The untold story of how breaking – one of the most widely practiced dance forms in the world today – began as a distinctly African American expression in the Bronx, New York, during the 1970s.Breaking is the first and most widely practiced hip-hop dance in the world, with around one million participants in this dynamic, multifaceted artform – and, as of 2024, Olympic sport. Yet, despite its global reach and nearly 50-year history, stories of breaking’s origins have largely neglected the African Americans who founded it. Dancer and scholar Serouj "Midus" Aprahamian offers, for the first time, a detailed look into the African American beginnings of breaking in the Bronx, New York.The Birth of Breaking challenges numerous myths and misconceptions that have permeated studies of hip-hop’s evolution, considering the influence breaking has had on hip-hop culture. Including previously unseen archival material, interviews, and detailed depictions of the dance at its outset, this book brings to life this buried history, with a particular focus on the early development of the dance, the institutional settings where hip-hop was conceived, and the movement’s impact on sociocultural conditions in New York City throughout the 1970s.By featuring the overlooked first-hand accounts of over 50 founding b-boys and b-girls alongside movement analysis informed by his embodied knowledge of the dance, Aprahamian reveals how indebted breaking is to African American culture, as well as the disturbing factors behind its historical erasure.

This book explores the politics of artistic creativity, examining how black artists in Africa and the diaspora create art as a procedure of self-making. Essays cross continents to uncover the efflorescence of black culture in national and global contexts and in literature, film, performance, music, and visual art. Contributors place the concerns of black artists and their works within national and transnational conversations on anti-black racism, xenophobia, ethnocentrism, migration, resettlement, resistance, and transnational feminisms. Does art by the subaltern fulfill the liberatory potential that critics have ascribed to it? What other possibilities does political art offer? Together, these essays sort through the aesthetics of daily life to build a thesis that reflects the desire of black artists and cultures to remake themselves and their world.

This book explores the politics of artistic creativity, examining how black artists in Africa and the diaspora create art as a procedure of self-making. Essays cross continents to uncover the efflorescence of black culture in national and global contexts and in literature, film, performance, music, and visual art. Contributors place the concerns of black artists and their works within national and transnational conversations on anti-black racism, xenophobia, ethnocentrism, migration, resettlement, resistance, and transnational feminisms. Does art by the subaltern fulfill the liberatory potential that critics have ascribed to it? What other possibilities does political art offer? Together, these essays sort through the aesthetics of daily life to build a thesis that reflects the desire of black artists and cultures to remake themselves and their world.

This book explores the politics of artistic creativity, examining how black artists in Africa and the diaspora create art as a procedure of self-making. Essays cross continents to uncover the efflorescence of black culture in national and global contexts and in literature, film, performance, music, and visual art. Contributors place the concerns of black artists and their works within national and transnational conversations on anti-black racism, xenophobia, ethnocentrism, migration, resettlement, resistance, and transnational feminisms. Does art by the subaltern fulfill the liberatory potential that critics have ascribed to it? What other possibilities does political art offer? Together, these essays sort through the aesthetics of daily life to build a thesis that reflects the desire of black artists and cultures to remake themselves and their world.

An examination of alternate imaginaries of ‘the global’ in post-millennium anglophone African literature and the differing forms of agency that these imaginaries produce.Irony, Agency and the Global Imaginary in Post-2000 Nigerian and Kenyan Literature provides deft and detailed readings of writers’ perspectives that theorize ‘the global’ as experienced through vectors of globality such as the tourism industry, development agencies, multinational media, NGOs and consumerism. Penny Cartwright develops a conceptual distinction between two types of global imaginaries: ‘territorial’ imaginaries that treat privileged spaces or locations as ‘global’, thus demanding strategies of physical access and mobility; and ‘orientational’ imaginaries that treat ‘globality’ as a disposition or attitude that individuals perform or embody. Drawing detailed case studies from the work of Ngugi wa Thiong'o and Binyavanga Wainaina (Kenya), Chris Abani, Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani and A. Igoni Barrett (Nigeria), Cartwright shows how these different kinds of imaginaries are combined, contrasted and ironized in literary texts. By analyzing Africa-based representations of ‘the global’, from the millennium period onward, this book considers how global imaginaries are shaped by and inflect distinctive regional experiences, including of postcoloniality, Structural Adjustment, oil economics, multilingualism and humanitarianism. Departing from more extensive recent scholarship on migration narratives, the book contributes insights into literary engagements of ‘the global’ that arise from Nigerian and Kenyan national spaces and circumstances. It explores the narrative strategies through which alternate ideas of the global are represented, with particular emphasis on ironizing strategies, as well as the kinds of personal and political responses that the various imaginaries produce in characters.

