities 

Nie Zhenzhao considers that an ethical dilemma is the irresolvable contradiction and conflict that 

ethical confusion in literary texts brings to the characters. When people choose to deal with a certain 

ethical issue, they will make their determination according to two reasonable but conflicting values: the 

choice of characters faces a kind of paradoxical dilemma that both are wrong (Huang, 2022). The crisis 

of multiple identities comes when people are caught in an ethical dilemma. 

Dottie’s complicated family background and social atmosphere give her multiple identities. Identity is 

complex because identity is not static, since it is constructed through one individual interaction with 

another individual or group and it is not fixed at birth, as people grow up, the changes of social status 

and family relationship, the superimposed identity give the meaning of individual or group of people. 

In the text of Dottie, Dottie’s ethical dilemma is obviously caused by the identity confusion in by her 

acting as a mother but actually in position as an elder sister. She is unable to coordinate the 

contradictions and conflicts brought by these two identities, especially when her individual ability 

alone is not enough to support the whole family.  

Dottie is burdened with different responsibilities and tasks, and is under the endless pressure and 

exploitation. Dottie ignores her own personality needs and blindly satisfies others. Dottie’s multiply 

identities satisfy the needs of others and lead to alienation of personal responsibility and identity crisis. 

She wants to be herself, but responsibility gets in the way and the weight on Dottie's shoulders leaves 

her breathless. She must find a balance between her multiple identities and her essential self. 

 

6. Memory of Group Culture-Social Identity 

The content of cultural memory is the past shared by a social group. In a white-dominated society, 

immigrants are marginalized as a minority. They are often ignored by the mainstream, and it is also 

difficult for them to break out of their inner shackles. 

6.1 Social Marginalization of Immigrants 

Diaspora is a cultural position that wanders between the center and the edge. It neither depends on the 

center nor sticks to the edge. In the words of HomiBhabha, “third dimension”(Homi,2009) 

characterized by “promiscuity” implies an epistemological advantage, a dual perspective of “inside and 

outside”, which provides a creative and subversive writing space. Originally referring to the 

relationship between the former colonial periphery and the imperial center, the term marginality has 

been used to define the mental state of diaspora writers who are being both in and out of the part: in the 

encounter of the self and the other, the emigrants can be simultaneously in double externalities, and he 



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or she belongs to both cultures. But they don’t identify with either of them. Individual circumstances 

vary, but there is a common edge. Gurnah is particularly adept at dealing with this sense of 

marginalization in his work. In a white-dominated society, immigrants act as a medium of intercultural 

communication, hovering between two cultures to form a specific group. They are insignificant and 

unacceptable existence relative to the mainstream group, and they are marginalized to form a stable but 

simultaneously changing circle. They have absolutely no sense of belonging in the mainstream group, 

and they can only feel a little reassured by shrinking in a safe space, which is reflected in Cage. 

Harden vaguely remembers when Fajir took him to the mosque, the old man would go to the market to 

teach him about those colorful vegetables. But since the old man was too sick to move, he never 

stepped out of the supermarket. He was afraid of the swamp, and the darkness outside the supermarket. 

Harden can only move within the range that they are most familiar with in this city, and he never dares 

to take a step forward outside. The only times when Harden appears out of his comfort zone without 

fearing are deeply recollected as a way for Gurnah to highlight the fear and marginalization of 

immigrants in a group culture. 

Living in two confronting cultures, but hardly belonging to either, the immigrant group seriously lacks 

a sense of belonging (Zhang, 2012), so the only way out is that they shrink into a the corner amid 

divisions and lack of self-confidence, no longer communicates with the outside world, and no longer 

seeks fresh food, by defaulting he will not be accepted. They were unable to separate the influence of 

their own nation and unable to integrate into the new environment, and gradually became separatists on 

the edge. 

6.2 Feebleness of Young Generation 

After a long period of colonization, the colonies suffered all the hardships, and there was no way out 

and no direction forward. Due to the cultural output and mind controlling of the strong, the colonized 

did not possess a strong sense of resistance, but were not completely disillusioned, so they were born at 

a loss. Generation after generation, the youth of colonial descendants are meaninglessly depraved and 

alienated during despair and inaction. 

“Bossi” is filled with invisible cries. Every character has his or her own characteristics. For example, 

Eunice, his brain is full of sailing knowledge, even those sailors call him the captain, but he never 

applies this knowledge to make a living, but was just immersed in his own world and determined to 

build a boat to go home. Bossi is an excellent swimmer and has strong sailing skills. He is an 

all-around young man, but he uses all his ingenuity to make fun of Eunice. These meaningless actions 

seem ordinary but are actually a kind of unconscious dissolution. They are forced to accept Western 

systems and education in a lifeless social environment. They know that they do not belong to the West 

at all, but their own family has no education to speak of, nor their own cultural identity, not to mention 

cultural self-confidence, which can only dispel their anxiety and doubts from unconscious actions. 



