Practice of Diaspora: Literature, Translation, and the Rise of Black Internationalism

A pathbreaking work of scholarship that will reshape our understanding of the Harlem Renaissance, The Practice of Diaspora revisits black transnational culture in the 1920s and 1930s, paying particular attention to links between intellectuals in New York and their Francophone counterparts in Paris. Brent Edwards suggests that diaspora is less a historical condition than a set of practices: the claims, correspondences, and collaborations through which black intellectuals pursue a variety of international alliances.

Edwards elucidates the workings of diaspora by tracking the wealth of black transnational print culture between the world wars, exploring the connections and exchanges among New York-based publications (such as Opportunity, The Negro World, and The Crisis) and newspapers in Paris (such as Les Continents, La Voix des N gres, and L'Etudiant noir). In reading a remarkably diverse archive--the works of writers and editors from Langston Hughes, Ren Maran, and Claude McKay to Paulette Nardal, Alain Locke, W. E. B. Du Bois, George Padmore, and Tiemoko Garan Kouyat --The Practice of Diaspora takes account of the highly divergent ways of imagining race beyond the barriers of nation and language. In doing so, it reveals the importance of translation, arguing that the politics of diaspora are legible above all in efforts at negotiating difference among populations of African descent throughout the world.

Author: Brent Hayes Edwards
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Published: 07/10/2003
Pages: 408
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 1.27lbs
Size: 9.20h x 6.46w x 1.05d
ISBN: 9780674011038


Review Citation(s):
Multicultural Review 03/01/2004 pg. 74

About the Author
Edwards, Brent Hayes: - Brent Hayes Edwards is Professor in the Department of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University.