African Migration Narratives

Reviews / Votes

Cajetan Iheka and Jack Taylor's edited collection is a refreshing addition to the scholarship on African migration. Not only does it privilege and represent the dynamics of African migration across different countries in Africa, through its representation of migration from different cultural productions, it emphasizes that to adequately understand an issue that has seemingly defined a people, all systems and genres of cultural production and means of self-representation should be assessed. * AFRICAN STUDIES QUARTERLY * In scope and in analytic rigor, it is indeed a worthy addition to existing studies, unveiling new voices and arts and defining the current state of African diasporic cultural production. * RESEARCH IN AFRICAN LITERATURES * Iheka and Taylor's volume presents a broad and complex picture of African migration and, more importantly, promotes examinations of work that showcases the complexity of race relations in post-colonial societies and humanized images of migrants. * JOURNAL OF REFUGEE STUDIES * It is a point that aptly summarizes the diversity of insightful and rich scholarship on display within African Migration Narratives, a work whose contribution to the fields of African studies, migration studies, and literary studies is invaluable in a time when, in the words of the collection's editors Iheka and Taylor, 'the world faces not a crisis in immigration, but a crisis in our capacity to offer hospitality. * AFRICA IS A COUNTRY * African Migration Narratives carefully differentiates the recent proliferation of migrant writing from earlier modes of expression. The result is a collection of rich essays on important contemporary writers and filmmakers. The collection is timely, considering the migrant crises that concern Africa and its diaspora in significant ways. While it uses some well-known twenty-first century writers, the book also brings to the foreground incredibly creative artists that have largely been ignored in African studies. -- Evan Mwangi, Northwestern University Conscious of the genealogy of migration studies, African Migration Narratives sees itself as a descendant that concentrates on what is now regarded as the new African diaspora. In scope and in analytic rigor, it is indeed a worthy addition to existing studies, unveiling new voices and arts and defining the current state of African diasporic cultural production. * Research in African Literatures *