The New African Diaspora

"The New African Diaspora is a follow-up to Okpewho, Carole Davies, and Ali Mazrui's edited collection The African Diaspora: African Origins and New World Identities (CH, Feb'00, 37-3466). The latter volume concentrated on the forced migrations of Africans to the Americas; the present volume investigates the more recent-and more voluminous and voluntary-migrations of Africans. Editors Okpewho and Nzegwu are renowned African scholars based in the US (SUNY Binghamton), and the overwhelming majority of the contributions examine the immigration of various groups of Africans to the US. There are a few exceptions. One essay, for example, looks at the experiences of Haitian 'boat people,' and another focuses on the ways in which Ghanaian migrants in the UK cope with bereavement. The 26 essays are organized into five sections. In the first section ('Overviews'), Okpewho and Paul Tiyambe Zeleza theorize 'diaspora' and examine (the sometimes tense) 'diaspora dialogues.' Summing Up: Highly recommended... All levels/libraries. -Choice"-A. Ejikeme, Trinity University, July 2010
". . . engaging, thought-provoking, and wide-ranging . . . Highly recommended.July 2010"-Choice
"The New African Diaspora captures one of the intellectual passions of a scholar with wide knowledge and expertise in African oral literatures who has maintained a consistent appreciation for and understanding of the aesthetic and material production of African peoples in the African Diaspora: this has to be acknowledged, recognized, and applauded."-African Studies Review
"[The] authors provide a window onto the challenges these new immigrants face in leaving their homes and adapting to their new host environments, as well as the contributions they have made, particularly in the arts.23.3 2010"-Journal of Refugee Studies
"Capacious in its thematic and disciplinary breadth of coverage of this issue."-Tejumola Olaniyan, University of Wisconsin, Madison
"Provocative, powerful, and prescient, coming right in time to be a guide to an entirely new discourse on the African diaspora."-Molefi Asante, Temple University