“Something Thats Been Up Has to Come Down”

Africana women novelists are mediators, then, functioning liminally. As such, it is not surprising that their stories always feature travel, whether it is the nomadism of the postcolonial subject or the forced uprooting of the enslaved African, or both, in the case of the postcolonial Africana subject. More importantly, however, their stories feature the return trip . . . that allows for healing and the restoration of wholeness.