Narrating African American Migrations: Mobile Literary Voices and Shifting Narrative Strategies

Wilfried Raussert

doi:10.32870/vel.vi3.23

Authors

Wilfried Raussert Universidad Bielefeld

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.32870/vel.vi3.23

Keywords:

migration, mobility, subaltern, decolonial, narration

Abstract

The essay starts with the historian Ira Berlin’s assumption that African American culture is specifically shaped through continuous processes of deterritorialization and reterritorialization. Through the analysis of exemplary texts by Olaudad Equiano, Ralph Waldo Ellison, and Edwidge Danticat, the essay traces
shifting paradigms within the narration of black mobility in African American literature from late eighteenth-century colonial America to the present. The essay tracks narrative strategies that African American writers employ to tell stories of displacement and relocation. At the center of this discussion is the question of the respective author’s positioning through discourse in the larger contexts of postcolonial, subaltern and decolonial studies perspectives.

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.

Author Biography

Wilfried Raussert, Universidad Bielefeld

Wilfried Raussert is Chair and Professor of North American Literary and Cultural Studies and Director of InterAmerican Studies at Bielefeld University, Germany. He is founder and general editor of the ejournal Fiar Forum for InterAmerican Research (www.interamerica.de), the online journal of the International Association of Inter American Studies. Since 2009 he has been executive manager of the International Association of InterAmerican Studies. Currently he is the director of the BMBFproject The Americas as Space of Entanglement(s) at Bielefeld University. Moreover, he is Fulbright representative and director of the DAAD exchange program with the Universidad de Guadalajara. He received his MA and PhD at the University of Mississippi, Oxford and completed his 'habilitation' at Humboldt University Berlin. He held visiting professorships at the University of Mississippi, at the Universidad de Guadalajara and at Humboldt University Berlin. From 2004 until 2006 he was Professor of North American Literatures at University College Cork, Ireland.

Research areas:

Studies of the Black Americas
Music and the social in the Americas
Art practices and public space in the Americas

References

Benesch, Klaus. (2003) The Pitfalls of Memory: Cross-Cultural Discourse and Autobiographical Form in Olaudah Equiano’s Interesting Narrative. In Udo Hebel (Ed.). Sites of Memory in American Literatures and Cultures. Heidelberg: Win- ter. Pp. 31-42

Berlin, Ira. (2010) The Making of African America: The Four Great Migrations. New York: Penguin Books.

Collins, Jo. (2013) Bricolage and History: Edwidge Danticat’s Life Writing in After the Dance. In Life Writing, Vol. 10.1, Special Issue Women’s Life Writing and Diaspora, 2013. Pp. 7-24.

Danticat, Edwidge. (2007) Brother I’m Dying. New York: Vintage Books.

Danticat, Edwidge. (2011) Create Dangerously: The Immigrant Artist at Work. New York: Vintage Books.

Ellison, Ralph. (1972) Invisible Man. New York: Vintage.

Equiano, Olaudah. (2001) The Interesting Narrative of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, The African, Written by Himself. New York: Norton. Werner Sollors (Ed.).

Gates, Henry L, Jr. (1988) Introduction. In Classic Slave Narratives. New York: Signet.

Gunew, Sneja. (2004) Haunted Nations: The Colonial Dimensions of Multiculturalisms. London: Routledge.

Hebdige, Dick. (2007) Subculture and Style. In Simon During (Ed.). The Cultural Studies Reader. New York: Routledge. Pp. 429-40.

Luz, Anna. (2006) Placesin Between: The Transit(ional) Locations of No- madic Narration. In Eva Näripéa et al. (Ed.). Place and Location Studies. Tallin: PAIK. Pp. 146-65.

Mignolo, Walter. (2011) The Darker Side of Western Modernity. Global Futures, Decolonial Options. Durham: Duke University Press.

Murphy, Geraldine (2001) Olaudah Equiano, Accidental Tourist. In Werner Sollers (Ed.). Olaudah Equiano. New York: Norton. Pp. 362-82.

Potter, Russell A. (2007) History-Spectacle-Resistance. In Simon During, (Ed.). The Cultural Studies Reader. New York: Routledge. Pp. 457-74.

Raussert, Wilfried. (2000) Negotiating Temporal Differences: Blues, Jazz and Narrativity in African American Culture. Heidelberg: Winter.

Spillers. Hortense. (1987) Ellison’s Usable Past: Toward a Theory of Myth. In Kimberley W. Benston (Ed.). Speaking for You: The Vision of Ralph Ellison. Washington, D.C.: Howard University Press. Pp. 144-58.

Spivak, Gayatri. (1995) Can the Subaltern Speak? In Bill Ashcroft et al. (Ed.). The Post-Colonial Studies Reader. New York: Routledge. Pp.24-28.

Spivak, Gayatri. (2007) The New Subaltern: A Silent Interview. In Simon During (Ed.). The Cultural Studies Reader. New York: Routledge. Pp. 229-40.

Trouillot, Michel-Rolph. (1995) Silencing the Past. Boston: Beacon.