The New African Diaspora

by Isidore Okpewho, Nkiru Nzegwu

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780253220950
Publisher:	Indiana University Press
Publication date:	08/26/2009
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	544
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.30(h) x 1.40(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Isidore Okpewho is Distinguished Professor of the Humanities at Binghamton University. He is editor (with Carole Boyce Davies and Ali A. Mazrui) of The African Diaspora (IUP, 1998) and author of African Oral Literature (IUP, 1992) and Once Upon a Kingdom (IUP, 1998).

Nkiru Nzegwu is Professor and Chair of Africana Studies at Binghamton University. She is author of Family Matters: Feminist Concepts in African Philosophy of Culture.

Table of Contents

Preface and Acknowledgments

Part 1. Overviews

1. Introduction: Can We "Go Home Again"?
Isidore Okpewho

2. Diaspora Dialogues: Engagements Between Africa and Its Diasporas
Paul Tiyambe Zeleza

Part 2. Leaving Home

3. Togo on My Mind
Adzele K. Jones

4. "I, Too, Want to Be a Big Man": The Making of a Haitian "Boat People"
Georges E. Fouron

5. Africa's Migration Brain Drain: Factors Contributing to the Mass Emigration of Africa's Elite to the West
Amadu Jacky Kaba

Part 3. Relocation and Redefinition

6. "The West Is Cold": Experiences of Ghanaian Performers in England and the United States
James Burns

7. Migration and Bereavement: How Ghanaian Migrants Cope in the United Kingdom
Helen Anin-Boateng

8. Acculturation and the Health of Black Immigrants in the United States
Florence M. Margai

9. Socio-Legal Barriers to the Full Citizenship of Recent African Immigrants in Canada: Some Preliminary Thoughts
Obiora Chinedu Okafor

10. The Effects of Immigration and Refugee Policies on Africans in the United States: From the Civil Rights Movement to the War on Terrorism
Cassandra R. Veney

11. Immigrants and the American System of Justice: Perspectives of African and Caribbean Blacks
John A. Arthur

12. Africans Abroad: Comparative Perspectives on America's Post-Colonial Africans
Baffour K. Takyi

13. Questions of Identity Among African Immigrants in America
Msia Kibona Clark

Part 4. A Measure of Success

14. Immigration and African Diaspora Women Artists
Nkiru Nzegwu

15. Emerging Communities: The Religious Life of New African Immigrants in the United States
Jacob K. Olupona and Regina Gemignani

16. The Orisha Rescue Mission
Donald Cosentino

17. Redefining "Africa" in the Diaspora with New Media Technologies
Azuka Nzegwu

Part 5. Transnational Perspectives

18. Resisting "Race": Organizing African Transnational Identities in the United States
Jill M. Humphries

19. African Video, Film Cinema, and Cultural Repackaging in the Diaspora
Folu F. Ogundimu

20. Excess Luggage: Nigerian Films and the World of Immigrants
Akin Adesokan

21. From the New Diaspora and the Continent: African American Return Figurations
Joseph McLaren

22. Self, Place, and Identity in Two Generations of West African Immigrant Women Memoirs: Emecheta's Head Above Water and Danquah's Willow Weep for Me
F. Odun Balogun

23. Language, Memory, and the Transnational: Art of Wosene Worke Kosrof
Andrea E. Frohne

24. Out Beyond Our Borders: Literary Travelers of the TransDiaspora
Sandra Jackson-Opoku

25. The Guyana Diaspora and Homeland Conflict Resolution
Perry Mars

26. The Ontological Imperative for the New African Diaspora
Adeolu Ademoyo

List of Contributors

Index

What People are Saying About This

"The New African Diaspora is a follow-up to Okpewho, Carole Davies, and Ali Mazrui's edited collection The African Diaspora: African Origins and New World Identities (CH, Feb'00, 37-3466). The latter volume concentrated on the forced migrations of Africans to the Americas; the present volume investigates the more recent—and more voluminous and voluntary—migrations of Africans. Editors Okpewho and Nzegwu are renowned African scholars based in the US (SUNY Binghamton), and the overwhelming majority of the contributions examine the immigration of various groups of Africans to the US. There are a few exceptions. One essay, for example, looks at the experiences of Haitian 'boat people,' and another focuses on the ways in which Ghanaian migrants in the UK cope with bereavement. The 26 essays are organized into five sections. In the first section ('Overviews'), Okpewho and Paul Tiyambe Zeleza theorize 'diaspora' and examine (the sometimes tense) 'diaspora dialogues.' Summing Up: Highly recommended... All levels/libraries. —Choice"

Universityof Wisconsin, Madison - Tejumola Olaniyan

Capacious in its thematic and disciplinary breadth of coverage of this issue.

Temple University - Molefi Asante

"Provocative, powerful, and prescient, coming right in time to be a guide to an entirely new discourse on the African diaspora."

University of Wisconsin, Madison - Tejumola Olaniyan

"Capacious in its thematic and disciplinary breadth of coverage of this issue."

