Pan-African American Literature

"The fast-changing contours of the African diaspora in the United States demand that we establish new ways of understanding black identity in the twenty-first century. Twenty-First Century Pan-African American Literature takes up writings by African born or identified authors like Teju Cole, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Dinaw Mengestu, and NoViolet Bulawayo. Stephanie Li asserts that these texts reinvent the meaning of blackness by placing immigration and diasporic identity at the center of their narratives, and reassessing the relationship between slavery and contemporary social conditions. The texts studied demonstrate the ways in which race is an evolving and contested site of identity that is made new by the experiences of recent African immigrants; they also show how blackness becomes a bridge between people of radically different experiences. Though race often alienates and frustrates immigrants who are accustomed to living in all-black environments, Li holds that it can also be a powerful form of community and political mobilization"--