An imaginative, narratological reading of Chinua Achebe's novels, stories, poetry, and essays through a literary and historical framework.Toyin Falola analyzes fictional and historical cartographies of Africa in Achebe’s literary works to offer a critical representation of Africa's present and future. In particular, he focuses on the historical valuation of a full range of the writer's works – novels including Things Fall Apart, but also short stories, poems, and essays – as important materials that have contributed to the political events in Nigeria and, by extension, Africa. The raw creativity found in Achebe’s stories and his ability to tell the Nigerian story – precolonial, colonial, and postcolonial – have endeared him to many, including readers and those critical of him and his works. Chinua Achebe: Narrating Africa in Fictions and History analyzes all of the writer’s works, dwelling on the Nigerian political context upon which many, if not all, of his narratives lie. As a result, it examines methodologies of narration and ideologies that allow his works to resonate with the imagination of Africa.

A timely look at contemporary African American creative works through the lens of Ta-Nehisi Coates's ground-breaking entry into the comic book industry. Writing Black Panther traces Ta-Nehisi Coates’s presence in comic books from 2015-2023, focusing on his contributions as the writer for Black Panther. His ambitious 50-issue run of the Marvel comic coincided with ongoing and multifaceted debates concerning diversity and inclusion – what we might call representation struggles – at a key moment in the history of comics with respect to Black writers. Howard Rambsy II locates Coates’s contributions at the intersection of African American literary studies and comic book studies, showing a dynamic convergence that redefines both fields and broadens the scope of Black creativity. Writing Black Panther demonstrates key aspects of Coates’s comics narratives that overlap with major themes and topics in African American literature. These include the depiction of multiple Black characters, exploration of intra-racial and interracial conflicts, excavations of Black histories, displays of Afrofuturist aesthetics, and attention to cultural geography. As a prominent essayist, bestselling author, and popular comic book writer, Coates stands out as a notable gateway figure who bridges multiple genres. His time as a comics writer constitutes an important, defining phase of his professional career. And as this book shows, Coates’s work on Black Panther went a long way to dispelling the myth that “diversity doesn’t sell” in the comic book industry.

A timely look at contemporary African American creative works through the lens of Ta-Nehisi Coates's ground-breaking entry into the comic book industry. Writing Black Panther traces Ta-Nehisi Coates’s presence in comic books from 2015-2023, focusing on his contributions as the writer for Black Panther. His ambitious 50-issue run of the Marvel comic coincided with ongoing and multifaceted debates concerning diversity and inclusion – what we might call representation struggles – at a key moment in the history of comics with respect to Black writers. Howard Rambsy II locates Coates’s contributions at the intersection of African American literary studies and comic book studies, showing a dynamic convergence that redefines both fields and broadens the scope of Black creativity. Writing Black Panther demonstrates key aspects of Coates’s comics narratives that overlap with major themes and topics in African American literature. These include the depiction of multiple Black characters, exploration of intra-racial and interracial conflicts, excavations of Black histories, displays of Afrofuturist aesthetics, and attention to cultural geography. As a prominent essayist, bestselling author, and popular comic book writer, Coates stands out as a notable gateway figure who bridges multiple genres. His time as a comics writer constitutes an important, defining phase of his professional career. And as this book shows, Coates’s work on Black Panther went a long way to dispelling the myth that “diversity doesn’t sell” in the comic book industry.

