The study of multiculturalism helps to create awareness without using demagogy or hate speech. A verse-novel Lara by Bernardine Evaristo and prose-novel Fruit of the Lemon by Andrea Levy have many common points that could be paralleled in terms of creating an understanding of sympathy through humor satire. These two novels have subtle comedy hiding important problems like racism and prejudice. These two authors follow the footsteps of the founding fathers of English literature like William Shakespeare and Johathan Swift who used irony and comedy to convey their messages.
After World War Second, psychologists accepted that even societies could get sick. The whole world killed each other because of national and racial labels, and England was not the exception. England was the most powerful empire before the war and even after she lost her colonized lands she continued to rule them through imperialism and associations like Commonwealth. Englishness was seen as a one-dimensional label only including the White race and western culture. However, after the war, England had to be built from scratch thus she needed the formerly colonized man to build it thus she called them to their ''Motherland''. The islanders who came to England to work were called Windrush Generation and their children were not accepted as English even though they were born and thought to be English. In the mentioned novels we see characters who were marginalized by their society.
The two novels include the same themes as identity crises, racial discourse, disillusionment, and family. For example, Bernardine Evaristo handles the suffering of war through Peggy and her little daughter Ellen. They had to stay apart for safety but we see how Ellen prays for her parents and writes letters so that she does not forget. In the same way, Andrea Levy includes sufferings of war through 'poor' Constance who had to stay in England through war and how she missed bananas and her family especially her aunt Rosemary who died while she was gone. We read how the war changed the perception of whites by blacks again with Constance. She goes through an identity crisis that mirrors the identity crisis of the protagonist, Faith. Wherefore Levy's novel is written in prose, we get lot more details like when she remarks how after the war Jamaican man married White English woman and brought their wives to Jamaica to Show how Mildred, Faith’s mother, wanted to spend time with them so that she could learn to be an ‘’English wife’’.
On the contrary, Evaristo left this background information to the readers' imagination only giving dates of the narratives. Evaristo's character has two different family trees which one includes the history of her ancestors who were rooted in Brazil and Nigeria, while the other family includes the history of her Irish, German and English ancestors. In Evaristo's novel, we see how two worlds collide and create Lara, a fair-skinned black woman; however, Levy's protagonist Faith, has two Jamaican parents but she discovers how her ancestors are the hybrid child of Scottish, Irısh and English overseers, landowners, or just poor man who came to Jamaica with hopes of becoming rich. It is interesting to see the irony in her ancestors who some of them went to England or America from Jamaica to become wealthy and how some of them came to Jamaica from England with the same goal. In both novels, we see the problem of the disillusionment of immigrants through these two protagonists' ancestors who sailed the place that they thought to be better only to swim in the lake of lost dreams.
In both novels, we see how fair skin is favored in families. It is understandable when Peggy, who is an English, favors her fair-skinned grandchildren but ironically Faith has ancestors like Matilda and Grace who are Jamaican woman that also favors fair-skinned children. It is implied that Englishness is more than race. It is a trademark that had been advertised so well that even colonized wanted to become English. It is a culture that includes one way of dressing, one way of speaking, one way of drinking tea which all of it was imitated by the ones who suffered the most from that race.
Levy processes the problem of racial discourse outside of Faith's family. For example; Faith gets accounted with Marion's family who is white working-class that uses racial discourse as a 'cultural thing', not to Faith but 'other darkies'. Faith realizes how different she sees herself and how others perceive her. When Simon's mother puts a flower in her hat and asks if she does not look exotic, like an exotic fruit that does not breed in England. Her racism is implicit because even she does not realize that she is doing it; when Faith asks her if she needs help in the kitchen, she uses her as a maid to bring this and that not realizing her behave is the perfect example of a white colonizer. On the contrary, Evaristo process this problem within Lara's close family, friends, and boyfriends. Her grandmother does not love her because of her skin color, her white friends use racial discourse, and even her Nigerian boyfriend Josh discriminates against her as a future wife because she does not know how to cook Nigerian food. In Lara's mother's side of the family not accepting the outsider is like a ''cultural thing''. Caitlin makes Emma swear on Bible not to leave Ireland, Emma fights with Mary-Jane for wanting to take an English husband, then Peggy suffocates Ellen for not to take Taiwo because she remember what her mother said about marriage and she does not want to disappoint her mother, forgetting that Ellen is an individual who has her thoughts and feelings.
Lastly, the theme of identity crisis is processed in similar ways in both novels. In both novels, authors create a mother figure who advises their children that they should know and not forget where they come from. Both protagonists decide to travel so that they could find the self that they lost in the rush life of England. They both have the colonizer's gaze at first when they arrive in their ancestral hometowns and as they discover their ancestors, they discover their true selves. Both writers point out that you must lose yourself to find your true self. Faith and Lara accept that they are the bastard child of the British Empire and the inheritor of that cruel but glorious past.
In conclusion, both writers know that it is not good to respond fire with fire thus they convey their messages without using hate speech against whites. These two novels help the study of multiculturalism in terms of showing ways of accepting the self and 'the other' instead of polarizing and communicating without labeling certain individuals of societies and most importantly showing different voices by glorifying diversity.
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