“Bodies on the Move”: Examining the Quest for Migration in the Postcolonial Africa Novel

Abstract

The scholarship of cosmopolitanism and migrations, in many forms, narrative, artistic, and cultural continues to influence and inform our experiences as global citizens navigating an increasingly complicated global environment. This paper aims to re(map) these notions, which calls for reconsideration, re-evaluation, and emphasizing the importance of cosmopolitanism as reflected in literature. There has been an exponential increase in studies on cosmopolitanism in literature during the last two decades. This tendency is directly tied with transnational interconnection and experiences with a difference in a way that has never been seen before as a result of cross-border commerce, migration, mobility, media, and consumption. This paper interrogates Open City by Teju Cole; We Need New Names by No Violet Bulawayo, Ghana Must Go by Taiye Selasie and Beyond Babylon by Igiaba Scego to underscore how they use cosmopolitanism as the main idea.