AML 5027 - FALL 2026 - OKONKWO

It can be argued that one of the most profound and paradigm-shifting developments in U.S. literature since 1875, most certainly in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, is the emergence of the immigrant's voice, the foreigner's presence and narrative, in that literature, including, in this case, African immigrant writers' significant and still-growing contributions to American life and letters. In her study Pan-African American Literature: Signifyin(g) Immigrants in the Twenty-First Century (2018), Stephanie Li persuasively argues, among other things, that the border-, nation- and identity-blurring work by the new generation of African immigrant authors in the U.S. has forced a reconsideration of our long-held notions of race, Americanness, Africanness, blackness, citizen, alien, and particularly "American," "African American," and even "African" literary "canons." Even as someone intelligently called their continent "shithole" country and recent sweeping changes to U.S. immigrant policies further complicate travel, educational opportunities, work, and life in general for many an African in and coming to America, postcolonial African immigrant writers continue to produce indisputably some of the most dazzling fiction in American literary history, decades post-1875. This course is conceived as a space for students, for us, to meditate on these issues. On our reading list are these novelists and works: NoViolet Bulawayo, We Need New Names; Dinaw Mengistu, The Beautiful Things that Heaven Bears; Imbolo Mbue, Behold the Dreamers; Ike Oguine, A Squatter's Tale; Okey Ndibe, Foreign Gods, Inc.; Teju Cole, Open City; Uwem Akpan, New York, My Village; and of course Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Americanah.