Abstract:
Abdulrazak Gurnah is a Zanzibar-born British novelist and one of
Africa's most well-known contemporary novelists. The novels written by him
provide a distinctive picture of pre to postcolonial East Africa, and the effects
which colonisation has on the people. The writings of Gurnah also depict the
struggles that people belonging to East Africa had to face in the post-colonial
age, both in and outside of their countries. Highlighting human relations has
been one of the top priorities for Gurnah. In the postcolonial Western social
sphere, the traditional concept of power associated with sovereignty,
domination, threat or violence has been changed to surveillance, normalising
judgements, categorization, discipline and observation of accepted heteronormative
social ideals which have further been complicated with the practice of
apartheid. Gurnah’s novel Dottie is a saga of the journey of life of its protagonist,
Dottie from a naive, exploited black girl to an independent, strong woman full of
self-respect. While fighting desperately to raise her siblings and herself in a
racist, white social structure she confronts constant oppressive power structure
that posits and assigns the Blacks a peripheral exploited position besides
confronting the power discourse of her own community which is used to subdue
and subjugate the woman rights and voices. Her continuous struggle for women
dignity and values and for educating herself emancipates her from this fatal
predicament and transmogrifies her life, ultimately leading to her absorbency of
existing power mechanism in order to make her fit and accepted in the
contemporary socio-cultural setting.
