FROM THE PUBLISHER

This fascinating and thoughtful analysis explores the meanings associated with "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 Using literary texts, autobiography, ethnography, and historical documents, African Identities discusses how ideas of Africa as an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 ways of thinking about race.