English 133T

Other Readings and Media

McKay, C : Home to Harlem ; Ellison, R : Invisible Man ; Hurston, Z. N.  : Tell My Horse ; Achebe, C : Arrow of God ; Dangarembga, T : Nervous Conditions ; Brodber, E : Louisiana ; Danticat, E : Breath, Eyes, Memory ; Diaz, J : Drown ; Smith, Z : On Beauty ; Adichie, C. N. : Half of a Yellow Sun 

Course Reader includes selections from Dubois, Garvey, Fanon, CLR James, amongst others.

Description

This course will survey prose of the African diaspora in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. We will consider the substance and contingencies of expressions of black global commonality and think about the relationship between politics and aesthetics in African diasporic literature. Lectures will explore such themes as black subjectivity and politics of representation; the dialectical relationship between particular and “universal” black experiences; the influence of black popular cultures on literary form; and the inheritances and innovations of contemporary black writers. If a single major problem haunts the course texts and their juxtapositions it is this: how do artists manage the paradox of radical difference and implicit identity embodied in the term “diaspora”?