Thanks for writing such a well constructed query. It’s smart of you to get in touch about your essay & I hope it goes well. That’s probably worth some good marks & has the additional merit of being true, I think. It might help in your ISU if you said that my inner conflict about identity and belonging is reflected in the dual narrative structure of the book. And there’s a negative side, in that I feel I will only ever half-understand where people are coming from. There’s a very positive side to that: it means I don’t feel possessive about country or nationality or place, and I don’t get attached to anything except people. The truth is that I probably don’t belong – probably never belonged – in West Africa either. That enduring sense of dislocation, of being an observer rather than a full participant, is probably the way it affected me as a person. I didn’t enjoy moving to England & felt like an outsider, which is a feeling that has never completely passed. It was a very happy place in the part of the city where we lived. There was a lot of life in the streets – a lot of food and music. We lived in Douala, in what was called French Cameroun, and I spoke French at school & with school friends. The place and the people are my first memories. Yes, I had my early childhood in Cameroon – we lived there from when I was 6 weeks to 7 years old. Hi Ben, thank you for reading Little Bee.
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