Description
Book SynopsisPan-African American Literature charts 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.
Trade Review"Timely and promising,
Pan-African American Literature will make a major and distinctive contribution to African American studies, cultural studies, and American literary studies." -- Michele Elam * author of The Souls of Mixed Folk: Race, Politics, and Aesthetics in the New Millennium *
"Recent Books of Interest to African American Scholars" roundup
* Journal of Blacks in Higher Education *
"Essential." * Choice *
"[An] important book." * American Studies in Scandinavia *
Table of ContentsIntroduction
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
