Distant homelands: Mobility, exile and (trans)nationalism in contemporary African fiction

Abstract

In this article, I argue that Bulawayo’s representation of precarity in her novel helps us decolonize representations of mobility in African literature. In Bulawayo’s novel, mobility undergirds the global presence of Africa and frames African identities in a cosmopolitan purview. Yet, the cultural trajectory of African migrants unveils practical realities within the nation state that shape expressions of cultural belonging in Afrodiasporic contexts. The novel’s presentation of poverty, abjection and dislocation limits the possibilities of an Afropolitan engagement with Darling’s experience in the diaspora. Her joyful, yet, precarious childhood in Zimbabwe and the illusion of an abundant life in the United States show that the postcolonial nation state and the US racial state remain unprecedented forces that constraint the fluidity of people of African descent’s identities. The metaphoric representation of her condition as a prisoner not only questions her mobility but also her difficult experience as a migrant in the United States underscores her struggles to belong in a racialized American society. Thus, the protagonist’s precarious position in her homeland and her host-land reveals the restrictive power of the state and challenges a romantic description of life in both the Global North and the Global South.