At home in diaspora : Black international writing / Wendy W. Walters.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Walters, Wendy W.

Series:

Critical American studies series

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Njami, Simon, 1962-.

Cliff, Michelle.

Phillips, Caryl.

Himes, Chester B., 1909-1984.

Wright, Richard, 1908-1960.

American fiction--African American authors--History and criticism.

American fiction.

American fiction--African American authors.

Wright, Richard, 1908-1960--Criticism and interpretation.

Wright, Richard.

Himes, Chester B., 1909-1984--Criticism and interpretation.

Himes, Chester B.

West Indian literature (English)--Black authors--History and criticism.

West Indian literature (English).

Phillips, Caryl--Criticism and interpretation.

Cliff, Michelle--Criticism and interpretation.

Njami, Simon, 1962---Criticism and interpretation.

Njami, Simon.

Black people--West Indies--Intellectual life.

Black people.

African Americans in literature.

Internationalism in literature.

Exiles in literature.

African diaspora.

Intellectual life.

Criticism and interpretation.

West Indian literature (English)--Black authors.

West Indies.

Physical Description:

xxv, 177 pages ; 23 cm.

Place of Publication:

Minneapolis : University of Minnesota Press, [2005]

Summary:

Although he never lived in Harlem, Chester Himes commented that he experienced "a sort of pure homesickness" while creating the Harlem-set detective novels from his self-imposed exile in Paris. Through writing, Himes constructed an imaginary home informed both by nostalgia for a community he never knew and a critique of the racism he left behind in the United States. Half a century later, Michelle Cliff wrote about her native Jamaica from the United States, articulating a positive Caribbean feminism that at the same time acknowledged Jamaica's homophobia and color prejudice.

In At Home in Diaspora, Wendy Walters investigates the work of Himes, Cliff, and three other twentieth-century black international writers-Caryl Phillips, Simon Njami, and Richard Wright-who have lived in and written from countries they do not call home. Walters suggests that in the absence of a recoverable land of origin, the idea of diaspora comes to represent a home that is not exclusionary. In this way, writing in exile is much more than a literary performance: it is a profound political act.

Contents:

Introduction: Diaspora Consciousness and Literary Expression vii

Part I The Fact of Slavery

1 "On the Clifflike Margins of Many Cultures": Richard Wright's Travels 3

2 The Postcolonial as Post-Enlightenment: Michelle Cliff and the Genealogies of History 27

Part II From Discrimination and Insult to Homes in Diaspora

3 Harlem on My Mind: Exile and Community in Chester Himes's Detective Fiction 59

4 "A Landmark in a Foreign Land": Simon Njami's Parisian Scenes 86

5 History's Dispersals: Caryl Phillips's Chorus of the Common Memory 111.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 141-171) and index.

ISBN:

0816644918

0816644926

OCLC:

57452805