At Home in Diaspora: Black International Writing

Description

In At Home in Diaspora, Wendy W. Walters investigates the work of Chester Himes, Michelle Cliff, and other twentieth-century black international writers who have lived in and written from countries they do not call home. Walters suggests that in the absence of a recoverable land of origin, the idea of diaspora comes to represent a home that is not singular or exclusionary. Contents Introduction: Diaspora Consciousness and Literary Expression Part I. The Fact of Slavery 1. "On the Clifflike Margins of Many Cultures": Richard Wright's Travels 2. The Postcolonial as Post-Enlightenment: Michelle Cliff and the Genealogies of History Part II. From Discrimination and Insult to Homes in Diaspora 3. Harlem on My Mind: Exile and Community in Chester Himes's Detective Fiction 4. "A Landmark in a Foreign Land": Simon Njami's Parisian Scenes 5. History's Dispersals: Caryl Phillips's Chorus of the Common Memory Epilogue Acknowledgments Notes Works Cited Index A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W Y