Work, Gratitude, and "The Good Immigrant": Rereading Andrea Levy's Every Light in the House Burnin' (1994) and Never Far from Nowhere (1996) after the Windrush Scandal

Abstract

Abstract:Written more than twenty years before the Windrush scandal broke, Every Light in the House Burnin' and Never Far from Nowhere foreshadow the British state's betrayal of the Windrush generation and express scepticism of the promise that respectable work leads to acceptance and equality in British society. In these novels, Levy interrogates the figure of "the good immigrant" and exposes the precarity of her Windrush-generation protagonists. While older characters keep their heads down, their British-born children assert their right to be ungrateful and unhappy, just like anyone else. Returning to these works in the light of the Windrush scandal, I examine Levy's early preoccupation with the same anxieties around the figure of the needy, unworthy immigrant she later raises in her short story "Loose Change." I focus specifically on the role of work and education in the immigrant experience and argue that Levy's early 1990s works speak directly to the urgent questions highlighted by the Windrush scandal around national identity and belonging.