Narrating Transcultural Encounters and Return in Akufor Aneneba’s The Land We Leave Behind

Abstract

Cultural contact is an inescapable aspect of life in the 21st century due to migration. For both voluntary and involuntary migrants, intercultural experiences are inevitable, and these may place them in a state of constant transformation and reconstruction. Unfortunately, migration is still a kind of one-way traffic, witnessing the flow from indigenous cultures to metropolitan centres. As these smaller cultures come in contact with the alleged superior cultures, they are subsumed under the guise of globalisation. African cultures are particularly vulnerable because many of its people migrate to Western countries in search of better life conditions in addition to those who were forcefully dislocated during the days of the slave trade. As they encounter these superior cultures, their selfhood is endangered. However, this feeling sometimes has a latent effect as it provides avenues for these migrants to break the cultural distance. This brings the major argument in this paper to the point where the diaspora is not just a place where people seek refuge to attain dreams; it also provides a pathway where displaced subjects reconcile with their cultures and histories. This argument is built around how the different encounters and experiences foster their reattachment to their home cultures. This will be investigated in Akufor Aneneba’s The Land We Leave Behind.