Emerging African women writing the diaspora

The turn of the twenty-first century has given rise to emerging African women writing the diaspora. The young generation of African women writers are moving away from traditional themes (related to gender roles, traditional customs and practices, motherhood and mothering) to focusing on African subjects in global spaces. In this essay, I show that writers like Chimamanda Adichie in Americanah and Noviolet Bulawayo in We Need New Names are going beyond feminist ideologies in their construction of African identities in transnational spaces. The diaspora becomes the artistic feature that fuels their writings; as they portray the complexities of migration and relocation to new hostlands Adichie and Bulawayo focus on how global systems reinforce structural inequalities, gender/racial hierarchies and hegemonic ideologies that negatively impact racialized communities like Africans. They showcase the myriad forces of oppression that African diasporic subjects must grapple with in their attempt for self-realization and cultural inclusion in new locales of the West. I argue that emerging African women writers’ construction of African identities go beyond the borders of the continent; revealing more complex transitional identities as migrants struggle to grapple with cultural difference in global spaces.