The untold story of how breaking – one of the most widely practiced dance forms in the world today – began as a distinctly African American expression in the Bronx, New York, during the 1970s.Breaking is the first and most widely practiced hip-hop dance in the world, with around one million participants in this dynamic, multifaceted artform – and, as of 2024, Olympic sport. Yet, despite its global reach and nearly 50-year history, stories of breaking’s origins have largely neglected the African Americans who founded it. Dancer and scholar Serouj "Midus" Aprahamian offers, for the first time, a detailed look into the African American beginnings of breaking in the Bronx, New York.The Birth of Breaking challenges numerous myths and misconceptions that have permeated studies of hip-hop’s evolution, considering the influence breaking has had on hip-hop culture. Including previously unseen archival material, interviews, and detailed depictions of the dance at its outset, this book brings to life this buried history, with a particular focus on the early development of the dance, the institutional settings where hip-hop was conceived, and the movement’s impact on sociocultural conditions in New York City throughout the 1970s.By featuring the overlooked first-hand accounts of over 50 founding b-boys and b-girls alongside movement analysis informed by his embodied knowledge of the dance, Aprahamian reveals how indebted breaking is to African American culture, as well as the disturbing factors behind its historical erasure.

This book explores the politics of artistic creativity, examining how black artists in Africa and the diaspora create art as a procedure of self-making. Essays cross continents to uncover the efflorescence of black culture in national and global contexts and in literature, film, performance, music, and visual art. Contributors place the concerns of black artists and their works within national and transnational conversations on anti-black racism, xenophobia, ethnocentrism, migration, resettlement, resistance, and transnational feminisms. Does art by the subaltern fulfill the liberatory potential that critics have ascribed to it? What other possibilities does political art offer? Together, these essays sort through the aesthetics of daily life to build a thesis that reflects the desire of black artists and cultures to remake themselves and their world.

This book explores the politics of artistic creativity, examining how black artists in Africa and the diaspora create art as a procedure of self-making. Essays cross continents to uncover the efflorescence of black culture in national and global contexts and in literature, film, performance, music, and visual art. Contributors place the concerns of black artists and their works within national and transnational conversations on anti-black racism, xenophobia, ethnocentrism, migration, resettlement, resistance, and transnational feminisms. Does art by the subaltern fulfill the liberatory potential that critics have ascribed to it? What other possibilities does political art offer? Together, these essays sort through the aesthetics of daily life to build a thesis that reflects the desire of black artists and cultures to remake themselves and their world.

This book explores the politics of artistic creativity, examining how black artists in Africa and the diaspora create art as a procedure of self-making. Essays cross continents to uncover the efflorescence of black culture in national and global contexts and in literature, film, performance, music, and visual art. Contributors place the concerns of black artists and their works within national and transnational conversations on anti-black racism, xenophobia, ethnocentrism, migration, resettlement, resistance, and transnational feminisms. Does art by the subaltern fulfill the liberatory potential that critics have ascribed to it? What other possibilities does political art offer? Together, these essays sort through the aesthetics of daily life to build a thesis that reflects the desire of black artists and cultures to remake themselves and their world.

An examination of alternate imaginaries of ‘the global’ in post-millennium anglophone African literature and the differing forms of agency that these imaginaries produce.Irony, Agency and the Global Imaginary in Post-2000 Nigerian and Kenyan Literature provides deft and detailed readings of writers’ perspectives that theorize ‘the global’ as experienced through vectors of globality such as the tourism industry, development agencies, multinational media, NGOs and consumerism. Penny Cartwright develops a conceptual distinction between two types of global imaginaries: ‘territorial’ imaginaries that treat privileged spaces or locations as ‘global’, thus demanding strategies of physical access and mobility; and ‘orientational’ imaginaries that treat ‘globality’ as a disposition or attitude that individuals perform or embody. Drawing detailed case studies from the work of Ngugi wa Thiong'o and Binyavanga Wainaina (Kenya), Chris Abani, Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani and A. Igoni Barrett (Nigeria), Cartwright shows how these different kinds of imaginaries are combined, contrasted and ironized in literary texts. By analyzing Africa-based representations of ‘the global’, from the millennium period onward, this book considers how global imaginaries are shaped by and inflect distinctive regional experiences, including of postcoloniality, Structural Adjustment, oil economics, multilingualism and humanitarianism. Departing from more extensive recent scholarship on migration narratives, the book contributes insights into literary engagements of ‘the global’ that arise from Nigerian and Kenyan national spaces and circumstances. It explores the narrative strategies through which alternate ideas of the global are represented, with particular emphasis on ironizing strategies, as well as the kinds of personal and political responses that the various imaginaries produce in characters.

