Racial Prejudice and the Texture of Un-belongingness in Abdulrazak Gurnah’s Dottie

Abstract

This research paper focuses on racial issues and the concept of un-belongingness in the third novel of Abdulrazak Gurnah, Dottie. Racial discrimination occurs when one person or a group of persons believe that their culture and society are superior to that of the other. Such feelings arise from various factors. Racism is also the oppression of one group by another group or groups. In the writings of Abdulrazak Gurnah, racial prejudice takes place primarily because of immigration. The characters in Gurnah’s writings were forced to migrate from one culture to another because of unrest in the societies. This migration made the characters of Gurnah’s novels suffer and face racial intolerance. Abdulrazak Gurnah’s Dottie explores the state of mind of a person who faces bias based on race. The protagonists of this novel, Dottie, her siblings, and other black characters, faced racial discrimination based on their skin color, which ultimately gave them the feeling that they didn’t belong to the society they had been living in. This paper focuses on the reasons for racial intolerance and the hatred that grows in the hearts and minds of those who face discrimination based on race.