Routledge African Diaspora Literary and Cultural Studies – serie

Literary Black Power in the Caribbean focuses on the Black Power movement in theanglophone Caribbean as represented and critically debated in literary texts,music and film.This volume is groundbreaking in its focus on the creative arts and artists intheir evaluations of, and insights on, the relevance of the Black Power messageacross the region. The author takes a cultural studies approach to bring togetherthe political with the aesthetic, enriching an already fertile debate on the era andthe subject of Black Power in the Caribbean region. The chapters discuss variousaspects of Black Power in the Caribbean: on the pages of journals and magazines,at contemporary conferences that radicalized academia to join forces with communities,in fiction and essays by writers and intellectuals, in calypso and reggaemusic, and in the first films produced in the Caribbean.Produced at the 50th anniversary of the 1970 Black Power Revolution in Portof Spain, Trinidad, this timely book will be of interest to students and academicsfocusing on Black Power, Caribbean literary and cultural studies, African diaspora,and Global South radical political and cultural theory.

Literary Black Power in the Caribbean focuses on the Black Power movement in theanglophone Caribbean as represented and critically debated in literary texts,music and film.This volume is groundbreaking in its focus on the creative arts and artists intheir evaluations of, and insights on, the relevance of the Black Power messageacross the region. The author takes a cultural studies approach to bring togetherthe political with the aesthetic, enriching an already fertile debate on the era andthe subject of Black Power in the Caribbean region. The chapters discuss variousaspects of Black Power in the Caribbean: on the pages of journals and magazines,at contemporary conferences that radicalized academia to join forces with communities,in fiction and essays by writers and intellectuals, in calypso and reggaemusic, and in the first films produced in the Caribbean.Produced at the 50th anniversary of the 1970 Black Power Revolution in Portof Spain, Trinidad, this timely book will be of interest to students and academicsfocusing on Black Power, Caribbean literary and cultural studies, African diaspora,and Global South radical political and cultural theory.

This book approaches the study of AfroEurope through narrative forms produced in contemporary France, a location which richly illustrates race in European spaces.The book adopts a transdisciplinary lens that combines critical black and urban geographies, intersectional feminism, and textual analysis to explore the spatial negotiations of black women in France. It assesses literature, film, and music as narrative forms and engages with the sociocultural and political contexts from which they emerge. Through the figure of the black flâneuse and the analytical framework of "walking as method", the book goes beneath spectacular representations of ghettoised banlieues, televised protests, and shipwrecked migrants to analyse the spatiality of blackness in the everyday. It argues that the material-discursive framing of black flânerie, as both relational and embodied movements, renders visible a politics of place embedded in everyday micro-struggles of raced-sexed subjects. Foregrounding expressive modes and forms that have traditionally received little critical attention outside of the French and francophone world, this book will be relevant to academics, researchers, writers, students, activists, and readers with interests in Literary and Cultural Studies, African and Afrodiasporic Studies, Black Feminisms, Migration Studies, Critical Black Geographies, Francophone Studies, and the comparative framework of Afroeuropean Studies.

This book approaches the study of AfroEurope through narrative forms produced in contemporary France, a location which richly illustrates race in European spaces.The book adopts a transdisciplinary lens that combines critical black and urban geographies, intersectional feminism, and textual analysis to explore the spatial negotiations of black women in France. It assesses literature, film, and music as narrative forms and engages with the sociocultural and political contexts from which they emerge. Through the figure of the black flâneuse and the analytical framework of "walking as method", the book goes beneath spectacular representations of ghettoised banlieues, televised protests, and shipwrecked migrants to analyse the spatiality of blackness in the everyday. It argues that the material-discursive framing of black flânerie, as both relational and embodied movements, renders visible a politics of place embedded in everyday micro-struggles of raced-sexed subjects. Foregrounding expressive modes and forms that have traditionally received little critical attention outside of the French and francophone world, this book will be relevant to academics, researchers, writers, students, activists, and readers with interests in Literary and Cultural Studies, African and Afrodiasporic Studies, Black Feminisms, Migration Studies, Critical Black Geographies, Francophone Studies, and the comparative framework of Afroeuropean Studies.

