Browsing by Author "Michael, Andindilile"

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    '"We have lost sight of Africa": America, Europe and the Diaspora in Caryl Phillips's Crossing the River'
    (Afroeuropa: Journal of Afroeuropean Studies, 2009) Michael, Andindilile
    More than any of Caryl Phillips' historical novels of the transatlantic experience, Crossing the River, published in 1995, is a Pro-diaspora novel. By pro-diaspora novel, I mean that it is a novel written primarily to subvert history in order to stress diasporic connections and the need for redemption within the African diaspora. Readers of this novel such as Wendy Walters, Benedict Ledent, Claude Julien and Gail Low have noted Phillips’s unwavering commitment to the African Diaspora. However, they have paid little attention to the connection between America and England that Phillips deliberately draws in the plotting of Crossing the River as part of his rhetorical strategy. In this essay, I contend that this Anglo-American connection exposes America's and Europe's bigotry in the treatment of African diasporans, and attaches that bigotry to their attempt to purge rather than redeem Africans in the diaspora.