October 30, 2014 - 12:17
first of all, to get this out of my system, DARKMATTERRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR
Iwanteveryonetocheckthemoutrightnow. even if you have before or looked at specifically just the stuff that sunshine posted, always consider looking at their stuff again and again.
website // twitter // youtube // facebook
okay
i think i'm good.
I was thinking about this same idea, as Sunshine says, "This makes me wonder how it must feel for African-Americans to try to reconnect to their African heritage, which was stolen from them generations ago, while having Africans looking down on them for being American."
This book doesn't give an analytic answers or questions, generally, but so much of the novel touched on varying levels of diaspora. Probably the point in which this idea was put most succinctly for me:
Wambui is talking to the African Student Association. "We call people like Kofi American-African, not African American, which is what we call our brothers and sisters whose ancestors were slaves. ... Try and make friends with our African-American brothers and sisters in a spirit of true pan-Africanism. But make sure you remain friends with fellow Africans, as this will help you keep your perspective. ... You will also find that you might make friends more easily with other internationals... Many of the internationals understand the trauma of trying to get an American visa and that is a good place to start a friendship."
But the trauma, I think, is not just of trying to get an American visa.
I think there is so much more I could say here, but I just want to start examining some things here, such as
- blackness as a forced identity vs a taken identity
- recent diasporic events creating an identity vs diaspora of ancestorly migration
- how those two convene