ABSTRACT
This book confronts the reality that new African immigrants now represent a significant force in the configuration of American polity and identity, especially in the last forty years. Despite their minority status, African immigrants are making their mark in various areas of human endeavor and accomplishment-from the academy, to business, to scientific innovation. The demographic shift is welcome news as well as a matter for concern, given the consequences of displacement and the paradoxes of exile in the new location. By its very connection to the “Old African Diaspora,” the notion of a “New African Diaspora”1 marks a clear indication of a historical progression reconnecting continental Africa with the New World without the stigma of slavery. However, the notion of trans-Atlantic slavery is never erased when the African diaspora is mentioned, whether in the old world or the new. Within this paradoxical dispensation, the new African diaspora must be conceived as the aftermath of a global migration crisis.2 While studies3 addressing new international migration patterns of ethnic groups into the United States, such as the cases of Asian-Americans, Latinos, Sino-Americans, etc. are on the rise, only a few4 address African immigrants. This is the context in which this book is significant.
