Pan–African American Literature
190 pages, 6 x 9
Paperback
Release Date:14 Sep 2018
ISBN:9780813592770
Hardcover
Release Date:14 Sep 2018
ISBN:9780813592787
Pan–African American Literature
Signifyin(g) Immigrants in the Twenty-First Century
By Stephanie Li
Rutgers University Press
2019 Choice Outstanding Academic Title
The twenty-first century is witnessing a dynamic broadening of how blackness signifies both in the U.S. and abroad. Literary writers of the new African diaspora are at the forefront of exploring these exciting approaches to what black subjectivity means. Pan-African American Literature is dedicated to charting the contours of literature by African born or identified authors centered around life in the United States. The texts examined here deliberately signify on the African American literary canon to encompass new experiences of immigration, assimilation and identification that challenge how blackness has been previously conceived. Though race often alienates and frustrates immigrants who are accustomed to living in all-black environments, Stephanie Li holds that it can also be a powerful form of community and political mobilization.
The twenty-first century is witnessing a dynamic broadening of how blackness signifies both in the U.S. and abroad. Literary writers of the new African diaspora are at the forefront of exploring these exciting approaches to what black subjectivity means. Pan-African American Literature is dedicated to charting the contours of literature by African born or identified authors centered around life in the United States. The texts examined here deliberately signify on the African American literary canon to encompass new experiences of immigration, assimilation and identification that challenge how blackness has been previously conceived. Though race often alienates and frustrates immigrants who are accustomed to living in all-black environments, Stephanie Li holds that it can also be a powerful form of community and political mobilization.
Timely and promising, Pan-African American Literature will make a major and distinctive contribution to African American studies, cultural studies, and American literary studies.
Recent Books of Interest to African American Scholars' roundup
Essential.
[An] important book.
STEPHANIE LI is the Susan D. Gubar Chair in Literature at Indiana University, Bloomington. She is the author of four books, including Signifying without Specifying: Racial Discourse in the Age of Obama (Rutgers University Press).
Introduction
1 Signifyin(g) on the Slave Narrative: African Memoirs of War and Displacement
2 Uncanny Rememories in Teju Cole’s Open City
3 The Impossibility of Invisibility in the Novels of Dinaw Mengestu
4 Refiguring the Ancestor in the Fiction of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
5 Becoming his own Father: Obama’s Dreams from My Father
Conclusion: Blackness Now
Works Cited
Index
1 Signifyin(g) on the Slave Narrative: African Memoirs of War and Displacement
2 Uncanny Rememories in Teju Cole’s Open City
3 The Impossibility of Invisibility in the Novels of Dinaw Mengestu
4 Refiguring the Ancestor in the Fiction of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
5 Becoming his own Father: Obama’s Dreams from My Father
Conclusion: Blackness Now
Works Cited
Index
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