“The New Breed”:Karim Amir as a Mixed-Race Picaro in Hanif Kureishi’s The Buddha of Suburbia

• Main Authors: Kody Chang, 張心瑀
• Other Authors: 蔡美玉
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Published: 2011
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/94204504824047770304

碩士 === 國立中正大學 === 外國語文研究所 === 99 === The Buddha of Suburbia has been considered as the ideal semi-autobiographical novel depicting Hanif Kureishi’s growing and living background. This thesis tries to explore the text which can be read in terms of picaresque characteristics. English society treated the massive immigration by stereotypes and with discrimination during the 1970s; Karim Amir, the mixed-race picaro, sets out on an adventure to seek his biracial identity to free himself from discrimination. The Buddha of Suburbia not only challenges White’s supremacy, but also tries to mix different genres into a new mode; it hybridizes diverse generic forms to embrace other possible ways for the repressed minority to be seen. This thesis also deconstructs reading the text from the desires and cultural meanings from multi-relations of the mixed race individual. The text demonstrates that the mixed race picaro can be an announcement of being a new group; furthermore, it reconstructs the discourses of ‘new Englishness’ in the 21st century.