ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the conversations on African youth and identity. Understanding cultural identity as always undergoes constant transformation to investigate African youth identity. Although Hall speaks of Caribbean identity, we find this useful in the argument we are making about African youth and cultural identity in general. The chapter explores how some artists give agency to their African youth characters and interrogate instances of agency gone wrong due to the historical circumstances and cultural settings. In terms of popular cultural life, it is nowhere to be found in its pure, pristine state. Some of the videos contest discourses of African cultural inferiority, recognize differences between Africans and African Americans while encouraging romantic relationships and affirm their Nigerian-ness and African diasporan youth hybridity. As black youth with African parents whose cultural expectations and consciousness seem different, they embraced these video images as alternative ways of being black African youth in the diaspora.