This book investigates the cultural connections between Africa and the Caribbean, using the lens of Mobility Studies to tease out the shared experiences between these highly diverse parts of the world.Despite their heterogeneity in terms of cultures, languages, and political and economic histories, the connections between the African continent and the Caribbean are manifold, stretching back to the trans-Atlantic slave trade. The authors in this book look to the past as well as to the present, focusing on the manifold mobile connections between the regions’ subjects, objects, ideas, texts, images, sounds, and beliefs. In doing so, the book demonstrates that mobility extends beyond just the movement of people, and that we can also see mobility in objects and ideas, travelling either in a material sense or in imaginary terms, in physical as well as in virtual spaces. Bringing the transdisciplinary fields of African Studies, Caribbean Studies, and Mobility Studies into dialogue, this book will be of interest to students and scholars across the humanities and social sciences.The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial (CC-BY-NC) 4.0 license. Funded by Universität Wien.

This book investigates the cultural connections between Africa and the Caribbean, using the lens of Mobility Studies to tease out the shared experiences between these highly diverse parts of the world.Despite their heterogeneity in terms of cultures, languages, and political and economic histories, the connections between the African continent and the Caribbean are manifold, stretching back to the trans-Atlantic slave trade. The authors in this book look to the past as well as to the present, focusing on the manifold mobile connections between the regions’ subjects, objects, ideas, texts, images, sounds, and beliefs. In doing so, the book demonstrates that mobility extends beyond just the movement of people, and that we can also see mobility in objects and ideas, travelling either in a material sense or in imaginary terms, in physical as well as in virtual spaces. Bringing the transdisciplinary fields of African Studies, Caribbean Studies, and Mobility Studies into dialogue, this book will be of interest to students and scholars across the humanities and social sciences.The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial (CC-BY-NC) 4.0 license. Funded by Universität Wien.

Oral Forms of Nigerian Autobiography and Life Stories discusses the oral life stories and poems that Africans, particularly the Yoruba people, have told about the self and community over hundreds of years.Disproving the Eurocentric argument that Africans didn’t produce stories about themselves, the author showcases a vibrant literary tradition of oral autobiographies in Africa and the diaspora. The oral auto/biographies studied in this book show that stories and poems about individuals and their communities have always existed in various African societies and they were used to record, teach, and document history, culture, tradition, identity, and resistance. Genres covered in the book include the panegyric, witches’ and wizards’ narratives, the epithalamium tradition, the hunter’s chant, and Udje of the Urhobo.Providing an important showcase for oral narrative traditions this book will be of interest to students, scholars, and researchers in African and Africana studies, literature and auto/biographical studies.

Oral Forms of Nigerian Autobiography and Life Stories discusses the oral life stories and poems that Africans, particularly the Yoruba people, have told about the self and community over hundreds of years.Disproving the Eurocentric argument that Africans didn’t produce stories about themselves, the author showcases a vibrant literary tradition of oral autobiographies in Africa and the diaspora. The oral auto/biographies studied in this book show that stories and poems about individuals and their communities have always existed in various African societies and they were used to record, teach, and document history, culture, tradition, identity, and resistance. Genres covered in the book include the panegyric, witches’ and wizards’ narratives, the epithalamium tradition, the hunter’s chant, and Udje of the Urhobo.Providing an important showcase for oral narrative traditions this book will be of interest to students, scholars, and researchers in African and Africana studies, literature and auto/biographical studies.

