The Problematic of a Diasporic Life: Fragmented Identities in Zindika's Leonora's Dance/Diasporada Yasama Sorunsali: Zindika'nin Leonora's Dance Adli Oyununda Parcalanmis Kimlikler (Critical Essay‪)‬

Although "[a] good number of plays by black men were being produced by the end of the 1960s" (Ponnuswami 217), black women playwrights remained invisible until the 1970s (Croft 84-5). Black theatre, as a whole, actually developed in Britain in the late 1970s and early 1980s. As for black women playwrights, their number seems to have increased dramatically since the early eighties. Yet, as Karen Dahl states, "'[w]hen I began looking for voices speaking directly "from the postcolonial space," I found a significant body of work based not only in the former colonies, but (as Homi K. Bhabba implies) in the heart of empire itself'" (39). Hence, "[b]lack theater presented the dilemma of being Black and British" (May 95). One of those writers from London is Zindika who may not be as well-known as Winsome Pinnock, another contemporary woman dramatist of Caribbean origin, but her work is well-worth looking into. Zindika, aka Zindika Macheol and Zindika Kamauesi is a representative of contemporary black British writing; "as a playwright Zindika mainly used her first name but for other publications she has used both the surnames" (Gabriele Griffin 2010). Although very little is known about her life, it can be deduced from Gabriele Griffin's interview conducted with the playwright in 2001 that Zindika made use of some of her own experiences in her plays: "Zindika talked of [the] trauma and the difficulties of being reunited with parents and siblings one did not grow up with as a teenager" (Griffin 2003a, 244). Although she has written in other genres, Zindika "is best known as a playwright and her plays have toured nationally. Her work has been performed in collaboration with the Adzido Dance Company at Sadlers Wells and the Royal Festival Hall; she is also "a teacher and an educationalist" (When Will I See You Again?). Her first play, Paper and Stone (1989) is "a didactic play addressed to young women who try to break away from the stranglehold of their (stereotypically imagined) conservative immigrant parents"; the play upholds "hard-work, higher education, and personal modesty [...] as safeguards against the depravity of the modern" (Aston and Reinelt 223). This play was followed by another play, Leonora's Dance (1992), and later by A Daughter's Grace (1999) which is a work of fiction. When Will I See You Again? (2002), co-written with Natalie Smith, is "about the experiences of a group of Caribbean people who came to Britain as children between the 1950s and 1970s and began a new life, often parted from their immediate family. It features both prose and verse". Zindika's next work, co-edited with Michael Williams and Cindy Soso, is a book for children: Valiant Women: Profile of African Women in the Struggle from 1583-1965 (2009), which "is a series of biographical profiles dedicated to the outstanding achievements of Black/African women whose courageous lives and works have contributed significantly to the struggles of African people worldwide" (Valiant Women).