Britain’s Imperial Past and Contemporary Borders in Adichie’s Americanah and Zadie Smith’s ‘Fences’

Abstract

Recent literary works draw attention to the multifaceted legacy of Britain’s imperial past, not only but including its impact on current UK border practices. The works of postcolonial and Black British authors illustrate especially strongly that the spatial epistemologies of empire are still prevalent in twenty-first century border debates. This article engages with Chimamanda Ngozie Adichie’s Americanah (2013) and Zadie Smith’s essay “Fences” (2016) as literary works that negotiate UK border practices both before and after Brexit. They draw attention to the intersections of empire, race, gender, and class in the recent resurgence of British bordering practices and emphasize the necessity to make visible both contemporary and historical borders in the UK in order to come to terms with the underlying colonial epistemologies of many border practices.