ABSTRACT
Afropolitan sensibilities are born out of a global age of increased mobility and transcultural interaction. This makes it pertinent to ask how conventional ideas about home and belonging as relating to a specific, singular location impact the Afropolitan, who regularly commutes between cultures, nations, and continents. This chapter argues that there is a need to uncouple the notions of home and belonging, as Afropolitans may feel at home in many different locations without necessarily feeling that they genuinely belong to all or any of them. The chapter is organised as a close reading of A Bit of Difference, in which Atta’s Afropolitan protagonist Deola, despite her expertise in the ambivalent politics of relocation, seems caught up in a state of personal indecision and longing for home—not in the old sense of the term but for a homing of the self. Deola’s Afropolitan experience is a restless one, but when she eventually succeeds in (be)coming home, in discovering an inner sense of purpose in her life, a related desire for fulfilling human relationships provides the contours of a space of belonging that, like home, is not tied to a specific location.
