“Born and bred, almost”

A Study of Identity Crisis and Mimicry in The Buddha of Suburbia

Abstract

Hanif Kureishi’s 1990 debut novel, The Buddha of Suburbia, investigates, among other things, mimicry and the crisis of identity among the diasporic community living in multicultural postcolonial Britain. Set mainly in South London and partly in New York in the early 1970s, the novel portrays a young mixedrace man called Karim, who aspires to leave the boring suburban life in order to explore life in central London. As he tries assimilating into English culture, he realizes that his former colonial history and new-found identity clash, complicating his perception of identity formation. Thus, he develops a kind of mimicry, which further complicates his identity in the novel. Karim negotiates his identity as a reader between belonging and not belonging to the English culture. In another sense, he is stuck in a ‘third space’ proposed by Homi K. Bhabha, as Karim feels ‘born and bred, almost’ like an Englishman, but he is not entirely English. In short, Karim becomes the marginalized character in the novel as he represents the colonial ‘Other’ in the text. His relation to the surrounding, especially to the English people living in London, illustrates how the diasporic, colonized others and marginalized people are treated in a post-WWII multicultural Britain. Overall, this paper investigates identity crisis and mimicry in Hanif Kureishi’s novel with some critical observation on Karim’s identity. In order to do so, the author delves into establishing theoretical connections from postcolonial perspectives.