Nzelu, Okechukwu and Ashworth, Jenn and Tate, Andrew (2023) Useful Reflections : Writing to Heal in a Hostile Environment. PhD thesis, Lancaster University.
![[thumbnail of 2023NzeluPhD]](https://eprints.lancs.ac.uk/style/images/fileicons/text.png)
Abstract
The first chapter is a short introduction to the exegesis. Part Two explores what I refer to as the ‘hostile environment’ of the racist UK publishing industry and the lack of clear models for a novel about two Black gay British men who love one another in a romantic, sexual sense, and explains the writing of my second novel partly as a response to these circumstances. Part Three introduces the ways in which I think of my novel as research and explores the limitations of our conventional thinking regarding the concept of family (including a discussion of the Book of Ruth, of which Here Again Now began as a retelling) and where queerness sits within or alongside that. Part Four examines the possibility that my novel might offer some kind of healing, both to its readers and to the literary context of the book itself which is just as wounded by patriarchy as the characters in my novel. Finally, the conclusion attempts to find some measure by which the book’s success as an act of healing can be judged.