African Homecoming

African Americans and others in the African diaspora have increasingly “come home” to Africa to visit the sites at which their ancestors were enslaved and shipped. In this nuanced analysis of homecoming, Katharina Schramm analyzes how a shared rhetoric of the (Pan-)African family is produced among African hosts and Diasporan returnees and at the same time contested in practice. She examines the varying interpretations and appropriations of significant sites (e.g. the slave forts), events (e.g. Emancipation Day) and discourses (e.g. repatriation) in Ghana to highlight these dynamics. From this, she develops her notions of diaspora, home, homecoming, memory and identity that reflect the complexity and multiple reverberations of these cultural encounters beyond the sphere of roots tourism.

Summoned from the Margin tells the story of Lamin Sanneh's fascinating journey from his upbringing in an impoverished village in West Africa to education in the United States and Europe to a distinguished career teaching at the Universities of Yale, Harvard, Aberdeen, and Ghana. He grew up in a polygamous household in The Gambia and attended a government-run Muslim boarding school. A chance encounter with Helen Keller's autobiography taught him that education and faith are the key to overcoming physical and personal hardship and inspired his journey. Burning theological questions about God's nature and human suffering eventually led Sanneh to convert from Islam to Christianity and to pursue a career in academia. Here he recounts the unusually varied life experiences that have made him who he is today. Watch the trailer:

DIVDIVFrom the bestselling author of To Sir, With Love comes the moving personal memoir of a westernized black man who journeys to Africa in search of his roots and discovers a vibrant and extraordinary society on the verge of monumental change/div In the early 1960s acclaimed British Guianese author E. R. Braithwaite embarked on a pilgrimage to the West African countries of Ghana, Guinea, Liberia, and across Sierra Leone just as the emerging nation was preparing to declare its independence. What Braithwaite discovered was a world vastly different from the staid, firmly established British society in which he had spent most of his life. In a place as foreign to him as the dark side of the moon, he was overcome by colorful sights, sounds, and smells that vividly reawakened lost memories from his childhood. Entering the intimate circles of the local intelligentsia, Braithwaite was able to view these newly evolving African societies from the inside, struck by their mixtures of passion and naïveté, their political obsessions and technological indifference. The author discovered a world that fascinated, excited, and, in some cases, deeply troubled him—and in the process he discovered himself.DIV E. R. Braithwaite’s A Kind of Homecoming is at once an enthralling personal journey and an eye-opening chronicle of a time of great change on the African continent that helps us to better understand the West Africa of today./divDIV/div/div

An illustrated history of African-American farmers, Homecoming is a requiem for a way of life that has almost disappeared. Based on the film Homecoming, produced for the Independent Television Service with funding provided by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. The videocassette of Homecoming is available from California Newsreel at www.newsreel.org.

The lack of African Americans in leadership roles within the academy creates a real crisis in the leadership pipeline. One of the problems could be that the pathways to leadership for African Americans are less visible. They can see the end result but may be less clear about how to get there. Oftentimes, understanding these pathways to leadership is less academic in nature and more informal and/or relational. Thus, the relationship between leadership and mentorship for African Americans is especially important to advancing in the academy. Further guidance and understanding of steps to advancement from established African American leaders in the academy is therefore needed. African American Leadership and Mentoring Through Purpose, Preparation, and Preceptors provides an exhaustive exploration of leadership and mentorship through purpose, preparation, and preceptors. This edited book explains how to identify ways that individuals can strengthen their career trajectory, determine strategies to employ for career advancement, establish lasting and impactful connections with key stakeholders per career aspirations, provide guidance for individuals seeking advancement within the academy, and explore current theoretical and practical nuances with regard to research, literature, and application of leadership and mentorship of African Americans in the academy. Covering topics such as cross-racial mentorship, emotionally intelligent leadership, and African American leaders, this text is ideal for teachers, faculty, university administrators, leaders in education, aspiring future leaders, researchers, academicians, and students.

Saints in Exile studies, from an insider's perspective, the worship practices and social ethics of the African American family of Holiness, Pentecostal, and Apostolic churches known collectively as the Sanctified Church. Cheryl Sanders identifies the theme of exile, both as an idea and an experience, as the key to understanding the dialectical nature of African American religious and intellectual life, that W.E.B. Du Bois called "double-conscious." Sanders's saints in exile are a people who see themselves as "in the world but not of it"; their marginalized status is both self-imposed and involuntary, a consequence of racism, sexism and other forms of elitism. When joined with the biblical tropes of homecoming and reconciliation, the concept of exile serves as a vital vantage point from which to identify, critique, and remedy the continued alienation of blacks, women, and the poor in the United States. Sanders's interpretive approach clarifies many paradoxical features of black existence, especially the peculiar interplay of the sacred and the secular in African American song, speech, and dance. She particularly scrutinizes gospel music, a product of the Sanctified worship tradition that has had a significant influence on popular culture. Saints in Exile goes further than any previous study in illuminating the African American experience; it will be welcomed by scholars and students of American religion, African American studies, and American History.

An interdisciplinary, code-switching, critical collection by revisionist African American scholar and activist Bernard W. Bell.

A PENGUIN BOOK CLUB PICK "Homegoing is an inspiration." —Ta-Nehisi Coates An unforgettable New York Times bestseller of exceptional scope and sweeping vision that traces the descendants of two sisters across three hundred years in Ghana and America. A riveting kaleidoscopic debut novel and the beginning of a major career: Yaa Gyasi's Homegoing is a novel about race, history, ancestry, love and time, charting the course of two sisters torn apart in 18th century Africa through to the present day. Two half sisters, Effia and Esi, unknown to each other, are born into two different tribal villages in 18th century Ghana. Effia will be married off to an English colonist, and will live in comfort in the sprawling, palatial rooms of Cape Coast Castle, raising "half-caste" children who will be sent abroad to be educated in England before returning to the Gold Coast to serve as administrators of the Empire. Her sister, Esi, will be imprisoned beneath Effia in the Castle's women's dungeon, before being shipped off on a boat bound for America, where she will be sold into slavery. Stretching from the tribal wars of Ghana to slavery and Civil War in America, from the coal mines in the north to the Great Migration to the streets of 20th century Harlem, Yaa Gyasi has written a modern masterpiece, a novel that moves through histories and geographies and—with outstanding economy and force—captures the intricacies of the troubled yet hopeful human spirit.