Women Writers of the New African Diaspora

Pauline Ada Uwakweh is Associate Professor of Literature and teaches postcolonial African, African-American and World literatures in the English Department at North Carolina A & T State University, USA. She earned her Ph.D. degree from Temple University, Philadelphia; her M.A. degree from the University of Calabar; and her B.A. degree from the University of Port Harcourt, Nigeria. She is the editor of African Women Under Fire: Literary Discourses in War and Conflict (2017) and co-editor of the book, Engaging the Diaspora: Migration and African Families (2014). She has published several articles, book reviews, and book chapters on women in professional journals, such as Research in African Literatures, African Literature Today, and Journal of African Literature Association. Some of her works have been published in critical books on African literature, including Emerging African Voices, Emerging Perspectives on Buchi Emecheta, Nwanyibu: Womanbeing in African Literature, and Emerging Perspectives on Ama Ata Aidoo. She is a Fellow of the Carnegie African Diaspora Program (CADFP).

Introduction: Transnationalism and New African Diaspora Women Writers: An Overview PART I: EMIGRATION: (En)gendering Transnationalism, Mobilities, and Politics of Representation 1. Power of the Story: Mediating Africa’s Diasporic Ruptures in Yaa Gyasi’s Homegoing 2. Specters of Slavery, Sites of Violence: Reading Chika Unigwe’s On Black Sisters Street as a Neo-Slave Narrative 3. Mobilities as Transnational Literary Aesthetics in Chimamanda Adichie’s Americanah PART II: NEGOTIATION: Transnational Identities, Home, and Intersectional Contexts 4. Navigating the American Dream: Diaspora Families and Transnational Dilemmas in Mbolo Mbue’s Behold the Dreamers 5. ‘The Home of Things Falling Apart’: Narrating and Performing Home(land) in NoViolet Bulawayo’s We Need New Names 6. Enter the Afropolitan: Taiye Selasi’s Cultural Significations in Ghana Must Go 7. Narrative Identity in Ancestor Stones: Aminatta Forna’s Postcolonial and Revisionist Discourse 8. Gendered Journeys and Self-Discovery: The Transnational Context in Leila Aboulela’s Bird Summons PART III: RETURNS: Reverse Migration, Ambivalent Returns, and Making Sense of Homeland 9. Theorizing Homeland Returns in Transnational Women’s Narratives 10: Conclusion: Telescoping the Future of New African Diaspora Women’s Literature