Hotbeds

Inter-racial relationships may be complicated by social attitudes and mind-sets born in colonialism slavery or more modern invidious European or African racism; or they may be challenged by differing expectations of cultural norms. Drawing on theories of black American cultural criticism African nationalism and gender analysis the critic Pia Thielmann analyses a range of novels from three continents which in different ways thematise the personal cultural and social aspects of relationships and which in a manner of respect are deemed to be crossing social boundaries.