ABSTRACT
Novelists Benjamin Kwakye and Okey Ndibe, born in Ghana and Nigeria, respectively, during the Independence era of the 1960s, exemplify diasporic authors who migrated to the US in the latter part of the twentieth century and whose works explore various African diasporic encounters. Kwakye and Ndibe were among the first of their generation to write fiction from within and substantively about “America.” Both writers interrogate the abstraction of America as a “dream” and as a reality. Kwakye's trilogy – The Other Crucifix (2010), The Three Books of Shama (2016), and The Count's False Banquet (2017) – and Ndibe's Foreign Gods, Inc. (2014) and memoir Never Look an American in the Eye: A Memoir: Flying Turtles, Colonial Ghosts, and the Making of a Nigerian American (2016) show modes of diasporic adaptation and retention or modification of foundational homeland identities. Also, African American women figure in their novels as signifiers of African diasporic encounters. Kwakye's and Ndibe's writings explore such areas as race relations, economic pursuits, university environments, African American connections, and homeland returns. Furthermore, a variety of literary and theoretical approaches to migration can be used to interpret their works, such as neo-classical migration theory, networking, Afropolitanism, and African Diaspora conceptions. In addition, such concepts as transnationalism, ethnic enclaves, localization, and the push-pull model are applicable.
