The New York Times reports that since 1990 more Africans have voluntarily relocated to the United States and Canada than had been forcibly brought here before the slave trade ended in 1807. The key reason for these migrations has been the collapse of social, political, economic, and educational structures in their home countries, which has driven Africans to seek security and self-realization in the West. This lively and timely collection of essays takes a look at the new immigrant experience. It traces the immigrants' progress from expatriation to arrival and covers the successes as well as problems they have encountered as they establish their lives in a new country. The contributors, most immigrants themselves, use their firsthand experiences to add clarity, honesty, and sensitivity to their discussions of the new African diaspora.
This is an ambitious and brilliant book by one of Africa''s leading diaspora intellectuals. A combination of a researcher''s field notes, a travelogue and personal memoir, it is unusual in African writing. It is the first book by an African scholar to take us on such an amazing analytical and narrative journey in search of African diasporas around the world from Latin America to the Caribbean, Europe and Asia. It is filled with analytical insights, captivating stories, and intriguing observations on the complex histories and experiences of African diasporas, their triumphs and tragedies, perils and possibilities, and their enduring struggles for belonging, for their humanity. Its inimitable passions are leavened by engaging humor, its scholarly analyses by a novelist''s eye for local context and color. The author seeks to address the perplexing question of what it means to be a person of African descent living outside of the African continent. He offers the reader fascinating and richly textured portraits and surveys of the diversity of diasporic lives as well as the abiding connections of the diaspora condition. What makes this book particularly gripping are the multilayered narratives, the braided stories and explorations of African diasporic lives across many contexts and places as well as the author''s own life during the period of his travels from 2006 to 2009. Also skillfully interwoven are the author''s daily encounters and observations, information and reflections from interviewees from all walks of life, and the larger structural contexts of diaspora struggles for enfranchisement and empowerment. For all the gruesome exclusions, vulnerabilities, and marginalities African diasporas have suffered in their various abodes, this is a remarkable tale of diasporic agency, a celebration of their lasting contributions to the construction of the modern world in all its manifestations. This book is part of the African World Series, edited by Toyin Falola, Jacob and Frances Sanger Mossiker Chair in the Humanities, University of Texas at Austin. "Paul Tiyambe Zeleza has been thinking about and living with pan-Africanism and Diaspora before its second wave of popularity and has done the experiential and intellectual work. In Search of African Diasporas: Testimonies and Encounters takes us with him as he documents the existence of our various journeys and arrivals, and the ways we re-create and redefine an African world wherever we are. As we read this book, we are able to travel with Zeleza from Venezuela to Oman, across the Caribbean and throughout Europe, getting the flavors and colors of the African Diaspora in myriad locations." -- Carole Boyce Davies, Professor of English and Africana Studies, Cornell University, General Editor, Encyclopedia of the African Diaspora "For over a century, we have been flooded with Black American narratives of returning to Africa. Paul Tiyambe Zeleza, a distinguished African scholar, reverses the poles and seeks to discover the global diaspora--the descendants of slaves, migrant laborers, refugees, fortune seekers. Part memoir, part travelogue, part history, part critical interrogation, Zeleza has given us a brilliant compendium of richly detailed and astute insights into how contemporary black intellectuals and activists understand racism and blackness, and how the black world sees itself, its relationship to Africa, and the future. From Latin America to the Arab world, Europe to the sub-continent, Zeleza''s fascinating journey takes place against a backdrop of globalization, growing divisions between rich and poor, ever greater displacement, heightened nationalism, and a genuine debate over the effectiveness of global black unity. Yet, as with Richard Wrights traveling observations a half-century earlier, Zeleza never avoids the hard questions or the difficult truths. A stunning achievement." -- Robin D. G. Kelley, Professor of American Studies and Ethnicity, University of Southern California "In Search of African Diasporas offers a landmark contribution to the growing scholarly inquest into the African Diaspora. Based on years of travel, discussion and reading, Paul Tiyambe Zeleza presents a veritable tour-de-force, generating an utterly unique account that fuses his travelogue of a modern Diasporic odyssey with a penetrating analysis that both interprets the Diaspora''s larger meaning, while also inhabiting its migratory flows. Highly readable, perceptively written, geographically broad, and refreshingly critical, Zeleza''s 21st century rendition of the timeless''travel diary'' is sure to set the bar for those who are attempting to grapple with