A. Ejikeme

The New African Diaspora is a follow-up to Okpewho, Carole Davies, and Ali Mazrui's edited collection The African Diaspora: African Origins and New World Identities (CH, Feb'00, 37-3466). The latter volume concentrated on the forced migrations of Africans to the Americas; the present volume investigates the more recent—and more voluminous and voluntary—migrations of Africans. Editors Okpewho and Nzegwu are renowned African scholars based in the US (SUNY Binghamton), and the overwhelming majority of the contributions examine the immigration of various groups of Africans to the US. There are a few exceptions. One essay, for example, looks at the experiences of Haitian 'boat people,' and another focuses on the ways in which Ghanaian migrants in the UK cope with bereavement. The 26 essays are organized into five sections. In the first section ('Overviews'), Okpewho and Paul Tiyambe Zeleza theorize 'diaspora' and examine (the sometimes tense) 'diaspora dialogues.' Summing Up: Highly recommended... All levels/libraries. —Choice

A. Ejikeme]]>

The New African Diaspora is a follow-up to Okpewho, Carole Davies, and Ali Mazrui's edited collection The African Diaspora: African Origins and New World Identities (CH, Feb'00, 37-3466). The latter volume concentrated on the forced migrations of Africans to the Americas; the present volume investigates the more recent—and more voluminous and voluntary—migrations of Africans. Editors Okpewho and Nzegwu are renowned African scholars based in the US (SUNY Binghamton), and the overwhelming majority of the contributions examine the immigration of various groups of Africans to the US. There are a few exceptions. One essay, for example, looks at the experiences of Haitian 'boat people,' and another focuses on the ways in which Ghanaian migrants in the UK cope with bereavement. The 26 essays are organized into five sections. In the first section ('Overviews'), Okpewho and Paul Tiyambe Zeleza theorize 'diaspora' and examine (the sometimes tense) 'diaspora dialogues.' Summing Up: Highly recommended... All levels/libraries. —Choice

Editorial Reviews

"The New African Diaspora is a follow-up to Okpewho, Carole Davies, and Ali Mazrui's edited collection The African Diaspora: African Origins and New World Identities (CH, Feb'00, 37-3466). The latter volume concentrated on the forced migrations of Africans to the Americas; the present volume investigates the more recent—and more voluminous and voluntary—migrations of Africans. Editors Okpewho and Nzegwu are renowned African scholars based in the US (SUNY Binghamton), and the overwhelming majority of the contributions examine the immigration of various groups of Africans to the US. There are a few exceptions. One essay, for example, looks at the experiences of Haitian 'boat people,' and another focuses on the ways in which Ghanaian migrants in the UK cope with bereavement. The 26 essays are organized into five sections. In the first section ('Overviews'), Okpewho and Paul Tiyambe Zeleza theorize 'diaspora' and examine (the sometimes tense) 'diaspora dialogues.' Summing Up: Highly recommended... All levels/libraries. —Choice"—A. Ejikeme, Trinity University, July 2010

". . . engaging, thought-provoking, and wide-ranging . . . Highly recommended.July 2010"—Choice

"The New African Diaspora captures one of the intellectual passions of a scholar with wide knowledge and expertise in African oral literatures who has maintained a consistent appreciation for and understanding of the aesthetic and material production of African peoples in the African Diaspora: this has to be acknowledged, recognized, and applauded."—African Studies Review

"[The] authors provide a window onto the challenges these new immigrants face in leaving their homes and adapting to their new host environments, as well as the contributions they have made, particularly in the arts.23.3 2010"—Journal of Refugee Studies

"Capacious in its thematic and disciplinary breadth of coverage of this issue."—Tejumola Olaniyan, University of Wisconsin, Madison

"Provocative, powerful, and prescient, coming right in time to be a guide to an entirely new discourse on the African diaspora."—Molefi Asante, Temple University

From the Publisher

The New African Diaspora captures one of the intellectual passions of a scholar with wide knowledge and expertise in African oral literatures who has maintained a consistent appreciation for and understanding of the aesthetic and material production of African peoples in the African Diaspora: this has to be acknowledged, recognized, and applauded.

African Studies Review

[The] authors provide a window onto the challenges these new immigrants face in leaving their homes and adapting to their new host environments, as well as the contributions they have made, particularly in the arts.23.3 2010

Journal of Refugee Studies

. . . engaging, thought-provoking, and wide-ranging . . . Highly recommended.July 2010

Choice

The New African Diaspora is a follow-up to Okpewho, Carole Davies, and Ali Mazrui's edited collection The African Diaspora: African Origins and New World Identities (CH, Feb'00, 37-3466). The latter volume concentrated on the forced migrations of Africans to the Americas; the present volume investigates the more recent—and more voluminous and voluntary—migrations of Africans. Editors Okpewho and Nzegwu are renowned African scholars based in the US (SUNY Binghamton), and the overwhelming majority of the contributions examine the immigration of various groups of Africans to the US. There are a few exceptions. One essay, for example, looks at the experiences of Haitian 'boat people,' and another focuses on the ways in which Ghanaian migrants in the UK cope with bereavement. The 26 essays are organized into five sections. In the first section ('Overviews'), Okpewho and Paul Tiyambe Zeleza theorize 'diaspora' and examine (the sometimes tense) 'diaspora dialogues.' Summing Up: Highly recommended... All levels/libraries. —Choice

A. Ejikeme