'Burminggaon? Nottinggaon? Biradforrd?': British Asian Noir Depictions of Bradford

TY - JOUR

T1 - 'Burminggaon? Nottinggaon? Biradforrd?'

T2 - British Asian Noir Depictions of Bradford

AU - Chambers, Claire Gail

N1 - © 2020, The Author(s). This is an author-produced version of the published paper. Uploaded in accordance with the publisher’s self-archiving policy. Further copying may not be permitted; contact the publisher for details.

PY - 2020/8/20

Y1 - 2020/8/20

N2 - In this article, I examine noir representations of ‘Biradforrd’, that important West Yorkshire city which, as one British-Punjabi character’s mispronunciation suggests, has been transformed by South Asian Muslim migration. I examine a trilogy: M. Y. Alam’s Bradford noir novels Annie Potts is Dead, Kilo and Red Laal (1998−2012), and a tetralogy: A. A. Dhand’s Streets of Darkness, Girl Zero, City of Sinners and One Way Out (2016−2019). These novels explore the biradari or kinship system evoked by Atia Hosain’s character in her neologism ‘Biradforrd’. They also focus, among other matters, on Bradford’s predominantly Mirpuri community from the Azad Kashmir region of northeast Pakistan. I argue that despite their different religious backgrounds, Alam and Dhand are both from the ‘myth of return’ class and portray from the inside Bradfordians’ ghettoized deprivation, drugs problem and vulnerability to racist and Islamophobic abuse.

AB - In this article, I examine noir representations of ‘Biradforrd’, that important West Yorkshire city which, as one British-Punjabi character’s mispronunciation suggests, has been transformed by South Asian Muslim migration. I examine a trilogy: M. Y. Alam’s Bradford noir novels Annie Potts is Dead, Kilo and Red Laal (1998−2012), and a tetralogy: A. A. Dhand’s Streets of Darkness, Girl Zero, City of Sinners and One Way Out (2016−2019). These novels explore the biradari or kinship system evoked by Atia Hosain’s character in her neologism ‘Biradforrd’. They also focus, among other matters, on Bradford’s predominantly Mirpuri community from the Azad Kashmir region of northeast Pakistan. I argue that despite their different religious backgrounds, Alam and Dhand are both from the ‘myth of return’ class and portray from the inside Bradfordians’ ghettoized deprivation, drugs problem and vulnerability to racist and Islamophobic abuse.

KW - Bradford

KW - noir

KW - British Asian

KW - crime fiction

U2 - 10.1093/fmls/cqaa017

DO - 10.1093/fmls/cqaa017

M3 - Article

SN - 0015-8518

VL - 56

SP - 259

EP - 279

JO - Forum for Modern Language Studies

JF - Forum for Modern Language Studies

IS - 3

ER -