Paper short abstract:

This paper examines issues of migration, Afropolitanism, affect, resistance, and coming-of-age. It analyses NoViolet Bulawayo’s We Need New Names and Bisi Adjapon’s Daughter in Exile as case studies to discuss the new African diaspora in the United States in 21st-century Anglophone women’s fiction.

Paper long abstract:

In this paper, I will examine migration, Afropolitanism, affect, resistance, and coming-of-age issues in 21st-century African women’s fiction set in Africa and the United States. I will analyse as case studies NoViolet Bulawayo’s We Need New Names (2013) and Bisi Adjapon’s Daughter in Exile (2023). These fictions deal with the Bildung processes of their female protagonists across two continents, Africa and America. I will start with the concept of "Afropolitanism" (Mbembe 2007; Selasi 2005) to analyse the main characters’ migration and formative experiences in the United States and the connections between the authors and their heroines’ movements and mobilities.

Then, I will engage with Ahmed’s thesis about the circulation of emotions (2004; 2008) and happiness paradigm (2010) to focus on integration and cultural assimilation issues in America. I will draw on Crenshaw's concept of intersectionality (1989, 1990) to investigate how different axes of identity and power (e.g. gender, race, ethnicity, and class) through their entanglements with affective temporalities create complex affective-temporal landscapes. I will suggest that emotions such as fear and hate help reinforce existing power structures, contributing to fostering psychological models of racism and sexism. Simultaneously, women's unhappiness, frustration, and nostalgia inform their stories and disclose their refusal to accept passivity and helplessness, showing their willingness to react against the forms of discrimination they often face and the circumstances in which they are forced to live. I will ultimately demonstrate how the narratives above give voice to African women's political and ethical demands for reparation and redress.