Week 6: The Lonely Londoners

This week we’ll be encountering Sam Selvon’s The Lonely Londoners (1956), a moving portrait of
Caribbean migrants trying to ‘make it’ in England. It contains some extraordinary writing about life in
London, an unforgettable cast of characters, and powerful passages that are likely to stay with you
for a long time.

For our seminar, I’d like us to focus on a couple of things (although no doubt our conversation will
also cover many other topics):

 The question of voice in Selvon’s novel. How would you describe the style, rhythm, cadence,
etc., of this novel?
 Selvon’s descriptions of London. How does this novel reconfigure and reimagine the big city?
 The relationship between masculinity and power, and the ways in which male characters in
the novel (who are otherwise so powerless and dispossessed) exert control, and sometimes
quite violent control, over female characters. (The critic Ashley Dawson has a good essay on
this subject, which you can access via this link.)
 Here are a few other things to keep your eyes on: 1) the moment when Galahad talks to his
hand (pages 76-77 of the Penguin edition) and the fete organised by Harris (page 104
onwards). A few questions to consider: what is going on psychologically for Galahad in this
scene, and how has this split in his self-image come about? (Here, it might be useful to think
about Du Bois' idea of 'double consciousness'.) And, in relation to the fete, how do you read
the character of Harris? How might you describe his relationship with the 'boys', and how
does he present Caribbean culture to his white audience?

I hope these prompts might be useful, although of course please bring your own questions, ideas
and reflections on the novel to our seminar.

And lastly, if anyone would like to learn more about the history of the Windrush generation, here are
a couple of excellent documentaries:
The Colony (1964): https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p055t73r/the-colony
Windrush (1998): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YGTm_Gsvyzw&ab_channel=comenatural