Muslim Masculinities in Literature and Film: Transcultural Identity and Migration in Britain

Description

A climate of Islamophobia allows anxieties about Muslim men living in and migrating to Britain to endure. British Muslims men are often profiled in highly negative terms or regarded with suspicion owing to their perceived religious and cultural heritage. But novels and films by British migrant and diaspora writers and filmmakers powerfully contest these stereotypes, and explore the rich diversity of Muslim masculinities in Britain. This book is the first critical study to engage with British Muslim masculinities in this literary and cinematic output from the perspective of masculinity studies. Through close analysis of work by Monica Ali, Nadeem Aslam, Guy Gunaratne, Sally El Hosaini, Hanif Kureishi, Suhayl Saadi, Kamila Shamsie, Zadie Smith, Zia Haider Rahman and Salman Rushdie, Peter Cherry examines how migrant and diaspora protagonists negotiate their masculinity in a climate of Islamophobic and anti-migrant rhetoric. Cherry proposes a transcultural reading of these novels and films that exposes how conceptions of 'Britishness', 'Muslimness' and those of masculinity are unstable and contingent constructs shaped by migration, interaction with other cultures, and global and local politics.

Peter Cherry is Assistant Professor in Comparative and World Literature in the Department of Turkish Literature at Bilkent University, Turkey, and a tutor in Literature at City Lit adult education college in London, UK. He holds a PhD in Comparative Literature from the University of Edinburgh, UK, and his work has been published in the Journal of Commonwealth Literature, Critical Comparative Studies and in the edited volume Turkish Literature as World Literature (New York: Bloomsbury, 2021).

This is a timely and important work on British Muslim masculinities which deals with its subject with sensitivity and sophistication. Drawing on established critical frameworks to do with masculinity, race and ethnicity, migration and 'Britishness', this book offers new and revealing insights into contemporary British fiction. -- Brian Baker, Senior Lecturer in English and Creative Writing, Lancaster University, UK 'Muslim Masculinities in Literature and Film is elegantly written, drawing on an admirable range of primary and secondary sources with wit, accessibility, and nuance. The book also has 'real-world impact', originality, scholarly weight, and political urgency.' * Claire Chambers, Professor of Global Literature, University of York, UK *