The Book Club Chapter: January & Augustus’s Secret Writing Prompt
The Book ClubWAS THERE A dignified way to happen upon your dead father’s lover? If so,I imagined it wasn’t blurting…
Sand, Sea, and a Pair of Labs
The Labradors “SWEAR YOU CAN do this, January,” Anya was saying as I zoomed out of town. “If I promise
“Gus’s Side of the Street”),
The Mouth THE WORST PART of being college rivals with Gus Everett? Probably the fact that I wasn’t sure he
Meet Cute or Meet Catastrophe?
The Pete-Cute I AWOKE, HEAD THROBBING, to a text from Anya: Hey, babycakes! Wanted to make sure you got my
The Ferlin’s Secret
I WASN’T READY TO look through the rest of the house, so I settled down at the table to write.
The Sceptic and the Sweetheart(beach read)
I HAVE A FATAL flaw.I like to think we all do. Or at least that makes it easier for me
Forgive Your Mother? Memory, Redemption, and the Sense of an Ending
Homegoing exemplifies how the history of institutionalized racism scripts Black American lives like a preordained fate similar, but also crucially
“The Gnarled Fingers of Fate”: Curse Temporalities and the Question of Agency
In 1913, W.E.B. Du Bois commissioned the artist Meta Fuller to produce a sculpture in celebration of the 50th anniversary
“An Accumulation of Time”: Writing Time as History
Homegoing is not primarily invested in aptly conveying the horrors of chattel slavery. Instead, the novel aims to capture a
The Other Problem of History: What Cannot Be Represented
As Dalley states in his study of the postcolonial historical novel, “just as contests over the meaning of history forced
The Problem of History: Historiography’s Imperial Legacies
Two-thirds into Gyasi’s debut novel, a middle-aged history teacher named Yaw finds himself questioned by a class of schoolboys. The
Historical Fiction Is “Having a Moment”
Listing Yaa Gyasi, Yvonne Owuor, Colson Whitehead, Chimamanda Adichie, and Peter Kimani as examples, historian Dan Magaziner notes in an
A Painful Notion of Time Conveying Black Temporality in Yaa Gyasi’s Homegoing
“History clings to our skin. Somehow we must remember that we remember differently.”Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi”One must return to the site.
This Shared Space of Africanness”: The Hair Salon as Afropolitan Heterotopia
Americanah is a diasporic novel that explicitly negotiates different Black epistemologies. While acceding to the constitutive force of an afterlife
“An Unapologetic Love Story”: Adichie’s Gendered Romance with Africa
“An Unapologetic Love Story”: Adichie’s Gendered Romance with AfricaAdichie herself has called Americanah an “unapologetic” love story, and it is
“An American Pathology”: Reading Americanah as Quest Romance
As Adichie remarked in an interview about the novel: “I am more or less expected, or maybe permitted, to
“A Bitter Americanizing”: Gendered Violence in the Aftermath of Slavery
Americanah is part of a discourse that diversifies notions of Blackness in the diaspora. This is what Goyal asserts when
”True from Experience”: Reception and the Realness of Racialization
Writing about the 19th-century realist novel in The Bourgeois, Franco Moretti argues that “description as a form was not neutral
You Can’t Write an Honest Novel About Race in This Country
Reading for RaceBoth in terms of style and content, the Washington Times opinion piece resembles Ifemelu’s successful race blog in
Independent Women Romance, Return, and Pan-African Feminism in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Americanah
”Since I must not all the same allow you to look at the future through rose coloured glasses, you should
In the Swirl of Other People’s Stories
Toward an Ethics of ListeningBenjamin develops his Angel of History – the historical materialist view of history – apropos the
Voices Cut Out of the Past Into the Present”
Blackness in Diaspora TimeThe ambiguity of its metahistorical purport notwithstanding, Open City provides a staunch critique of totalizing aspirations of
“To Experience the Pain Afresh”
Metahistory and the Circling Movement of MelancholiaCompared to the other novels I discuss in this book, Open City addresses the
”To Trace Out a Story”: Narrating Movement and the Movement of Narrative
With its vast array of historico-ontological and metaphorical connotations, movement can easily be identified as a master trope of the
Chapter II Going Through The Motions Movement, Metahistory, and the Spectacle of Suffering in Teju Cole’s Open City
Chapter II Going Through The Motions Movement, Metahistory, and the Spectacle of Suffering in Teju Cole’s Open City”[L]iterature, like psychoanalysis,
Conclusion: The Challenges of Afropolitan World Making
Objectively, the global moment of Afropolitanism affords a greater visibility to people of African descent, be it in the world
Making black history (CHAPTER 1.3)
argues that Black culture and identity have been quite thoroughly investigated in spatial terms, focusing on notions such as dispersal
Making black history (CHAPTER 1.2)
1.2 The Extranationality of African LiteratureAfrican literature has often been defined in terms of national or nationalist literature and interpreted
Making black history (CHAPTER 1)
Chapter I Introduction – Writing Race in the Moment of Afropolitanism”We all know the truth: more connects us than separates
SUMMER 1980
SUMMER 1980IN THE MONTHS AFTER LEARNING SHE WOULD BE JOINING THE ASTRO-naut corps, Joan did three things.First, she gave notice