questions of identity, culture, and society in a fast-paced world of global change. Yet, anchored in history, this book is as much an artifact of the African Diaspora, as it is a current reflection on this persistently enduring modern phenomenon." -- Ben Vinson III, Herbert Baxter Adams Professor of Latin American History, Johns Hopkins University, Author of Flight: A Tuskegee Airman in Mexico, and African Slavery in Latin America and the Caribbean "A groundbreaking and powerful look at the African Diaspora in the world. Paul Tiyambe Zeleza''s existentialist commentary on multiple African Diasporas reminds the reader of Richard Wright''s Black Power in reverse: sincere, intimate and controversial. The novelistic descriptions of people and places also recalls some of the best travel narratives of Ryszard Kapuściński." -- Manthia Diawara, Professor of Comparative Literature and Africana Studies, New York University, author of African Film: New Forms of Aesthetics and Politics "Africa''s memory and relationship with its diaspora is a troubled one, a mixture of ignorance, stereotype, sentimentality, alienation, admiration and distortions. All this is compounded by the fact that Africans have themselves not sought direct knowledge of its Diasporas. Paul Tiyambe Zeleza''s book is an authoritative contribution to the initiation of Africa''s own exploration of whatever happened to its descendants outside the continent and how they are faring today. It is a tour de force that combines the aesthetic sensibilities and descriptive force of a novelist and essayist that Zeleza is and the scholarly authority of a renowned African historian. The result is a fascinating encounter with Africa''s Diaspora in the many places he visited. It is a gripping distillation of anecdote, personal reflections and analysis. Zeleza is an erudite traveler and thoroughly reliable guide whose account opens new vistas to the lives of Africa''s dispersed descendants. The book is a must-read for anyone who seeks to understand the complex outcomes of the Presence Africaine in the world." -- Professor Thandika Mkandawire, former Director of the United Nations Research Institute for Social Development, Chair in African Development at the London School of Economics, University of London "...an engaging global history of African diasporas...A fine read for lower-level undergraduates first encountering diaspora studies...Summing Up: Highly recommended" -- CHOICE Magazine "...Zeleza writes with admirable clarity...in choosing to share the interactions of his fieldwork in this travel diary, Zeleza has produced a bold, challenging work..." -- Studies in Travel Writing
This anthology presents a new study of the worldwide African diaspora by bringing together diverse, multidisciplinary scholarship to address the connectedness of Black subject identities, experiences, issues, themes, and topics, applying them dynamically to diverse locations of the Blackworld—Latin America, the Caribbean, Africa, and the United States. The book underscores three dimensions of African diaspora study. First is a global approach to the African diaspora, showing how globalism underscores the distinctive role that Africa plays in contributing to world history. Second is the extension of African diaspora study in a geographical scope to more robust inclusions of not only the African continent but also to uncharted paths and discoveries of lesser-known diaspora experiences and identities in Latin America and the Caribbean. Third is the illustration of universal unwritten cultural representations of humanities in the African diasporas that show the distinctive humanities’ disciplinary representations of Black diaspora imaginaries and subjectivities. The contributing authors inductively apply these themes to focus the reader’s attention on contemporary localized issues and historical arenas of the African diaspora. They engage their findings to critically analyze the broader norms and dimensions that characterize a given set of interrelated criteria that have come to establish parameters that increasingly standardize African diaspora studies.
Patrick Manning follows the multiple routes that brought Africans and people of African descent into contact with one another and with Europe, Asia, and the Americas. In joining these stories, he shows how the waters of the Atlantic Ocean, the Mediterranean Sea, and the Indian Ocean fueled dynamic interactions among black communities and cultures and how these patterns resembled those of a number of connected diasporas concurrently taking shaping across the globe. Manning begins in 1400 and traces the connections that enabled Africans to mutually identify and hold together as a global community. He tracks discourses on race, changes in economic circumstance, the evolving character of family life, and the growth of popular culture. He underscores the profound influence that the African diaspora had on world history and demonstrates the inextricable link between black migration and the rise of modernity. Inclusive and far-reaching, The African Diaspora proves that the advent of modernity cannot be fully understood without taking the African peoples and the African continent into account.
Through the research and experiences of 16 scholars whose native homes span ten countries, this collection shifts the discussion of belonging and affinity within Africa and its diaspora toward local perceptions and the ways in which these notions are asserted or altered.
