Rodwell Makombe – författare

This book explores literary representations of African immigrant experiences in Western countries, against the backdrop of colonial stereotypes and recent expressions of anti-immigrant sentiment in Europe and America.

The book deploys the concept of coloniality of migrancy to explore how global coloniality continues to shape the identities and lived experiences of African immigrants as represented in African diasporic literatures. It considers the persistence of racist and discriminatory attitudes and patterns of thought that developed during slavery and colonialism, and asks to what extent it is possible for African immigrants to transcend race in their configuration of their identity. Five key twenty-first century African diasporic novels are considered in the analysis: Imbolo Mbue’s Behold the Dreamers, Dave Eggers’ What is the What: The Autobiography of Valentino Achak Deng, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Americanah, NoViolet Bulawayo’s We Need New Names and Helon Habila’s Travellers. Overall, the book demonstrates that despite the hostility migrants of colour encounter, Africans are shunning the victimhood of colonialism and slavery and finding alternative ways of navigating and inhabiting the modern world.

Foregrounding the usefulness of decoloniality and postcolonial theory as theoretical tools, this book will be an invaluable resource to researchers across the fields of African literature, migration, sociology, politics, and decolonial studies.

This book explores literary representations of African immigrant experiences in Western countries, against the backdrop of colonial stereotypes and recent expressions of anti-immigrant sentiment in Europe and America.

The book deploys the concept of coloniality of migrancy to explore how global coloniality continues to shape the identities and lived experiences of African immigrants as represented in African diasporic literatures. It considers the persistence of racist and discriminatory attitudes and patterns of thought that developed during slavery and colonialism, and asks to what extent it is possible for African immigrants to transcend race in their configuration of their identity. Five key twenty-first century African diasporic novels are considered in the analysis: Imbolo Mbue’s Behold the Dreamers, Dave Eggers’ What is the What: The Autobiography of Valentino Achak Deng, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Americanah, NoViolet Bulawayo’s We Need New Names and Helon Habila’s Travellers. Overall, the book demonstrates that despite the hostility migrants of colour encounter, Africans are shunning the victimhood of colonialism and slavery and finding alternative ways of navigating and inhabiting the modern world.

Foregrounding the usefulness of decoloniality and postcolonial theory as theoretical tools, this book will be an invaluable resource to researchers across the fields of African literature, migration, sociology, politics, and decolonial studies.

Human movement and mobility are at an all-time high, making it more important than ever to understand how discourses around migration shape and influence individuals and the socioeconomic conditions of the countries they both inhabit and leave behind.

Featuring both intercontinental and intracontinental perspectives, authors Kunle Musbaudeen Oparinde and Rodwell Makombe present new, much-needed data from the African continent in terms of how discourses around migration are socially constructed in Africa and how this compares globally. Collected from social media and online platforms, this data spotlights the everyday realities of Nigerians and Zimbabweans, and by extension many Africans, in their quest to relocate. Unpacking reasons for migration, as well as the dominant discourses post-migration, the authors analyse the inherent feelings of migrants, potential migrants, unwilling but forced migrants and those who have chosen to remain in their countries despite harsh socioeconomic realities.

Examining this pressing field of study in an underexplored regional context, Social Constructions of Migration in Nigeria and Zimbabwe takes a refreshing new angle to deepen our understanding around the causes and effects of migration.

Human movement and mobility are at an all-time high, making it more important than ever to understand how discourses around migration shape and influence individuals and the socioeconomic conditions of the countries they both inhabit and leave behind.

Featuring both intercontinental and intracontinental perspectives, authors Kunle Musbaudeen Oparinde and Rodwell Makombe present new, much-needed data from the African continent in terms of how discourses around migration are socially constructed in Africa and how this compares globally. Collected from social media and online platforms, this data spotlights the everyday realities of Nigerians and Zimbabweans, and by extension many Africans, in their quest to relocate. Unpacking reasons for migration, as well as the dominant discourses post-migration, the authors analyse the inherent feelings of migrants, potential migrants, unwilling but forced migrants and those who have chosen to remain in their countries despite harsh socioeconomic realities.

Examining this pressing field of study in an underexplored regional context, Social Constructions of Migration in Nigeria and Zimbabwe takes a refreshing new angle to deepen our understanding around the causes and effects of migration.

The book is about comedy, the nation, and resistance in Zimbabwe, following the fall of Robert Mugabe in 2017. It explores how satiric comedies and comic texts in post-Mugabe Zimbabwe contest hegemonic narratives of the nation and authorise alternative narratives from the margins. Drawing on postcolonial theories of the nation, it analyses subversive comedies and social media texts that contest official political narratives in Zimbabwe, including the comedies of four Zimbabwean comedians—Kapfupi and Marabha, Doc Vikela, and Sabhuku Vharazipi—as well as social media texts on President Mnangagwa’s Facebook Page and cartoons published by the Zimbabwean newspaper ZimDaily. Primarily found via social media platforms (Facebook and Youtube), these texts centre alternative views and narratives of ordinary citizens, contesting established truths and providing a counter-narration to official hegemonic discourses of the nation.

Where existing scholarship on post-Mugabe politics in Zimbabwe focuses on issues such as the coup, militarisation, and discourses of "newness", little attention has been paid to the forms of resistance used in everyday discourse by Zimbabweans, and particularly via satire and comedy. These comic texts, shared by comedians and normal citizens on social media, can provide a useful alternative perspective to make sense of the politics and political performances that characterize the new political dispensation after Mugabe.