Making Black History : Diasporic Fiction in the Moment of Afropolitanism / Dominique Haensell.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Haensell, Dominique, 1986- Author.

Series:

Buchreihe der Anglia / Anglia Book

Buchreihe der Anglia / Anglia Book Series ; 73

Language:

English

Physical Description:

1 online resource (VII, 245 p.)

Place of Publication:

Berlin ; Boston : De Gruyter, [2021]

Language Note:

In English.

Summary:

This study proposes that - rather than trying to discern the normative value of Afropolitanism as an identificatory concept, politics, ethics or aesthetics - Afropolitanism may be best approached as a distinct historical and cultural moment, that is, a certain historical constellation that allows us to glimpse the shifting and multiple silhouettes which Africa, as signifier, as real and imagined locus, embodies in the globalized, yet predominantly Western, cultural landscape of the 21st century. As such, Making Black History looks at contemporary fictions of the African or Black Diaspora that have been written and received in the moment of Afropolitanism. Discursively, this moment is very much part of a diasporic conversation that takes place in the US and is thus informed by various negotiations of blackness, race, class, and cultural identity. Yet rather than interpreting Afropolitan literatures (merely) as a rejection of racial solidarity, as some commentators have, they should be read as ambivalent responses to post-racial discourses dominating the first decade of the 21st century, particularly in the US, which oscillate between moments of intense hope and acute disappointment.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Acknowledgments

Chapter I Introduction - Writing Race in the Moment of Afropolitanism

Chapter II Going Through The Motions - Movement, Metahistory, and the Spectacle of Suffering in Teju Cole's Open City

Chapter III (Post‐)Independent Women - Romance, Return, and Pan-African Feminism in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Americanah

Chapter IV A Painful Notion of Time - Conveying Black Temporality in Yaa Gyasi's Homegoing

Chapter V Conclusion - The Past Is Always Tense, the Future Perfect

Bibliography

Index

Notes:

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 27. Sep 2021)

This eBook is made available Open Access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0 https://www.degruyter.com/dg/page/open-access-policy

Description based upon print version of record.

ISBN:

3-11-072209-7