Dialogues Across Diasporas focuses on the shared historical legacies of members of the Africana and Latina diasporas, and the cultural impact of the African diaspora in the Americas. This book seeks to emphasize connections rather than divisions among different migratory ethnic communities via a reconfiguration of borders and ethnic identities. This collection of essays has three major goals: first, to foreground shared themes and strategies in the literary productions of women of Africana and Latina/o descent; second, to highlight the importance of the arts for community activism within shared diasporic spaces; and third, to illustrate the potential of artistic and activist collaborations among women from both groups across disciplinary, political, national, and ethnic divides. Dialogues across Diasporas is divided into three sections. The first section provides a theoretical overview of diasporic migrations, politics, and identities. It argues that diverse diasporas can unite around shared political and cultural experiences such as converting contested spaces into communities and resisting rhetorics of exclusion. The second section demonstrates the diverse ways in which migratory women and daughters of the diaspora frame their histories, lived experiences, and different forms of knowledge via poetry, short stories, academic essays, and other art forms. The third section focuses on women's activism, suggesting opportunities for collaboration among and between diverse diasporic communities.

Diasporas in Dialogue is an indispensable guide for those leading or participating in dialogue processes, especially in ethnically diverse communities. The text offers both a theoretical and practical framework for dialogue, providing insight into the needs, assets and challenges of working in this capacity. The first book to offer structured processes for dialogue with refugee communities - demonstrates how diaspora communities can be engaged in dialogue that heals, reconciles and builds peace Relates the story of the Portland Diaspora Dialogue Project, a remarkable collaboration between university researchers and African community activists committed to helping newly arrived refugees Written accessibly to provide practitioners, academics, and community members with a simple and cogent account of how, step by step, the process of healing communities and re-building can begin Published at a critical time in the face of the worldwide refugee crisis, and offers helpful frameworks and practical tools for dialogue in situations where individuals and communities are displaced

The author stages a series of conversations with prominent writers and artists to assess how to define cultural identity in the modern world and age of mass media and global migration. His premise is that conventional cultural identity is not static.

When Africans dialogue with citizens of the United States of America, the continent in its parts through the perspectives of nationals engage each other in conversations. The conversations flow like streams in many directions yielding fruits of different sorts. It is possible for a systematic observer-researcher to fish out important themes and ideas. This book, Diaspora and Imagined Nationality: USA-Africa Dialogue and Cyberframing Nigerian Nationhood, traces the hegemony of Western ideas in postings and conversations online. In the process it frames Nigeria''s presence online as a postcolonial nation (or nation space) through various communicative activities of citizens at home and in the diaspora. These communicative activities and political activism have led to a wide range of scholarly interrogations and interventions in media, communication, and migration studies against the backdrop of globalization, democratization, and modernization theories. It has been amply documented that communication and social interaction produce ideas that can be evaluated along the lines of deliberative democracy. These approaches have produced outcomes without the benefit of the complex debates, dialogues, and disagreements that come with popular participation and creation of variegated knowledge by a collective. As part of the conclusion, the study posits that the concept of nationhood is not fixed but is a symbolic construct that evolves through unstructured conversations, sharing, and intense debates. This book navigates the unstructured virtual terrain of dialogues, debates, and seas of information available online. One of the objectives of this book is to bring together the multiple voices and transitions of individuals who left their home-countries to new host-communities by attending to one of the fruits of this technology-driven mode of communication and knowledge production. Diaspora and Imagined Nationality does not pretend to be a universal representation of all Nigerians in the diaspora; it instead focuses on what a small group of intellectuals of African descent and their friends talk and gripe about, and how these themes affect the larger collective. This book is part of the African World Series, edited by Toyin Falola, Jacob and Frances Sanger Mossiker Chair in the Humanities, University of Texas at Austin. "The world wide web''s impact on global communication has been phenomenal and it is becoming increasingly more so as technology advances. As a result of this, institutions and individuals are able to share ideas on the internet. The Nigerian Community is not immune to this activity and this brilliant book examines various issues that are developing from online discussions amongst Nigerians in the diaspora. Thus, Odutola explores how and why the notion of National Identity plays a significant role in online conversations. For him, Cyberframing Nigerian nationhood has created a radical new way of discussing the idea of the Nation as it has also allowed marginalised communities and people to (re) tell their own stories and create their own concepts of National identity without fear of being subjugated or challenged by dominant groups. Since the issue of National identity is now in cyberspace, it allows for endless definitions and discussions of this already complex concept and raises such question like ''Whose National Identity is it anyway?'' Overall, it is remarkable to see how communities in the diaspora have found their voices in their new ''imagined spaces'' on line to make ideas, discussions and projects become real." -- Ekua Andrea Agha "Among other things, information and telecommunications technology has made it possible to expand the meaning of community without propinquity. This book shows that despite the ongoing Diasporization of Africans as a result of the world''s most recent encounters with globalization, epistemic communities are in formation. These communities are composed of people who remain concerned about their countries of origin, and those who study those countries, engaged in conversation with people located there on matters of common concern and interest. The book in particular, considers the nature, forms, content and meanings of conceptualizations of nation, as well as discourses of nationalism by Nigerians at home and abroad, and consequences of these discussions and debates on clarifying what it means to be a nation. It is well-researched, thought-provoking, and constitutes a significant contribution to Nigerian, African, and Communication Studies." -- Mojubaolu Olufunke Okome, Professor, Brooklyn College CUNY "A wonderful read! One of the most original contributions to the cutting-edge body of work on netizenship and the public sphere in Africa. Theoretical acuity meets narrative savvy in Kole Odutola''s brilliant study of the impact of the USA-AfricaDialogue listserv on African studies. This book should be read and reread by all lovers of Africa and knowledge!" -- Professor Pius Adesanmi, Winner, the Penguin Prize for African Writing "Koleade Odutola''s recent book provides an essential scholarly contribution to two areas of digital humanities that one can argue are still under-theorized--Africa''s digitalscape and its relationship with the post-colonial emigres living in the West." -- Africa: Journal of the International African Institute "[A]n essential scholarly contribution to two areas of digital humanities that one can argue are still under-theorized--Africa''s digitalscape and its relationship with the postcolonial emigres living in the West." -- Journal of Africa Featured in The Nation Online, December 2014

