Reading the whiteness of British Asian literature: A reading of Sathnam Sanghera’sThe Boy with the Topknot: A Memoir of Love, Secrets and Lies in Wolverhampton

Abstract

A text is assumed to reflect truth when its ideology meets that of the reader. British Asian literature has tended to be read as giving an insight into South Asian communities, as reflecting “truth”. Dominant readings do not tend to “see” the ways in which this literature, in terms of perspective, ideology, and the direction in which it faces, is located in Britishness as whiteness. This article, through a close reading of Sathnam Sanghera’s popular memoir The Boy with the Topknot, reverses the gaze on the community that the memoir is assumed to reveal, in order to highlight and identify what becomes normalized, invisible, universal in such a text. The article seeks to show how “Britishness” as whiteness is the normative perspective of the text, embodied in the second-generation British narrator as ideal integrated/assimilated citizen. From this perspective, non-whiteness, in the form of first generation immigrants as well as Sanghera’s younger self, is othered. The text reflects the state’s integrationist and assimilationist policies, founded on the assumption that “identity” is a construction that needs to be left behind, while intimating that a normalized whiteness/Britishness as “non-identity” should be embraced, revealing an internalized historicist racism. Meanwhile, “identity” and “difference” are used to sell British Asian texts such as this memoir — they are packaged as “multicultural”, “hybrid” (and, increasingly, “diverse”) products, and this is also how they are popularly read. Therefore, my reading of this text, as located in Britishness as whiteness, unpacks what terms such as multiculturalism, hybridity, and diversity may conceal. A counter reading of the text, which draws out the violence it reveals, of the historicist British racial state, highlights the role of readers’ assumptions in the construction of a text, suggesting that other readings are possible. This is also illustrated by alternative readings of the book by Sikh readers.