Abstract
African artists have responded creatively and forcefully to political discussions on the human costs of clandestine emigration via the sea from Africa to Europe, what the recent book African Migration Narratives (Cajetan Iheka and Jack Taylor, eds., 2018) calls “the migration turn in African cultural production.” African artists give voice to and make visible those who emigrate to the Global North and to the families they leave behind. This paper focuses on migration narratives in fiction and film, such as Boubacar Boris Diop’s novel Doomi Golo: The Hidden Notebooks (2016), Jean-Marie Teno’s feature film Clando (Clandestine) (Cameroon/France 1996), Didier Awadi’s documentary film The Lion’s Point of View (Senegal/France 2010), and Mati Diop’s supernatural romantic drama Atlantics (Senegal/France 2019). Boubacar Boric Diop articulates the drive to Europe as a mental condition and a form existential alienation through the character of Yacine Ndiaye whom he calls the “she-monkey” (or golo in Wolof). The narratives of – what Mati Diop calls – the “ghost generation” memorialize the precarious lives of migrants and their families in tales of marginalization and fragility.
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
KEYWORDS
Literary Criticism, Media, Film, Conceptual Frameworks, Identity and Difference, Africa
