The Prayer, A Novel, and, Love and Desire: Disrupting the narrative of black masculinity

Munroe, Martin Bartholomew (2024) The Prayer, A Novel, and, Love and Desire: Disrupting the narrative of black masculinity. Doctoral thesis, University of East Anglia.

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Abstract

This doctoral project explores how creative writing by Black British male writers focusing on themes of love and desire can disrupt embedded stereotypes around Black British masculinity as either hypersexualised or desexualised to represent fuller and more diverse fictionalised lives with emotional and erotic complexity. The novel, titled The Prayer, centres on the sex lives, loves, and desires of three Black brothers living in contemporary London. The novel explores queer and straight interracial desire and the burden of sexualised ethnic identities for the three Black brothers. The critical paper analyses three contemporary novels with regard to their disruptive representation and rendering of complex male subjectivity: Rainbow Milk by Paul Mendez, Open Water by Caleb Azumah Nelson and Some Kind of Black by Diran Adebayo. The novel part of the project is also examined according to the linking question around an expanded conception of Black masculinity and the project closes by drawing some conclusions and suggestions as to where the research could usefully progress.

Item Type:	Thesis (Doctoral)
Faculty \ School:	Faculty of Arts and Humanities > School of Literature, Drama and Creative Writing
Depositing User:	Chris White
Date Deposited:	12 May 2025 10:41
Last Modified:	12 May 2025 10:41
URI:	https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/99237
DOI:

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