Cultural Intersection A Survey of Selected Novels on African Diaspora (original) (raw)
Related papers
2015
This paper discusses the representation of Afropolitan identity forma tion in Taiye Selasi’s debut novel Ghana must go (2013), and Chima manda Adichie’s novel Americanah (2013). The aim of the paper is to discuss Afropolitan identity formation as presented in the two novels using Selasi’s (2005) essay Who is an Afropolitan? as a benchmark. Se la si blends the words ‘Africa’ and ‘cosmopolitan’ in her essay, which discusses several themes, namely: cultural hybridity, careers, identity for mation, self-expression and an African bond as they relate to the Afropolitan. Although we have listed all the major themes above, this paper only focuses on the theme of Afropolitan identity formation. For example, in Ghana must go (2013) Kehinde, the twin boy struggles with his identity because of his Scottish heritage which gives him a skin complexion that is neither black nor white and he does not know what nationality to consider himself. In Americanah (2013), Dike also struggles with his identi...
International Journal of English Language & Translation Studies. Vol-2, Issue-1, 2014
Hybridity has been one of the most recurrent themes of the African fiction during and after the colonial period. It is one of the complex issues of postcolonial Africa as it was difficult for many Négritude writers, such as Léopold Sédar Senghor, Aimé Césaire, and Frantz Fanon, to find a common ground on what colonization bequeathed to Africa. Hence, Senghor (1977) came up with the oxymoron of “colonization as a necessary evil”. However, to evaluate the advantages and disadvantages of colonization to Africans, in terms of impact, one should go further than expected to approve or dismantle Senghor’s position. The issues of cultural hybridity and identity crisis are still topical in African literature. Also, in the context of globalization, it is relevant to study the post-independence situation of African societies as represented by their early prominent and visionary writers such as Chinua Achebe from Nigeria and Cheikh Hamidou Kane from Senegal. Therefore, hybridity becomes a concern, through which writers address the dilemma of the African. They portray the intellectual who is entrapped in two different cultures and becomes alienated. The corpus of this article showcases this phenomenon through the characters of Obi Okonkwo in No Longer at Ease (1960) and Samba Diallo in Ambiguous Adventure (1962). Through a critical analysis and a post-colonial perspective, the article focuses on identity crisis, alongside the contentious debate over cultural diversity versus cultural difference, which is highly reflected in the novels investigated in the paper. Keywords: African fiction, Cultural Crisis, Globalization, Hybridity, Identity Crisis
Journal of American Academic Research, 2018
Contemporary African literature is marked by movement of authors from their original homelands to new spaces and creation of a new genre known as diasporic African fiction. Studies in this area are developmental. Selected for this paper are Uwem Akpan, Helen Oyeyemi, Chika Unigwe and Ekow Duker, whose works: Say You're One of Them, The Icarus Girl, On Black Sisters' Street and White Wahala, respectively reflect racial tension and identity conflict in the new diasporic African setting and circumstances that give birth to them. Applying postcolonial and psychoanalytic theories, this paper examines how the different nations of Africa and the social classes in the "imagined communities" portrayed in the texts have fared in their responses to the challenges of "arrested decolonization" in postcolonial Africa. The paper discovers that racial tension and identity conflict in Africa are a common problematic concern that arises due to colonial and postcolonial dynamics and that authors of African origin are worried, hence the commitment nature of their fiction, which tends to be psychotherapeutic. It concludes that diasporic African literature serves as a custodian of African consciousness.
International Journal of English Language and Translation Studies, 2014
Hybridity has been one of the most recurrent themes of the African fiction during and after the colonial period. It is one of the complex issues of postcolonial Africa as it was difficult for many Négritude writers, such as Léopold Sédar Senghor, Aimé Césaire, and Frantz Fanon, to find a common ground on what colonization bequeathed to Africa. Hence, Senghor (1977) came up with the oxymoron of “colonization as a necessary evil”. However, to evaluate the advantages and disadvantages of colonization to Africans, in terms of impact, one should go further than expected to approve or dismantle Senghor’s position. The issues of cultural hybridity and identity crisis are still topical in African literature. Also, in the context of globalization, it is relevant to study the post-independence situation of African societies as represented by their early prominent and visionary writers such as Chinua Achebe from Nigeria and Cheikh Hamidou Kane from Senegal. Therefore, hybridity becomes a concern, through which writers address the dilemma of the African. They portray the intellectual who is entrapped in two different cultures and becomes alienated. The corpus of this article showcases this phenomenon through the characters of Obi Okonkwo in No Longer at Ease (1960) and Samba Diallo in Ambiguous Adventure (1962). Through a critical analysis and a post-colonial perspective, the article focuses on identity crisis, alongside the contentious debate over cultural diversity versus cultural difference, which is highly reflected in the novels investigated in the paper.