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The novel is narrated from a first-person perspective, the main character witnesses the ongoing issues, 

and experiences the matters as a participant. It is this kind of witness and participation that brings the 

feeling of powerlessness to the fullest. When “I” and Bossi went on an adventure to Prison Island, he 

swore that his mother and sister would not be left alone, but he was submerged in the sea on the way 

home, all promises came to nothing, and he missed a lot of cruelty things. He didn't help Haji, who 

couldn’t sail or deal with the wind and waves. He missed Haji being beaten as an Arab and missed 

Karim’s letter and didn’t know his own younger sister had become a prostitute, he missed a lot... Bossi 

missed everything, just like the author Gurnah himself set off far away from his own land, lonely and 

sad, witnessing his homeland suffering so much but couldn’t do anything except recording it in dismay. 

His repetitive calling back of the past ceaselessly reminds him of the familiar or the strange continent. 

But his internal heart is like Haji, desperate and helpless, seeing others trample his hometown, ravage 

the spirit of the residents but can’t do anything. Gurnah is both a bystander and a participant of 

hesitance and powerlessness. 

 

7. Personality Development in Collective Memory-Female Identity 

In the post-colonial world, the status of women cannot be ignored. Gurnah reflects the dilemma of 

female identity from the life experience of women and their mental state description. In the patriarchal 

society, how to survive, and how to extricate women themselves from the predicament of identity and 

find a way out is a long and arduous process. 

7.1 The Issue of Objectifying Female 

French sociologist Jean-Creud Kaufman divided the woman’s body into three types: the first is the 

general body, the second is the erotic body, and the third the aesthetic body (Anneh, 2017). In such a 

post-colonial period, the female body was regarded as the “erotic body”, usually considered as a 

symbol of desire, and the role of women was to satisfy such desire in male’s gaze. 

In white-centrism and colonial society, women have always been at the bottom of the oppression and 

exploitation, especially black women. They were not only oppressed by white people for granted, but 

also by men of their own race. Squeezed by race, class and gender, they occupied no place in society. 

Social resources were in the hands of men, and if they wanted to obtain resources, they had to exchange 

benefits, while they had nothing but their bodies. Therefore, in the context of that era, women could 

only use their bodies as bargaining chips to price themselves for things they needed. 

In Cage, the problem shifts from the society objectifying women to women objectifying themselves. 

When problems cannot be overcome and new problems arise, it is unavoidable for individuals in the 

overall social environment. Suggestions are given to individuals under the influence of collective 

memory. When the beautiful girl Rukia came to an unfamiliar town, she was coveted and molested by 

men. It can be seen that in this colonial context, women themselves have been “ideologically 



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colonized”, and they have been subtly objectified, which had a huge impact on the deformed female 

identity at that time. 

The objectification of women is a basic phenomenon in society. As long as it involves gender and 

living conditions, this phenomenon will definitely be mentioned. Therefore, every novel of Gurnah 

reflects such point. As he expressed, stories are the way to describe the world, and when things that 

people take for granted gradually form a social convention and continue to perpetuate in the collective 

memory, then everyone is not a bystander (Wang, 2021). Gurnah is in this society and sees that it is not 

only a problem of the past tense, but also a problem of the present tense. It will still be passed down 

with memory and habits. The only thing he can do is to write these stories out for the public to read and 

comprehend this problem. 

7.2 Female under the Control of Patriarchy 

While being objectified by men, women have tacitly regarded as appendages of male, they cannot have 

their own thoughts and actions, and they are to be attached to men. Just as white people are above all 

skin colors and all species, men also oppress women with power. Such an unequal patriarchal society is 

not a natural attribute, but a result of the development of social productive forces. Women, as a 

vulnerable group, struggle to survive under oppression. 

Gurnah described Dottie’s struggle and self-redemption vividly in Dottie. Facing the default rules of 

social groups, she sensed that it was inappropriate and tried to confront them, and found herself and 

improved herself in female education. Dottie’s quest for independence is mainly reflected in two things: 

the first is to buy a house, a house of her own in the UK. Second, she changed her job and gained 

professional status as an office typist by taking secretarial courses. 

But Dottie couldn’t afford to buy on her own, so she didn’t say no when Patterson offered her help. 

Patterson provided a spacious accommodation when Dottie and Sophia were living in their squalid and 

cramped house. Patterson did help Dottie solve her anxiety about living space and material problems, 

but he tried to take full control of Dottie’s life with the help of male dominance and wanted to juggle 

the two sisters at the same time. As Hillis Miller said, “Dislocation of community means that the link 

and joint are broken and cannot maintain the original union state.” The contrast between Patterson and 

Dottie suggests that in her journey towards independence, she could not rely entirely on men as 

companion (Huang, 2022, p. 52). The patriarchal society functionalizes women, believing that the role 

of women is to satisfy men’s desires, but also to imprison and objectify women. 

