Spatial Encounters: African Migrant Masculinities and Gendered Geographies of Power in Dinaw Mengestu’s The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears

Abstract

This article focuses on Dinaw Mengestu's representation of African migrant masculinities within the American space in The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears. By paying attention to the gendered nature of the American space, histories, and political and economic cultures, I argue that American foundational mythologies and metanarratives act as repertoires that shape marginal African masculinities' imagination and the embodied experience of the American space. In reading African migrant masculinities' navigation of commercial and corporate America, this article takes heed of the materiality, corporeality, and the governmentality of space and examines how space produces and shapes sociality. Ultimately, the examination of African masculinities' use and access to the American space enables an interrogation of gendered experiences of migration, African masculinities within global modernity, and the reimagining of ethical and egalitarian horizons of racial and political relations.