An imaginative, narratological reading of Chinua Achebe's novels, stories, poetry, and essays through a literary and historical framework.Toyin Falola analyzes fictional and historical cartographies of Africa in Achebe’s literary works to offer a critical representation of Africa's present and future. In particular, he focuses on the historical valuation of a full range of the writer's works – novels including Things Fall Apart, but also short stories, poems, and essays – as important materials that have contributed to the political events in Nigeria and, by extension, Africa. The raw creativity found in Achebe’s stories and his ability to tell the Nigerian story – precolonial, colonial, and postcolonial – have endeared him to many, including readers and those critical of him and his works. Chinua Achebe: Narrating Africa in Fictions and History analyzes all of the writer’s works, dwelling on the Nigerian political context upon which many, if not all, of his narratives lie. As a result, it examines methodologies of narration and ideologies that allow his works to resonate with the imagination of Africa.

A timely look at contemporary African American creative works through the lens of Ta-Nehisi Coates's ground-breaking entry into the comic book industry. Writing Black Panther traces Ta-Nehisi Coates’s presence in comic books from 2015-2023, focusing on his contributions as the writer for Black Panther. His ambitious 50-issue run of the Marvel comic coincided with ongoing and multifaceted debates concerning diversity and inclusion – what we might call representation struggles – at a key moment in the history of comics with respect to Black writers. Howard Rambsy II locates Coates’s contributions at the intersection of African American literary studies and comic book studies, showing a dynamic convergence that redefines both fields and broadens the scope of Black creativity. Writing Black Panther demonstrates key aspects of Coates’s comics narratives that overlap with major themes and topics in African American literature. These include the depiction of multiple Black characters, exploration of intra-racial and interracial conflicts, excavations of Black histories, displays of Afrofuturist aesthetics, and attention to cultural geography. As a prominent essayist, bestselling author, and popular comic book writer, Coates stands out as a notable gateway figure who bridges multiple genres. His time as a comics writer constitutes an important, defining phase of his professional career. And as this book shows, Coates’s work on Black Panther went a long way to dispelling the myth that “diversity doesn’t sell” in the comic book industry.

A timely look at contemporary African American creative works through the lens of Ta-Nehisi Coates's ground-breaking entry into the comic book industry. Writing Black Panther traces Ta-Nehisi Coates’s presence in comic books from 2015-2023, focusing on his contributions as the writer for Black Panther. His ambitious 50-issue run of the Marvel comic coincided with ongoing and multifaceted debates concerning diversity and inclusion – what we might call representation struggles – at a key moment in the history of comics with respect to Black writers. Howard Rambsy II locates Coates’s contributions at the intersection of African American literary studies and comic book studies, showing a dynamic convergence that redefines both fields and broadens the scope of Black creativity. Writing Black Panther demonstrates key aspects of Coates’s comics narratives that overlap with major themes and topics in African American literature. These include the depiction of multiple Black characters, exploration of intra-racial and interracial conflicts, excavations of Black histories, displays of Afrofuturist aesthetics, and attention to cultural geography. As a prominent essayist, bestselling author, and popular comic book writer, Coates stands out as a notable gateway figure who bridges multiple genres. His time as a comics writer constitutes an important, defining phase of his professional career. And as this book shows, Coates’s work on Black Panther went a long way to dispelling the myth that “diversity doesn’t sell” in the comic book industry.