This collection brings together new critical approaches to diaspora studies, branching out to areas such as literary studies, visual culture, and museum studies, and explores them in relation to a variety of fictional works, cultural traditions, theoretical paradigms, and geo-political contexts. The innovation of this volume lies in the interplay of both texts and theoretical insights from these different areas of cultural analysis, drawn together to probe diverse manifestations of diaspora while pointing out new directions of critique. Moving between representations of real and imaginary, violent and utopian, past, present and future diasporas, contributors demonstrate the ways in which authors, performers and artists are establishing new modes of representing and imagining diaspora in an increasingly globalised age. Contributions are organised into sections on performance, speculative fiction, city spaces, affective or violent diasporas, and silence and voice. Bringing together these wide-ranging histories, contexts and media allows for dialogue across vastly divergent experiences and representations of diaspora, and opens up a theoretical debate on the changing nature of this field of study.

An erudite collection of critical essays by one of the most respected scholars in African Studies today. An active blogger on The Zeleza Post, from which these essays are drawn, he provides a genuinely critical engagement with Africa's multiple worlds. The collection explores the meaning of the election of a member of the first African in the Diaspora to the presidency of the United States along with a range of essays that analyse the role of Africa and Africans and the interaction of the world with Africa.

Transatlantic, Transcultural, and Transnational Dialogues on Identity, Culture, and Migration analyzes the diasporic experiences of migratory and postcolonial subjects through the lenses of cultural studies, critical race theory, narrative theory, and border studies. These narratives cover the United States, the U.S.-Mexico border, the Hispanophone Caribbean, and the Iberian Peninsula and illustrate a shared diasporic experience across the Atlantic. Through a transatlantic, transcultural, and transnational lens, this volume brings together essays on literature, film, and music from disparate geographic areas: Spain, Cuba and Jamaica, the U.S.-Mexico border, and Colombia. Throughout the volume, the contributors explore intertextual transatlantic dialogues, and migratory experiences of diasporic subjects and queer subjectivities. The chapters also examine the use of language to preserve Latinx culture, colonial and Spanish cultural exchanges, border identities, and race, gender, identity, and cultural production. In turn, these diasporic experiences result from transatlantic, transcultural, and transnational phenomena that converge in a globalized society and aid in questioning the artificial boundaries of nation states.

By its focus on the African immigrant family, Engaging the Diaspora: Migration and African Families carves its own niche on the migration discourse. It brings together the experiences of African immigrant families as defined by various transnational forces. As an interdisciplinary text, Engaging makes a handy reference for scholars and researchers in institutions of higher learning, as well as for community service providers working on diversity issues. It promotes knowledge about Africans in the Diaspora and the African continent through current and relevant case studies. This book enhances learning on the contemporary factors that continue to shape African migrants.