Joan Riley (1958- ) is a Caribbean immigrant novelist from Jamaica. Having attended British school in her homeland, Riley moved to England in 1976 to pursue her undergraduate and graduate studies at Sussex University and London University. Her first novel, The Unbelonging was published in 1985 and received the attention of critics interested in ethnic studies, Black British writings of exile and diasporic writings of Afro-Caribbean immigrants. Riley continues to examine the reality of Caribbean presence in English society and probes the interaction between colonizer/colonized cultures through shaping examples of immigrants’ status of in-between both for first generation, educated via British norms at schools and those of second generation who were born and raised in England. Those ideas are examined further through the lenses of political identities based on race (Black) and gender (Woman) in the novels that were yet to follow The Unbelonging: Waiting in the Twilight (1987), Romance (1988) and A Kindness to Children
Joan Riley (1958- ) is a Caribbean immigrant novelist from Jamaica. Having attended British school in her homeland, Riley moved to England in 1976 to pursue her undergraduate and graduate studies at Sussex University and London University. Her first novel, The Unbelonging was published in 1985 and received the attention of critics interested in ethnic studies, Black British writings of exile and diasporic writings of Afro-Caribbean immigrants. Riley continues to examine the reality of Caribbean presence in English society and probes the interaction between colonizer/colonized cultures through shaping examples of immigrants’ status of in-between both for first generation, educated via British norms at schools and those of second generation who were born and raised in England. Those ideas are examined further through the lenses of political identities based on race (Black) and gender (Woman) in the novels that were yet to follow The Unbelonging: Waiting in the Twilight (1987), Romance (1988) and A Kindness to Children