Precarious Passages - by Tuire Valkeakari (Paperback)

About the Book

Precarious Passages unites literature written by members of the far-flung Black Anglophone diaspora. Rather than categorizing novels as simply "African American," "Black Canadian," "Black British," or "postcolonial African Caribbean," this book takes an integrative approach: it argues that fiction creates and sustains a sense of a wider African diasporic community in the Western world.

Book Synopsis

Precarious Passages unites literature written by
members of the far-flung Black Anglophone diaspora. Rather than categorizing
novels as simply "African American," "Black Canadian,"
"Black British," or "postcolonial African Caribbean," this
book takes an integrative approach: it argues that fiction creates and sustains
a sense of a wider African diasporic community in the Western world.

Tuire Valkeakari analyzes the writing of Toni Morrison, Caryl
Phillips, Lawrence Hill, and other contemporary novelists of African descent.
She shows how their novels connect with each other and with defining moments in
the transatlantic experience, most notably the Middle Passage and enslavement.
The lives of their characters are marked by migration and displacement. Their
protagonists yearn to experience fulfilling human connection in a place they
can call home. Portraying strategies of survival, adaptation, and resistance
across the limitless varieties of life experiences in the diaspora, these
novelists continually reimagine what it means to share a Black diasporic
identity.

Review Quotes

"The range of scholarship
that this volume represents is truly impressive at every stage, and the critical
undertaking that it embodies serves as a useful and insightful summation of the
field."--Review of English Studies

"An insightful and
illuminating read, with much to teach about the diasporic imagination in the
aftermath of the Second World War."--British Society for Literature and
Science

"A thoughtful, detailed
reading of several contemporary Afro-diasporan Anglophone writers from Canada,
England, the United States, and the Caribbean."--New West Indian Guide

"A compelling and generative source for scholars and students of myriad fields."--Studies in the Novel

About the Author

Tuire Valkeakari is professor of English at Providence College and the author of Religious Idiom and the African American Novel, 1952-1998.