Racism, Transformation, and Awakening—A Postcolonial Interpretation of Identity in The Grass Is Singing

Abstract

Doris Lessing’s “The Grass Is Singing” depicts British expatriates’ migration experiences accommodated into their new living and social surroundings in Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) to highlight the dilemmatic situation full of shocks and hardships those migrants confronted with in their lives as a result of dynamic colonial identities on African land. The purpose of this paper is to expound on racial discrimination against the native blacks in this novel, analyze the white hostess’s identity transformation, and study the native’s awakening of his ethnic consciousness. Since culture is by no means static, the resilience and adaptability of colonial societies should not be underestimated. Therefore, I argue that through learning how colonized peoples responded to the political and cultural dominance of Europe, the resilience and transformability of colonized cultures would change the characteristics of imperial culture itself in ways that have been both profound and lasting. The themes of racial discrimination, identity transformation, and the awakening of ethnic consciousness depicted in “The Grass Is Singing” continue to have important implications for today’s society.