Research Paper on:
The Rainbow Sign by Hanif Kureishi

Unformatted Sample Text from the Research Paper:
British, but his father is Pakistani (Anonymous, 1990). In this autobiographical essay, which documents the tension that Kureishis mixed heritage created in this life, it becomes clear that Kureishi does  not fill that he fitted in completely with either population. The whites he lived with ostracized and ridiculed him as an outsider. But, on the other hand, the experience of  growing up in England made him too "British" to feel completely at home in Pakistan. This leads Kureishi to the conclusion that the nature of nationalism in Britain is  undergoing change, and certainly, an examination of his essay shows that Kureishi is correct. In his account of his youth during the sixties, Kureishi tells of how increasing resentment  by British whites against Pakistani immigrants affected him and his friends. His best friend, for example, is so swayed by public rhetoric that he becomes part of a neo-Nazi gang,  effectively ending their friendship. The boys in the gang - who like to beat up Pakistanis - were Hanifs classmates, "I knew their parents. They knew my father" (11). He  withdrew, "from the park, from the lads, to a safer place, within myself" (11). A keen observer of social life, even at this age, Kureishi began noting statements in political  speeches that he felt spurred the creation of the neo-Nazi attitudes in youth. For instance, in 1967, Duncan Sandys said, "The breeding of millions of half-caste children would merely produce  a generation of misfits and create national tensions" (11). Of course, Hanif was one of these "half-caste" children of whom the politician spoke so disparagingly. This prejudice in Great  Britain causes Hanif to become very interested in the Civil Rights movement going on in the US and to identify with African Americans. However - interestingly, considering recent current events