The Politics of Shame in Musa Okwonga's One of Them: An Eton College Memoir

• Published in: Life writing Vol. 22; no. 3; pp. 453 - 468
• Main Author: Niemi, Minna
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Routledge 03.07.2025
• Subjects: memoir; Musa Okwonga; postcolonial; racism; Shame
• ISSN: 1448-4528; 1751-2964
• DOI: 10.1080/14484528.2025.2475301

This article examines Musa Okwonga's representation of a migrant subject's complex experiences of shame in his memoir One of Them, as they are connected to societal practices that expel the subject from the parameters of national belonging tied to race and class. In drawing on Frantz Fanon's readings of racialised shame, I show how in Okwonga's memoir experiences of racial shaming are abundant and destructive. Secondly, the memoir also represents the subject's internalised shame, as he blames himself for not prospering in the world that has excluded him, and I further discuss the memoir in connection with theoretical writings focusing on immigrants' incomplete assimilation processes. Okwonga's memoir thus represents several experiences of shame, and the effects of these experiences are also present on the narrative level: the story refuses to progress, as the narrative relies on paratactic structure and the use of the present tense, suggesting that the narrating 'I' remains incapable of drawing conclusions regarding his past. I argue nevertheless that it is politically important to represent these shattering effects of shame on the textual level: shame is not part of making oneself in capitalist discourse; instead, it distorts such aspirations, and Okwonga's narrative effectively represents these phenomena.