The first of its kind, this special focus section examines a relatively understudied concept and brings together new literary works and scholarship across continents and languages. Contemporary authors and activists like Fatou Diome, Shailja Patel, Abdourahman Waberi, and Igiaba Scego contribute to a new literary, cultural, and political genre called migritude. Migritude initially indicated a group of younger African authors in Paris but has since expanded to include Europe beyond France, such as Britain and Italy, as well as South Asian and Caribbean diasporas. This body of work reveals intersections between complex histories of colonialism, immigration, globalization, and racism against migrants and highlights differences in region, class, gender, and sexuality that constrain the movement of many people. In an era characterized by openly belligerent nationalism and anti-immigrant and anti-LGBTQ rhetoric, this special focus section aims to unpack migritude cultural production in an international context to study and combat these violent trends.
Introduction: Migritude from a Comparative Perspective
Ashna Ali is assistant professor of literature at Bard High School Early College Manhattan. Their research focus is on postcolonial migrant feminisms and their poetics. They have forthcoming work in Journal of Narrative Theory and JamIt!
Christopher Ian Foster is author of Conscripts of Migration: Neoliberal Globalization, Nationalism, and the Literature of New African Diasporas (2019). He has served as assistant professor of English and Africana studies at Jackson State University and James Madison University. He has published widely in postcolonial and diaspora studies on the literature of global migration. He currently teaches in the International Studies Program at Colorado State University.
Supriya M. Nair iis a professor in the Department of English Language and Literature at the University of Michigan. She is the author of two monographs, Caliban’s Curse: George Lamming and the Revisioning of History (University of Michigan Press) and Pathologies of Paradise: Caribbean Detours (University of Virginia Press). She also is coeditor of Postcolonialisms: An Anthology of Cultural Theory and Criticism (Rutgers University Press) and editor of Teaching Anglophone Caribbean Literature (MLA Options for Teaching).
Ashna Ali, Christopher Ian Foster, Supriya M. Nair; Introduction: Migritude from a Comparative Perspective. the minnesota review 1 May 2020; 2020 (94): 54–66. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/00265667-8128407
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