Ghosts of the African Diaspora: Re-Visioning History, Memory, and Identity

by Joanne Chassot

Overview

The first monograph to investigate the poetics and politics of haunting in African diaspora literature, Ghosts of the African Diaspora: Re-Visioning History, Memory, and Identity examines literary works by five contemporary writers—Fred D’Aguiar, Gloria Naylor, Paule Marshall, Michelle Cliff, and Toni Morrison. Joanne Chassot argues that reading these texts through the lens of the ghost does cultural, theoretical, and political work crucial to the writers’ engagement with issues of identity, memory, and history. Drawing on memory and trauma studies, postcolonial studies, and queer theory, this truly interdisciplinary volume makes an important contribution to the fast-growing field of spectrality studies.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781512601619
Publisher:	Dartmouth College Press
Publication date:	01/02/2018
Series:	Re-Mapping the Transnational: A Dartmouth Series in American Studies
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	247
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

JOANNE CHASSOT is a lecturer in English and American literature at the University of Lausanne, Switzerland.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments • Introduction: Tracing the Ghost • “Voyage through death / to life upon these shores”: Representing the Middle Passage • Dusky Sallys: Re-Visioning the Silences of History • “You best remember them!”: Repossessing the Spirit of Diaspora • “A ghost-life”: Queering the Limits of Identity • Afterword: Learning to Live with Ghosts • Notes • Works Cited • Credits • Index