After being oppressed by society for a long time, women begin to try to escape, and this process is also 

the manifestation of women’s awakening. The days of being controlled by her body and her mind were 

unacceptable. Finally, Dottie stepped out with the encouragement of her good friend Estella and found 

a job by her own efforts. Gurnah finally arranged a perfect love for Dottie, which also indicates that 

under the oppression of power, women must keep a sober head like Dottie, constantly receive new 



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education and knowledge. The process of Dottie’s independence is the process of a woman finding her 

own identity under the oppression of male power. 

 

Conclusion 

Memory runs throughout the life, since a series of impressive moments including parting, scattering, 

settling etc.,are sealed in memory. Gurnah’s mission is to offer those migrants an opportunity to record 

in their own particular experiences what they saw, heard and felt in their own way. They will naturally 

pay more attention to the fate of refugees, and will be more delicate and multi-faceted when looking at 

issues. With an uncompromising and compassionate vision, he provides insight into the impact of 

colonialism and refugees living in the gap between different cultural continents’ fate. 

Those international migrants living outside their homeland are separated from different social cultures, 

have difficulty adjusting their chaotic identities, and encounter an identity crisis. Of course, this is only 

a social status quo at the spiritual level. Only when they have the ability to live can they pay attention 

to the spiritual level. And more refugees are mixed with both physical and psychological crises. They 

have no education, no skills, and it is difficult to create value with their hands. Refugees who can 

support themselves will also be treated extremely unfairly. This series of problems is seen by Gurnah. 

He focuses on the displacement and mental trauma of this group. He runs through memories and brings 

deep feelings. He uses diaspora literature to arouse the attention of immigrants themselves to seek 

self-identity. 

The generalization of the phenomenon of diaspora has accelerated mankind into the era of globalization, 

but the antagonism and conflict between races have always existed. The colonizers used a hegemonic 

attitude to suppress the exploited, and they forcibly exported their own culture. Africa was educated by 

white people and rule, following their rules and regulations. When Western civilization was introduced 

into Africa, the order of the African ethnic groups set into the chaotic. Conflicts and violence began to 

arise within them. Under the notice of power, they gradually alienated and divided themselves. 

As a writer of African race, Gurnah saw a nation divided by racial discrimination as a bystander. They 

closed themselves under a narrow space and could not see their own needs, but they were divided from 

each other under the manipulation of racism and resent each other. Gurnah understands and presents 

Africa as an African, warns his compatriots from a profound perspective, and also opens up the world's 

thinking. 

 

Acknowledgments 

Many people have offered me valuable help on my thesis writing, including my instructor, my parents, 

my friends and JISU.First of all, I would like to extend my sincere gratefulness to Prof. Dan Cui, my 

instructor who supported me patiently and encouraged me consistently. She gave me much aid through 



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offering me insights, important reference materials and professional revising suggestions. She revised 

my thesis ceaselessly from the theoretical perspective, structure arrangements, supportive proofs, etc.I 

admire her very much for her serious and responsible attitude towards academics. I also extend my 

gratefulness for my parents for their support, as graduation is approaching, they have been encouraging 

me to pursue my dreams and tell me never to give up. They helped me much mentally and financially. 

Finally, I would like to thank my friends, with whom we spent a full and fruitful period together in the 

university. 

 

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Notes 

Note1. This paper is the periodical research result of Project on “The Anxiety and Transcendence of 

John Keats’s Individual Identity Construction” sponsored by National Social Science Foundation of 

China (21FWWB015); of Project on “A Study of the Construction of John Keats’s National Identity” 

sponsored by the fellowship of China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (No: 2021M700496); of Project 

on “A Study of English Major Course System Construction with ValueShaping Based on ‘Global 

Village’ as the Foreign Language Lab” sponsored by the Academy ofForeign Language Teaching 

Attached to the Institute of Higher Education of China (No:21WYJYZD08); of Project on “A Study of 

Routes Applied to Cultivate the Inter-cultural Competenceof English Major Students” (No: 

GJJX20201130); of Project on “The Establishment and Practice of Vista Mode of Development and 

Transformation of English-major Teaching Faculty’s Proficiency under New Arts Prospect” sponsored 

by Chinese Private Higher Education Association(CANFZG22417);of Project on“The Construction and 

Practice of Mode of Development and Transformation of Foreign Language Teaching Faculty’s 



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Proficiency in International Studies of Universities under Multiple-Discipline Background” Sponsored 

by Jilin Higher Education Association (No: JGJX2022D316); “A Study of John Keats’s National 

Identity Writing and Forging Chinese National Community Consciousness” sponsored by Education 

Department ofJilin Province. 


