The Poetics and Politics of Diaspora

This book studies the creative discourse of the modern African diaspora by analyzing poems, novels, essays, hip-hop and dub poetry in the Caribbean, England, Spain, and Colombia. It captures diasporan movement through mutually intersecting axes of dislocation and relocation, and efforts at political group affirmation and settlement, or "location."

Jerome C. Branche is Associate Professor of Latin American Literature and Cultural Studies at the University of Pittsburgh.

Introduction: Malungaje: Toward a Poetics of Diaspora 1. Dislocation and Re/membering: Ndongo and D'Aguiar Write the Middle Passage 2. Dislocation and Double Consciousness in Kamau Brathwaite: The Poet as Guinea-bird 3. Speaking Truth, Speaking Power: Of "Immigrants," Immanence, and Linton Kwesi Johnson's "Street 66" 4. Exile's Half-Life, Exile's Dead End: The Conundrum of Relocation in Equatoguinean Literature 5. Marcando Territorio (Marking Territory): Location as Project and Process in Colombia. Conclusion.