369 p., Reconstructs the process of migration, assimilation, and the realization of full sociopolitical participation in the United States in terms of the relationship between peoples of African descent--who were compelled to migrate as slaves across the Middle Passage, and who also voluntarily immigrated from various localities within the Black Atlantic--and select groups of immigrants from other locations around the globe. The author concentrates on novels by William Faulkner, Paule Marshall, James Baldwin, and cartoonist Chris Ware, and examine closely how these authors, in their respective texts, work to restructure, reimagine, and thereby challenge the enshrined American narratives of national belonging and acculturation through literary constructions of the identities and experiences of peoples of African descent, as migrants themselves, in tandem with their social, political, economic, sexual, racial, and cultural engagements with other immigrants to the nation-state.
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
270 p., Cuba's geographic proximity to the United States and its centrality to US imperial designs following the War of 1898 led to the creation of a unique relationship between Afro-descended populations in the two countries. Drawing on archival sources in both countries, the author traces four encounters between Afro-Cubans and African Americans.
210 p., This project examines the ways in which several texts written in the late 20th century by African American and Caribbean writers appropriate history and witness trauma. Analyzes the writings of Toni Morrison, Ernest Gaines, Paule Marshall, and Fred D'Aguiar as they offer distinct approaches to history and the resulting effects such reconstituted, discovered, or, in some cases, imagined histories can have on the affirmation of the self as a subject. Explores the values of the African diaspora cross-culturally as manifested in the representational practices of these writers.
