Britishness as Dependent on Alienation in Foreigners Cedric Dent, Jr. College

Caryl Phillips’s Foreigners depicts three separate stories based on historical facts and accounts of three Black men living in Great Britain at different times. Their lives, though not literally intertwined, greatly inform one another due to what substance Phillips’s writing highlights in each. The titular focus of the text is not necessarily about defining what it means to be a foreigner in Great Britain but, rather, how British identity becomes dependent upon non-Whites (foreign or otherwise) to help define its privileged group by treating all non-Whites as foreigners.

The book clearly focuses on African-Britons, chiefly Francis Barber, Randolph Turpin, and David Oluwale respectively. Barber was the servant of Dr. Samuel Johnson, living in England and attending Dr. Johnson’s funeral at the start of “Doctor Johnson’s Watch” (first chapter) in London. The earliest narrative discussions with the reader indicate that there is a status the speaker aspires to hold among his fellow Englishmen, and it establishes external perception as a point of interest. He speaks of his place in Dr. Johnson’s wider circle, his apparent position as a “minor literary wit in London society,” and his own biased explanations for standing with the “less...