421 Competing Hegemonies Textus XXIII (2010), pp. 421-436. Serena Guarracino Competing Hegemonies: Can Suniti Namjoshi Be Named “Black British”? Suniti Namjoshi’s writing represents a challenge to the literary, cultural and academic notion of “Black Britishness”. The scholar who willingly undertook the challenge of putting Namjoshi the writer and the public persona of any Black British author one beside the other – or against each other – would necessarily be confronted with a number of questions: first of all, whether Namjoshi’s Indian origin – and the plethora of Indian references in her writing – would entitle her to be considered “Black”; secondly, whether her current residence in Devon (UK), preceded by a long period of liv- ing in Canada, could allow one to define her as “British”. Yet, both questions are bound to get a wider resonance, as geography would prove a rather slippery ground on which to base one’s own case: would Namjoshi’s birth in a city still under British rule such as Pune in Western Maharashtra – complemented by such elements as skin complexion, diasporic life, sartorial habits – be enough to make her fit the category of “Black writer”? May the (still temporary) end of her migration route, instead of her beginnings – first in an American school at the foot of the Himalayas, then in the US and finally in Canada – be accountable for her Britishness? The following essay does not try to answer these questions. Yet it addresses them – albeit tangentially, echoing the writer’s own prac- tice of tackling many and different issues at the same time. My argu-