Culture Diaspora and Afropolitanism in the Wake of Globalisation
Working Papers: Journal of English Studies, 2020
This paper interrogates culture, diaspora, and Afropolitanism within the concept of globalisation. While these concepts are not recent, the aim of this study is to offer fresh insight to the debate on the foregoing and a new way of making sense of these concepts, particularly the intersection of cultures, in the wake of contemporary globalisation. The method of analysis adopted in this study is qualitative and descriptive. This is within the tenets of Cultural Hybridity Theory as a theoretical framework. The data for this study are drawn from deductions from literary texts, and material culture, practices and trends. Some of the questions this paper raises for critical reflection are: how has the ongoing global cultural intersection and flux affected the African culture and identity? In what ways have these present global cultural intersection and realities mapped a new African identity and consciousness? Significantly, this paper underscores the forms of cultural intersections and hybrid connections ongoing today and the new identity such phenomena are capable of instigating particularly for Africans. This study stresses that though culture is polymorphous, the idea of culture autochthony is no longer tenable. Also, this study makes a strong case for the consideration of the internet or cyberspace as a diasporic cultural digital space, while it concludes that what differentiates the globalisation of today and previous globalisation is the rise of the internet. For the African, the interplay of culture intersection, globalisation and digital propagation through the internet signal the emergence of Afropolitanism as an epistemological framework for marking the African identity and culture today in its unity-in-diversity, within the continent and in the New African Diaspora.
Literator
The publication of Diaspora and Identity in South African Fiction (2016) by J.U. Jacobs is a timely intervention, in that it is the first comprehensive study of South African fiction to sustain the argument that South African writing is always already diasporic. Although Jacobs’ diasporic framework undoubtedly serves as an important addition to the recent trends identified by literary scholars, his focus on 12 well-established writers (including Coetzee, Wicomb, Mda, Gordimer and Ndebele), highlights some of the gaps that need to be filled in a study of this kind. For instance, what about the younger generation of writers, including those from elsewhere in Africa who are writing about living in South Africa? How do they deal with what has been termed the new diaspora, with debates around Afropolitanism and the experiences of internal, inter-continental and trans-continental migrancy in an increasingly globalising world? Despite these shortcomings, Jacobs’ premise about the inevitabl...
AFROPOLITANIST CONSTRUCTS IN TAIYE SELASI’S GHANA MUST GO AND CHIMAMANDA NGOZI ADICHIE’S AMERICANAH
Tobi Idowu , 2018
Migrant literature has continued to gain increasing prominence in literary production due to what has been described as postcolonial impulse in the contemporary Third World literature. This is, in part, reflective of the experiences of the Third World countries in the face of increasing globalisation; and also, in part, reflective of the increasing residency of literary artists and critics of the third world countries in the West. Meanwhile, Afropolitanism falls into the general category of migrant literature. However, what sets it apart from other migrant literary discourse is its radical shift in thematic focus with regards to home, identity and in the construal of nationality. Afropolitanism has its provenance in the now seminal essay of multinational writer, Taiye Selasi (2005) titled, ByeBye Barbar or What is an Afropolitan? of whose major thematic thrust is the refusal to pander to the thematic expectations of a typical African in the diaspora. This study therefore engages with the ideas that underpin the thematic preoccupations of the Afropolitans. It adopts the qualitative approach for its methodology as two texts of veritable Afropolitan tilts, Taiye Selasi’s Ghana Must Go and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Americanah have been selected as primary analytical texts in order to explore the Afropolitanist constructs. The study also makes use of postcolonial theory as its theoretical framework. This study, thereafter, is able to foreground, through the exploration of such diasporic markers as race, identity, home, exilic feelings and cultural intermingling, that Afropolitan writings not only seek to problematize the conventional standards of engagement within the migrant literature but also to push forward into the front burner unheralded but legitimate ideas surrounding migrant experiences.