West African Women in the Diaspora: Narratives of Other Spaces, Other Selves

This book examines fictional works by women authors who have left their homes in West Africa and now live as members of the diaspora.

In recent years a compelling array of critically acclaimed fiction by women in the West African diaspora has shifted the direction of the African novel away from post-colonial themes of nationhood, decolonization and cultural authenticity, and towards explorations of the fluid and shifting constructions of identity in transnational spaces. Drawing on works by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Buchi Emecheta, Ama Ata Aidoo, Sefi Atta, Chika Unigwe and Taiye Selasie, this book interrogates the ways in which African diaspora women’s fiction portrays the realities of otherness, hybridity and marginalized existence of female subjects beyond Africa’s borders. Overall, the book demonstrates that life in the diaspora is an uncharted journey of expanded opportunities along with paradoxical realities of otherness.

Providing a vivid and composite portrait of African women’s experiences in the diasporic landscape, this book will be of interest to researchers of migration and diaspora topics, and African, women’s and world literature.