African Identities

<p>This fascinating and well researched study explores the meaning generated by `Africa' and `Blackness' throughout the century.<br> Using literary texts, autobiography, ethnography, and historical documents, <em>African Identities</em> discusses how ideas of Africa as an origin, as a cultural whole, or as a complicated political problematic, emerge as signifiers for analysis of modernity, nationhood and racial difference.<br> Kanneh provides detailed readings of a range of literary texts, including novels by:<br> * Toni Morrison<br> * Alice Walker<br> * Gloria Naylor<br> * Ngugi Wa Thiong'o<br> * Chinua Achebe<br> * and V.S. Naipaul.<br> For anyone interested in literature, history, anthropology, political writing, feminist or cultural analysis, this book opens up new areas of thought across disciplines.</p> Introduction. 1. The Meaning of Africa: Texts and Histories 2. 'Coming Home': Pan-Africanisms and National Identities 3. Remembered Landscapes: African-American Appropriations of Africa 4. Crossing Borders: Race, Sexuality and the Body Afterword. Bibliography.