This book explores the works of women writers and filmmakers across the African and African Diaspora world, reflecting on how the transnational sphere can serve to highlight voices that were at the margins of gender and race hierarchies.The book demonstrates how in discourse and theory Africana women are the centers of their own knowledge production and agency, as the artists and their characters point the way forward. Their multi-perspectivism leads to avenues of selective mutuality and influence to generate transformative creative work, scholarship, and practices. Writers included are Sylvia Wynter, Edwidge Danticat, Amanda Smith, Werewere Liking, Chimamanda Ngozi Adiche, Sefi Atta, NoViolet Bulawayo, Nnedi Okorafor, Mariama Bâ, Ama Ata Aidoo, Igiaba Scego, Léonara Miano, Gisèle Hountondji, Monique Ilboudo, and Maryse Condé, as well as filmmaker Kemi Adetiba. Over the course of the book, the contributors critically explore and update the canon on women in the African and African Diaspora literary sphere, highlighting their contributions to theoretical debates and providing substantive nuance to diasporic subjectivity.This book will be of interest to scholars of African and Africana Studies, comparative literature, and women and gender studies.

This book explores the works of women writers and filmmakers across the African and African Diaspora world, reflecting on how the transnational sphere can serve to highlight voices that were at the margins of gender and race hierarchies.The book demonstrates how in discourse and theory Africana women are the centers of their own knowledge production and agency, as the artists and their characters point the way forward. Their multi-perspectivism leads to avenues of selective mutuality and influence to generate transformative creative work, scholarship, and practices. Writers included are Sylvia Wynter, Edwidge Danticat, Amanda Smith, Werewere Liking, Chimamanda Ngozi Adiche, Sefi Atta, NoViolet Bulawayo, Nnedi Okorafor, Mariama Bâ, Ama Ata Aidoo, Igiaba Scego, Léonara Miano, Gisèle Hountondji, Monique Ilboudo, and Maryse Condé, as well as filmmaker Kemi Adetiba. Over the course of the book, the contributors critically explore and update the canon on women in the African and African Diaspora literary sphere, highlighting their contributions to theoretical debates and providing substantive nuance to diasporic subjectivity.This book will be of interest to scholars of African and Africana Studies, comparative literature, and women and gender studies.

Drawing on a range of historical and literary texts, this book examines how Black women under the yoke of slavery negotiated their sense of belonging and spirituality from a liminal position, stuck between a new life in the Americas, and their connections to their African ancestral roots and a wider diasporic community. The book investigates how Black women in the Spanish-speaking Caribbean, the United States, and Brazil turned to their spiritual beliefs as a tool of resilience and resistance. These “griots” and “goddesses” are forced to negotiate complex issues such as race, gender, identity, maternity, sexuality, and belonging, from a liminal position that looks to both settle roots in a foreign land, and stay connected to ancestors and the Sacred. As these Black female protagonists turn to (re)memory and ancestral knowledge to map their connection with the Divine, they become mediators of worlds, and hybrid griots surpassing temporal and geographical boundaries. With important reflections on Toni Morrison’s Beloved, Dahlma Llanos-Figueroa’s Daughters of the Stone, and Ana Maria Gonçalves’s Um Defeito de Cor, amongst other texts, this book will be of interest to advanced students and researchers of comparative literature, religious studies, gender studies, and African diaspora studies.

Drawing on a range of historical and literary texts, this book examines how Black women under the yoke of slavery negotiated their sense of belonging and spirituality from a liminal position, stuck between a new life in the Americas, and their connections to their African ancestral roots and a wider diasporic community. The book investigates how Black women in the Spanish-speaking Caribbean, the United States, and Brazil turned to their spiritual beliefs as a tool of resilience and resistance. These “griots” and “goddesses” are forced to negotiate complex issues such as race, gender, identity, maternity, sexuality, and belonging, from a liminal position that looks to both settle roots in a foreign land, and stay connected to ancestors and the Sacred. As these Black female protagonists turn to (re)memory and ancestral knowledge to map their connection with the Divine, they become mediators of worlds, and hybrid griots surpassing temporal and geographical boundaries. With important reflections on Toni Morrison’s Beloved, Dahlma Llanos-Figueroa’s Daughters of the Stone, and Ana Maria Gonçalves’s Um Defeito de Cor, amongst other texts, this book will be of interest to advanced students and researchers of comparative literature, religious studies, gender studies, and African diaspora studies.

