This fascinating and well researched study explores the meaning generated by `Africa' and `Blackness' throughout the century.
Using literary texts, autobiography, ethnography, and historical documents,
African Identities
discusses how ideas of Africa as an origin, as a cultural whole, or as a complicated political problematic, emerge as signifiers for analysis of modernity, nationhood and racial difference.
Kanneh provides detailed readings of a range of literary texts, including novels by:
* Toni Morrison
* Alice Walker
* Gloria Naylor
* Ngugi Wa Thiong'o
* Chinua Achebe
* and V.S. Naipaul.
For anyone interested in literature, history, anthropology, political writing, feminist or cultural analysis, this book opens up new areas of thought across disciplines.