A theory of Yere-Wolo : coming-of-age narratives in African diaspora literature

Do verso poético à tomada fílmica: a cinematização de Cahier d’un retour au pays natal de Aimé Césaire / From the Poetic Verse to the Filmic Take: The Cinematization of Aimé Cesaire’s Cahier d’un Retour au Pays Natal

Caligrama Revista de Estudos Românicos ◽

10.17851/2238-3824.25.3.253-275 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 25 (3) ◽

pp. 253

Author(s):

Beatriz D'Angelo Braz ◽

Dennys Silva-Reis

Keyword(s):

African Diaspora ◽

Exploratory Analysis ◽

Film Adaptations ◽

Aime Cesaire ◽

Literary Studies ◽

Feature Film ◽

Diaspora Literature ◽

African Diaspora Literature ◽

Do So

Resumo: Este artigo visa a fazer uma análise exploratória sobre a adaptação de Cahier d’un retour au pays natal (1939), texto de Aimée Césaire (1913-2008), para sua versão audiovisual homônima (2008) realizada por Philippe Bérenger (1960-). Para isso, primeiro, faz-se uma reflexão sobre os elos entre literatura e cinema e, depois, uma análise em cotejo das duas obras. Exploram-se os vínculos com os movimentos da Negritude e do Surrealismo, e com a pouca percorrida trilha das adaptações fílmicas de poemas. Em suma, esta é uma contribuição para os estudos literários do cinema e para os estudos de literatura de expressão francesa negra no Brasil.Palavras-chave: Aimé Césaire, Philippe Bérenger, negritude, poema, filme.Abstract: This article aims at carrying out an exploratory analysis of the adaptation of Cahier d’un retour au pays natal (1939), text written by Aimée Césaire (1913-2008), into the homonymous feature film (2008) directed by Philippe Bérenger (1960-). In order to do so, it first addresses the links between literature and cinema, and then analyses and compares the two pieces. We have also explored the connection to both the Negritude and Surrealistic movements, as well as the lack of film adaptations of poems. Therefore, this is a contribution to literary studies of cinema and to studies of francophone African diaspora literature in Brazil.Keywords: Aimé Césaire, Philippe Bérenger, negritude, poem, film.

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Delphine Fongang, ed. The Postcolonial Subject in Transit: Migration, Borders, and Subjectivity in Contemporary African Diaspora Literature. (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2018). pp. 176.

Ufahamu: A Journal of African Studies ◽

10.5070/f742253961 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 42 (2) ◽

Author(s):

Fouad Mami

Keyword(s):

African Diaspora ◽

Diaspora Literature ◽

Transit Migration ◽

African Diaspora Literature ◽

In Transit

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"One foot on the other side" : suicideality in contemporary African diaspora fiction

10.32469/10355/79485 ◽

2020 ◽

Author(s):

◽

Katelyn Harlin

Keyword(s):

Mental Health ◽

Mental Illness ◽

African Diaspora ◽

The Body ◽

Black Psychology ◽

Diaspora Literature ◽

Medical Discourses ◽

Literary Meaning ◽

Feminist Theories ◽

The Individual

When this dissertation first began to take shape, it was in response to a period of wide reading of African diaspora fiction--my comprehensive exam preparations-- wherein I began noticing the sheer number of suicides I was encountering. After some preliminary research, I was further struck by how little criticism confronted this literary trope in African diaspora texts. In the beginning, I assumed that this phenomenon was the manifestation of the contemporary focus on mental health and mental illness, which while largely a product of Western medicine, neoliberal discourses of self-reliance and Capitalist "self-care" branding, has certainly been circulating globally for a number of years now. Thus, I expected this dissertation to be a discussion of Africana writers' efforts to resist, revise, combine or consolidate these discourses with the cultural, political, and ontological concerns of Blackness, ultimately offering a new, more Africanized method of thinking through mental health and mental illness. In some ways, this proved true; in particular, I believe this is evident and legible through the Ogbanje and abiku fiction discussed in chapter four of this dissertation. However, over time this project outgrew that framework, and efforts to link Black literary suicides to the real world experiences of suicidality and mental illness became at best, specious, and at worst pathologizing. Thus, with mere months before my planned defense, I reconceived of what the work of this project actually is. The primary points that I hope this project makes are as follows: 1. Suicide is a foundational and constitutive trope of what we might call Anglophone African diaspora literatures. 2. Suicide in these texts is experienced on the level of community: by their nature, these suicides subordinate the individual's "right" to life to the collective's hopes for survival. 3. These representations of suicide reflect an Afrocentric, nonlinear conception of time and space. Often, suicides occur because of the belief that another simultaneous reality exists and is accessible through the death of the body. 4. Western, neoliberal tropes of the individual as improvable and perhaps even perfectible through introspection and work have throughout the 60-year scope of this project put pressure on the Afro-centric, collective literary meaning of suicides. 5. Contemporary African diasporic fiction is marked by its willingness to engage with 3 and 4 simultaneously, as ideas that are in tension, but not conflict, and which therefore do not require resolution. 6. Ultimately, African literature operating under what I term suicideality offers radical political potential because it constructs modes of collaboration and coalition across boundaries, especially boundaries between life and death/living and dead. Therefore, rather than significant emphasis on the sociological or medical discourses of suicide, this project will be focused on interrogating the imaginative act of suicide and its implications within African diaspora literature; particularly, I am interested in the ways the imaginative act of suicide articulates ontology, space-time, and the body. Therefore, I will draw from Black psychology as well as literary theory, political manifestos, Black Atlantic theories and Black feminist theories of assemblage. [DIACRITICS NEEDED]

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AFRICAN COSMOPOLITANISM IN THE EARLY MODERN MEDITERRANEAN: THE DIASPORIC LIFE OF YOHANNES, THE ETHIOPIAN PILGRIM WHO BECAME A COUNTER-REFORMATION BISHOP

The Journal of African History ◽

10.1017/s002185371600058x ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 58 (1) ◽

pp. 61-83 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

MATTEO SALVADORE

Keyword(s):

Early Modern ◽

African Diaspora ◽

Coming Of Age ◽

Language Skills ◽

Diaspora Studies ◽

Early Modern Europe ◽

Counter Reformation ◽

History Of ◽

Unique Experience ◽

Significant Addition

AbstractThe article chronicles the diasporic life of the Cyprus-born Ethiopian priest Yoḥannǝs (1509–65), who, after traveling far and wide across Europe and to Portuguese India, eventually settled in Rome and served the papacy for over two decades. Rare language skills and a cosmopolitan coming of age enabled his remarkable ecclesiastical career as an agent of the Counter-Reformation. Shortly before an untimely death, Yoḥannǝs became the second black bishop and the first black nuncio in the history of the Roman Church, rare appointments that would not be accessible to black Africans again until the 20th century. His unique experience represents a significant addition to the available historiography on blacks in early modern Europe and calls into question some commonly held assumptions in African diaspora studies.

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