This book examines fictional works by women authors who have left their homes in West Africa and now live as members of the diaspora.In recent years a compelling array of critically acclaimed fiction by women in the West African diaspora has shifted the direction of the African novel away from post-colonial themes of nationhood, decolonization and cultural authenticity, and towards explorations of the fluid and shifting constructions of identity in transnational spaces. Drawing on works by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Buchi Emecheta, Ama Ata Aidoo, Sefi Atta, Chika Unigwe and Taiye Selasie, this book interrogates the ways in which African diaspora women’s fiction portrays the realities of otherness, hybridity and marginalized existence of female subjects beyond Africa’s borders. Overall, the book demonstrates that life in the diaspora is an uncharted journey of expanded opportunities along with paradoxical realities of otherness. Providing a vivid and composite portrait of African women’s experiences in the diasporic landscape, this book will be of interest to researchers of migration and diaspora topics, and African, women’s and world literature.

This book examines fictional works by women authors who have left their homes in West Africa and now live as members of the diaspora.In recent years a compelling array of critically acclaimed fiction by women in the West African diaspora has shifted the direction of the African novel away from post-colonial themes of nationhood, decolonization and cultural authenticity, and towards explorations of the fluid and shifting constructions of identity in transnational spaces. Drawing on works by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Buchi Emecheta, Ama Ata Aidoo, Sefi Atta, Chika Unigwe and Taiye Selasie, this book interrogates the ways in which African diaspora women’s fiction portrays the realities of otherness, hybridity and marginalized existence of female subjects beyond Africa’s borders. Overall, the book demonstrates that life in the diaspora is an uncharted journey of expanded opportunities along with paradoxical realities of otherness. Providing a vivid and composite portrait of African women’s experiences in the diasporic landscape, this book will be of interest to researchers of migration and diaspora topics, and African, women’s and world literature.

This book re-reads the last 60 years of Anglophone African women’s writing from a transnational and trans-historical feminist perspective, rather than postcolonial, from which these texts have been traditionally interpreted. Such a comparative frame throws into relief patterns across time and space that make it possible to situate this writing as an integral part of women’s literary history.Revisiting this literature in a comparative context with Western women writers since the 18th century, the author highlights how invocations of "tradition" have been used by patriarchy everywhere to subjugate women, the similarities between women’s struggles worldwide, and the feminist imagination it produced. The author argues that in the 21st century, African feminism has undergone a major epistemic shift: from a culturally exclusive to a relational feminism that conceptualizes African femininity through the risky opening of oneself to otherness, transculturation, and translation. Like Western feminists in the 1960s, contemporary African women writers are turning their attention to the female body as the prime site of women’s oppression and freedom, reframing feminism as a demand for universal human rights and actively shaping global discourses on gender, modernity, and democracy.The book will be of interest to students and researchers of African literature, but also feminist literary scholars and comparatists more generally.

This book re-reads the last 60 years of Anglophone African women’s writing from a transnational and trans-historical feminist perspective, rather than postcolonial, from which these texts have been traditionally interpreted. Such a comparative frame throws into relief patterns across time and space that make it possible to situate this writing as an integral part of women’s literary history.Revisiting this literature in a comparative context with Western women writers since the 18th century, the author highlights how invocations of "tradition" have been used by patriarchy everywhere to subjugate women, the similarities between women’s struggles worldwide, and the feminist imagination it produced. The author argues that in the 21st century, African feminism has undergone a major epistemic shift: from a culturally exclusive to a relational feminism that conceptualizes African femininity through the risky opening of oneself to otherness, transculturation, and translation. Like Western feminists in the 1960s, contemporary African women writers are turning their attention to the female body as the prime site of women’s oppression and freedom, reframing feminism as a demand for universal human rights and actively shaping global discourses on gender, modernity, and democracy.The book will be of interest to students and researchers of African literature, but also feminist literary scholars and comparatists more generally.

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.