This book makes a significant addition to the field of literary criticism on African Diaspora literatures. In one volume, it brings together the novels of eight transnational African Diaspora women writers, Yaa Gyasi, Chika Unigwe, Chimamanda Adichie, Imbole Mbue, NoViolet Bulawayo, Aminatta Forna, Taiye Selasi, and Leila Aboulela, and positions them as chroniclers of African immigrant experiences.
The book inspires critical readings of these writers' works by revealing emerging trends in women's literature as they are being determined and redefined by immigration. As transnational subjects, the writers engage various meanings of mobility and exhibit innovative aesthetic styles; they create awareness on gender identities and transformations, constructions of home and belonging, as well as the politics of citizenship in the hostland. The book also highlights the importance of reverse migrations and performance returns to the homeland as an expression of human desire for home and belonging, and taken as a whole, it enhances our understanding of how migration and transnational existence are (re)shaping immigrant subjects.
This book will be of interest to scholars, students, and researchers of African Diaspora literatures and gender studies, who will find this book beneficial for investigating critical trends, approaches to transnational literature, and for comprehending the diasporic burdens that transnational immigrants bear.
About the Author: 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).