Rose Sackeyfio: West African Women in the Diaspora. Narratives of other spaces, other selves

HUMA Book Launch

Author: Rose Sackeyfio (Winston-Salem State University, United States) 

Introduction: West African Women in the Diaspora: Narratives of Other Spaces, Other Selves is a volume of eight critical essays that explore the works of women writers from Ghana and Nigeria. The book examines contemporary themes that resonate diaspora perspectives of African women in the 21st century. The work is framed by postcolonial theory and feminist energies that engage the fluid and shifting constructions of women’s identity in transnational spaces. The book is a unique contribution to literary criticism through analysis of African women’s writing in a single volume that highlights the intersection of race, class and gender in the lives of African migrant women. West African Women in the Diaspora: Narratives of Other Spaces, Other Selves is an invaluable resource for scholars, researchers and students of African women’s writing in the global age. The essays interrogate the ways in which African women’s fictional works portray the realities of otherness, hybridity and marginalized existence of female subjects beyond Africa’s borders. Spatio-temporality connects the forerunners of African women’s literature to the fictional works of leading contemporary writers. The selected writers include Buchi Emecheta and Ama Ata Aidoo as pioneering writers along with Sefi Atta, Chika Unigwe, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, and Taiye Selasie. See the book: West African Women in the Diaspora: Narratives of Other Spaces, Other Selves (Routledge, 2021).

About the author: Rose A. Sackeyfio has taught in the Department of English and Department of Liberal Studies at Winston-Salem State University for almost three decades. Her research and teaching are situated at the nexus of inter-disciplinary scholarship on literatures of African and African-Diaspora women, Women’s Studies, Cultural Studies and recently, South Asian Women’s Writing. Her research interests evolved from over 40 years of travel and research in West Africa. Her publications and scholarly pursuits explore various aspects of the lives of African and African Diaspora women in the global arena. She is the author of the forthcoming book, West African Women in the Diaspora: Narratives of Other Spaces, Other Selves (Routledge, 2021). She is editor of a volume of critical essays, Women Writing Diaspora in the 21st Century (Lexington Books, 2021) and co-editor of a collection of critical essays, Emerging Perspectives on Akachi Adimora-Ezeigbo (Lexington 2017). Her other publications include many book chapters in edited collections and peer-reviewed articles in the leading journals, African Literature Today and the Journal of the African Literature Association. Dr Sackeyfio’s current research examines the experiences of African female students in China and constitutes a larger project on the ways in which African Women in China have negotiated gendered spaces within the context of globalization. Dr Sackeyfio’s current book project is African Women Narrating Identity: Local and Global Journeys of the Self. 

Discussant: Helen Yitah, a full professor of English since 2019, is the Dean of the School of Languages at the University of Ghana (UG). She is the former Head of the Department of English and the founding Director of the University of Ghana-Carnegie Writing Centre. She is also the Head of the Writing Support Unit of UG’s Centre for Teaching and Learning Innovation. A literary scholar and cultural critic, she has published on gender identity in literature, particularly oral and written African literature, African American & Immigrant American literature, children’s literature in Ghana, and women’s cultural production in colonial and contemporary Africa. Her publications appear in lead journals including Research in African Literatures, Oral Tradition, Meridians: Feminism, Race, Transnationalism, Fabula, Children’s Literature, Children’s Literature Association Quarterly, Southern Quarterly, African Literature Today, Journal of Postcolonial Writing and the Journal of African Cultural Studies. Her most recent work as an editor includes: After the Ceremonies: New and Selected Poems by Ama Ata Aidoo (University of Nebraska Press, 2017), Philosophical Foundations of the African Humanities through Postcolonial Perspectives (Brill Publishers, 2019), and Radio – A Platform for Creative Writing: Ghanaian Literature and Broadcast Culture, special issue (44.2) of Obsidian: Literature and Arts in the African Diaspora (Illinois State University Press, 2018). Her current book projects include Knowing African Women: Critical Perspectives on Rural Women’s Oral Poetry and Woman of Africa: The Autobiography of Mabel Dove-Danquah.