This seminar is intended to introduce students to the literature of the black diaspora in an effort to provide a comprehensive, though not exhaustive, overview of black literature. We will primarily focus on African American, Caribbean, and African literature to examine differences and similarities within these respective narratives. This class will focus on black migration throughout a host of time periods and spaces. For example, we will interrogate the literary representations of the Atlantic slave trade, African American migration from the South to the North during the Great Migration, while also reading narratives from the Caribbean concerned with charting migration to and from former colonial countries and the estrangement and displacement that emerges as a result. A significant portion of this class will also focus on contemporary migration narratives emerging from Africa and how the encounter with the Western world produces a new sense of identity and self. We will utilize both theoretical and historical approaches to understand the literary representations of black migration. Because this is a seminar on comparative (perhaps better: relational) literature, we will chart similarities and differences in the literary representations of black migrants and migration.
Some of the questions to be addressed are the following: What historical conditions caused the Great Migration and what ideas pushed and pulled blacks to the North? How does this take shape in literature? Given that there has been a “return to the South,” did the North fail at integrating African Americans according to the authors we have under investigation? How does encountering the Western world cause a shift in identity? How do race and racism function in these encounters with the Western world? What factors cause one to leave their homeland and how have these promises been fulfilled or neglected? How does the experience of migration to the United States differ from the migration experience to, say, England or France? How do notions of mobility factor into one sense of the world and oneself? How does perception of one’s homeland shift by traveling abroad and how is this represented in narratives of return? Ultimately, what is the connection between race, subjectivity, and space?
SLO
- To understand the complexity of literature of the black diaspora
- To understand literature in a relational fashion
- Professional development by learning to present at conferences
- Learning how to produce an article/essay ready to submit to an academic journal
Texts
Wilson, August. The Piano Lesson & Gem of the Ocean
Morrison, Toni. Jazz: A Novel
McKay, Claude. Home to Harlem
Dunbar, Paul. Sport of the Gods
Danticat, Edwidge. Breath, Eyes, Memory, A Novel
Cesaire, Aime. Notebook of a Return to the Native Land
Walcott, Derek. Omeros
Kincaid, Jamaica. Lucy
Adiche, Chimamanda Ngozi. The Thing Around Your Neck
Selasi, Taiye. Ghana Must Go: A Novel
Laye, Camara. The Dark Child
Waberi, Abdourahman. Transit: A Novel
Aidoo, Ama Ata. Our Sister Killjoy & Anowa
Mengest, Dinaw. All our Names: A Novel
Phillips, Caryl. The Atlantic Sound
Possible Assignments
2 In class paper presentations (about 8 pages)
15 – 20 page seminar paper
In class discussion