Precarious Passages: The Diasporic Imagination in Contemporary Black Anglophone Fiction

Precarious Passages unites literature written bymembers of the far-flung Black Anglophone diaspora. Rather than categorizingnovels as simply "African American," "Black Canadian,""Black British," or "postcolonial African Caribbean," thisbook takes an integrative approach: it argues that fiction creates and sustainsa sense of a wider African diasporic community in the Western world. Tuire Valkeakari analyzes the writing of Toni Morrison, CarylPhillips, Lawrence Hill, and other contemporary novelists of African descent.She shows how their novels connect with each other and with defining moments inthe transatlantic experience, most notably the Middle Passage and enslavement.The lives of their characters are marked by migration and displacement. Theirprotagonists yearn to experience fulfilling human connection in a place theycan call home. Portraying strategies of survival, adaptation, and resistanceacross the limitless varieties of life experiences in the diaspora, thesenovelists continually reimagine what it means to share a Black diasporicidentity. Read more