Angela Carter wrote that the official past, specifically a literary past is a vast

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The Fruit of the Lemon challenging the master narrative

Fruit of the Lemon written by Andrea Levy in 1999 is a story about the Jacksons, a Jamaican immigrant family living in London. Its structure and narrative does not fall into the category of 'master' narratives, which notion is collapsing today. In this essay I will explain how the Fruit of the Lemon stands in oppositon with this narrative, focusing on the issues of identity, race and gender.

If we talk about master narratives, I immediately think about stories, in which the ending could be figured out right at the beginning of the story with ordinary characters usually white male protagonist, with a woman at his side or in which I knew the series of events beforehand. Some criteria have to be fulfilled to be suitable as a master narrative. This though differs all the time, since there are a vast amount of different genres, and all has its own rules. Not to mention what century, what decade are we talking about, since things change around the world, and the concept of master narrative necessarily connects with history and politics. This constant change of the original concept of a master narrative counts as a collapse of the idea, since more kinds of texts has more interpretations and there is a need for local authority for explanation.

For some, this is a liberation being freed from the generalising narratives which seek to control all the more various stories which might be told. For others, it is a symptom of a culture adrift, one which has lost one system of authentication and, failing to develop any coherent replacement, is left with a collection of fragments which are all equally valid and unvalidatable. (Chris Hopkins p. 304)

As a child of the 20th century I agree with the former view; I see it as a kind of freedom to texts; in this rushing world there is a need of change almost all the time, and texts being not a master narrative become more interesting. But I can also see the point of the latter judgement, saying that these texts literally lose their value not being a master narrative. I do not think that these texts are lesser value than the ones applying master narrative, although I can understand the worry about these, why they are considered pieces, and not as a whole, substantial work.

Challenging the master narrative actually is not a difficult thing to do, in our case one just makes the protagonist female and that is it. In Fruit of the Lemon the protagonist is female and black and on top of these she also has identity issues. Faith, the main character of Andrea Levys book is a young girl in her twenties, just moved out from home with his friends; starting her new job at the BBC. Her parents are very protective about her, specifically because she has an older brother Carl. Carl is more independent; he has a job for a while and safely heading towards settling down, and having a family. Because of this, Mildred and Wade Jackson do not have to worry about their son at all, that gives us time to pay more attention to Faith.

In the first part of the book Faith unconsciously falls into an identity crisis. The question of identity becomes very complicated. It would be nice and simple if we were all pure says Levy in an article. Faith is between two identities: she was born and been brought up in England, but her parents came from Jamaica. She never been to her ancestrial home yet, she does not know anything about her family there, since my mum and dad never talked about their lives before my brother Carl and I were born.

She attended the local school, she is educated to be English, she thinks of herself as English. Even her parents encourage their kids, to settle down in England, nonetheless they are thinking about moving back. They confuse Faith even more with this kind of opposite mentality. She cannot understand why her parents would want to move back after all these years, since she never been to Jamaica. Everything from Jamaica was odd to me explains Levy who fantasised about her own family tree and expanded the original fragments to use it in the book. Toplu also mentions the Jackson parents' opposite mentality: Faiths hybrid identity is equally enforced by her parents; though they emphatically deny racial discrimination, they try to convince her to keep close to her own kind.

When Faith visits Simons Quintessentially English village in chapter twelve she slowly starts to realize that she knows nothing about her roots. In the scene when a man in the pub asks her where she is from and the answer London makes him giggle, Faith feels upset. Right after this, Simons mother starts asking questions about her relatives, to which questions she does not know the answers. In the third part of the book, after her visit to Jamaica arriving back to England again, she almost has the same experience as her parents: they arrived on Guy Fawkes night just like her, which closes the frame of the story. I was gaining a fledgling sense of pride in having a Jamaican heritage The Jamaica I found was a brochure-beautiful island. She resolved her identity crisis with this visit to Jamaica and learnt about her ancestors.

Levy states that there are a lot of white people who would deny the English identity from her, as well as she knows black people who have ancestry alike and disclaim being English but in her opinion national identity is not a personal issue. Faith does not face with any direct insults because of her race; there are only slight hints around her. For example Olivia, who offered her a job at the degree show: Your work has ethnicity which shines through, although Faith at that time knew nothing about her ancestry. Also Marions family demean blacks in the curious way that the English have; they treat Faith as a member of their own family but are not ashamed to talk about how they hate other blacks in front of Faith. Lot of people claim themselves not to be racist around Faith and her family, but they still are, since they distinguish between black and white and even between black and black.

The ultimate realization of race issues by Faith is made when she witnesses the attack at a black woman in a bookshop. The attack and the aftermaths of how her white flatmates reacted to it opened up her eyes the shock that eventually she could not handle and did not leave her room for days. Since Levy does not supply any clues about the racism Faiths brother Carl experiences, and this leads the reader to observe a propensity to discriminate against women rather than men. The only thing we know about is Carls girlfriend, who has a white family. Ruth is almost the opposite of Faith, she has a very strong idea of identity and she tries to push the whole Jackson family into recognizing their Blackness and acting against racism.

In the second part of the book, Faith travels to Jamaica to resolve her identity crisis. The stories about her ancestors her relatives tell them are all about women, with two exceptions: his father and his paternal grandfather. Her family tree is also much broader on her mothers side, since Mildred has three sisters for instance. Men in her lineage usually lost in time, nobody is sure who the father of whom was. The reason for this is that most of the time the mothers stayed with their children and also that these stories are told by women to Faith, except one: Cecilias Story told to me by Vincent.

There is an illustrative family tree in the book before every story about Faith's relatives. I noticed the symmetry as Toplu points out: at the beginning there is only a tree of 4 people, but as the story moves forward it becomes more and more broaden, constantly changing Faith's identity. It is also a metaphor of Faiths growing recognition of her family. Levy pointed out through Fruit of the Lemon, that as Britain always been multicultural, there is a need to break with the traditions of narrative.

To conclude, if we examine the issues of identity, race and gender in the Fruit of the Lemon we can see that although it is not following the rules of a 'master' narrative its value is not less then any other piece of text and even becomes more interesting.

Word count: 1434Bibliography:Hopkins, Chris, Thinking About Text: An Introduction to English Studies

(Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009)Levy, Andrea, Fruit of the Lemon (London: Headline Book Publishing, 2004)

Levy, Andrea, This is my England, The Guardian, [accessed 26 November 2013]

Toplu, ebnem Home(land) or Motherland: Translational Identities in Andrea Levys Fruit of the Lemon in Anthurium: A Caribbean Studies Journal, 3.1 (2005) [accessed 26 November 2013]

Hopkins p.304

Fruit of the Lemon p. 4.

Levy, Andrea, This is my England, The Guardian, [accessed 26 November 2013].

Toplu, ebnem Home(land) or Motherland: Translational Identities in Andrea Levys Fruit of the Lemon in Anthurium: A Caribbean Studies Journal, 3.1 (2005) [accessed 26 November 2013]

p. 4.

Levy article.

Ibid.

Andrea Levy, Fruit of the Lemon (London: Headline Book Publishing, 2004) p. 31.

Toplu p. 2.

Toplu p. 5.

Fruit of the Lemon p. 257.

Toplu p. 11.