This landmark collection of newly commissioned essays explores how diverse women of African descent have practiced religion as part of the work of their ordinary and sometimes extraordinary lives. By examining women from North America, the Caribbean, Brazil, and Africa, the contributors identify the patterns that emerge as women, religion, and diaspora intersect, mapping fresh approaches to this emergent field of inquiry. The volume focuses on issues of history, tradition, and the authenticity of African-derived spiritual practices in a variety of contexts, including those where memories of suffering remain fresh and powerful. The contributors discuss matters of power and leadership and of religious expressions outside of institutional settings. The essays study women of Christian denominations, African and Afro-Caribbean traditions, and Islam, addressing their roles as spiritual leaders, artists and musicians, preachers, and participants in bible-study groups. This volume's transnational mixture, along with its use of creative analytical approaches, challenges existing paradigms and summons new models for studying women, religions, and diasporic shiftings across time and space.
There has been much recent celebration of the success of African 'civil society' in forging global connections through an ever-growing diaspora. Against the background of such celebrations, this innovative book sheds light on the diasporic networks - 'home associations' - whose economic contributions are being used to develop home. Despite these networks being part of the flow of migrants' resources back to Africa that now outweighs official development assistance, the relationship between the flow of capital and social and political change are still poorly understood. Looking in particular at Cameroon and Tanzania, the authors examine the networks of migrants that have been created by making 'home associations' international. They argue that claims in favour of enlarging 'civil society' in Africa must be placed in the broader context of the political economy of migration and wider debates concerning ethnicity and belonging. They demonstrate both that diasporic development is distinct from mainstream development, and that it is an uneven historical process in which some 'homes' are better placed to take advantage of global connections than others. In doing so, the book engages critically with the current enthusiasm among policy-makers for treating the African diaspora as an untapped resource for combating poverty. Its focus on diasporic networks, rather than private remittances, reveals the particular successes and challenges diasporas face in acting as a group, not least in mobilising members of the diaspora to fulfill obligations to home.
The African diaspora is arguably the most important event in modern African history. From the fifteenth century to the present, millions of Africans have been dispersed -- many of them forcibly, others driven by economic need or political persecution--to other continents, creating large communities with African origins living outside their native lands. The majority of these communities are in North America. This historic displacement has meant that Africans are irrevocably connected to economic and political developments in the West and globally. Among the known legacies of the diaspora are slavery, colonialism, racism, poverty, and underdevelopment, yet the ways in which these same factors worked to spur the scattering of Africans are not fully understood -- by those who were part of this migration or by scholars, historians, and policymakers. In this definitive study of the diaspora in North America, Toyin Falola offers a causal history of the western dispersion of Africans and its effects on the modern world. Reengaging old and familiar debates and framing new ones that enrich the discourse surrounding Africa, Falola isolates the thread, running nearly six centuries, that connects the history of slavery, the transatlantic slave trade, and current migrations. A boon to scholars and policymakers and accessible to the general reader, the book explores diverse narratives of migration and shows that the cultures that migrated from Africa to the Americas have the capacity to unite and create a new pan-Africanist movement within the globalized world. Toyin Falola is the Jacob and Frances Sanger Mossiker Chair in the Humanities and University Distinguished Teaching Professor at the University of Texas at Austin. He is the 2011 recipient of the Distinguished Africanist Award from the African Studies Association and serves as the vice president of the International Scientific Committee of the UNESCO Slave Route Project. His previous books published by the University of Rochester Press include The Power of African Cultures and Nationalism and African Intellectuals.
As Africans and descendants of slaves have sought to expand an understanding of their history, focus on the African diaspora--the global dispersal of a people and their culture--has increased. African studies have assumed a prominent place in historical scholarship, and a growing number of non-African scholars has helped revise a discipline established over several decades. The six contributions in this volume were compiled as a result of the thirtieth Walter Prescott Webb Memorial Lecture held at the University of Texas at Arlington. The contributors, nationally recognized in the field, represent a collaborative analysis of the African diaspora from African and non-African perspectives. Joseph E. Harris discusses how the African diaspora influences the economies, politics, and social dynamics of both the homeland and the host country. Alusine Jalloh reconstructs the mercantile activities of the Fula in colonial Sierra Leone. Joseph E. Inikori argues that slavery and serfdom in medieval Europe provide greater insights into precolonial Africa than do standard New World comparisons. Colin A. Palmer examines the power relationships that undergirded American slavery in order to better understand the enslaved. Douglas B. Chambers reveals the enduring influence of Africanisms in the historical development of Afro-Virginian slave culture. And Dale T. Graden looks at African slavery in Salvador, Bahia, Brazil between 1848 and 1856, focusing on the Bahian elite and their response to slave resistance.
