Abstract
Sharon is a woman in her thirties who grew up in racial isolation in care in the north of England without either her White English mother or her Black Ghanaian father. In an English society which codes its citizens on the basis of their colour, Sharon must reconcile the psychic split between a genealogical sense of herself which is Ghanaian and English and a racialized self which is Black and White. As her statement reveals, the psychological struggle begins when she realizes that bi-racialized1 English society dictates that she embrace her Blackness and deny her Whiteness.
We can try to deprive ourselves of our realities but in the darkest hour of the night, when no one else is around and we have gone to the loo to spend a penny, we must look in the mirror. Eventually that moment comes when we look in the mirror and we see a Black woman …
Sharon
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© 1999 Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited
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Ifekwunigwe, J. (1999). When the Mirror Speaks: The Poetics and Problematics of Identity Construction for Métisse Women in Bristol. In: Barot, R., Bradley, H., Fenton, S. (eds) Ethnicity, Gender and Social Change. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230508156_12
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230508156_12
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-0-333-71112-5
Online ISBN: 978-0-230-50815-6
eBook Packages: Palgrave Social & Cultural Studies CollectionSocial Sciences (R0)