ABSTRACT
In this chapter, I argue that Nduka Otiono and Amatoritsero Ede, both Nigerian-Canadian writers, negotiate dual homelands by writing their “place” in both Nigeria and Canada through the discursive spaces of the Niger Delta and Black Canada. As writers who constitute the new African diaspora, it is important to engage with their uniquely Niger Delta and Canadian perspectives. I position both writers as active agents in the construction of their dual national spaces from the position of marginality. I demonstrate how Otiono and Ede integrate notions of home as both a distant fact and an immediate reality in such a way that what Monica Popescu calls “affective temporal structures” accentuate the temporal perspectives of the Niger Delta and the immigrant subject-position of Black Canada at the same time. I also show how home slides between temporalities, spaces, places, and realities in a form of “trans-spatiotemporality” that is present in the poetry of Otiono and Ede. Ultimately, I underscore a unique aesthetic associated with the Niger Delta identity in the complex and heterogenous space of new African diasporic writing.
