Reviewed by: The Passport That Does Not Pass Ports: African Literature of Travel in the Twenty-First Century ed. by Isabel Balseiro And Zachariah Rapola Elizabeth Olubukola Olaoye The Passport That Does Not Pass Ports: African Literature of Travel in the Twenty-First Century EDITED BY ISABEL BALSEIRO AND ZACHARIAH RAPOLA Michigan State UP, 2020. xx + 218 pp. ISBN 9781609176471 e-book. The stories and memoirs that make up this collection affirm, with different narrative techniques, that intercultural dialogues are ongoing within the African continent. Whether through trade or asylum-seeking on the part of refugees or unexpected relationships and diplomatic missions or even through imaginative voyages, the continent remains a fluid space of intercultural exchange. The fluidity among cultures that Achille Mbembe describes in his essay on Afropolitanism finds expression in several stories, positioning Africans in contact with other Africans of other nations, deliberately embracing the differences in certain places, while at other times being forced into some spaces to escape unhomely homes. Some of the stories/memoirs describe similarities among places and cultures, while some attempt to explicate difference, not only in architecture and history, but also in the marked temper of the ethnic nations. One way of examining these stories and memoirs is through the lens of Afropolitanism. The strategic placement of both Taiye Selasie and Achille Mbembe's essays on Afropolitanism at the beginning of the collection consciously draws the reader's attention to the possibility of this Afropolitanist reading. Although Afropolitanism, as a theory, has come under strict scrutiny by those who refuse to see how the term detours from existing means of being an African in the world (like Kwame Anthony Appiah's Cosmopolitanism, or the postcolonial concept of hybridity), it is still a useful way of navigating these stories. Many of the stories here are pulled out of existing collections or are an extract of book-length memoirs. Selecting the stories in this collection for the sole purpose of showing travels within the continent, then juxtapositing them with Afropolitan theory draws attention to certain aspects of this theory that find expression in some of the stories that make up the collection. Reading the stories that make up this collection, it becomes apparent that both physical and cultural passports mark identities that refuse to go through ports. So, in cases where individuals physically go through ports, their previous identities must be shed, dropped at the border, or gradually disembodied like a snake's skin to fit into new spaces. For instance, Yvonne Adihambo Owuor's "Weight of Whispers" explores a Rwandan refugee's gradual realization of his lost royalty in exile. This story offers a deep understanding of the limbo status of a refugee's mind. This limbo is not just a neutral place, exemplified by the story; the reader perceives that no matter how temporal spaces seem, they still have an agency that might negatively truncate a journey. Names get changed as exile reduces men even within the African continent. Exile also leads to death, erasure, and freedom. [End Page 254] Several images in these stories provide ample opportunities for analyzing the souls of the characters who are often engaging in traveling and remembrance to reconnect with lost landscapes and mindscapes. Hassouna Mosabi's "The Wanderer" is significant in this regard. The wanderer, who is the protagonist of the first story in the collection, moves from country to country and from continent to continent. His views of the places he visited are tainted by his dreams and nightmares, as well as the stories his father told him. At the end of the story, the reader perceives impressions and memories expressed as encounters with places. This non-chronological narration leaves the reader wondering if the experiences that the wanderer described are real or imagined. This bifurcation of the dividing line, between the real and the imagined, makes travel possible in the protagonist's mind and reality. The characters in the story can sometimes be Afropolitan because they are "not citizens, but Africans, of the world" (4). The excerpts and stories are expressive of characters who inhabit this Afropolitan space, who display a willingness to complicate Africa, who complicate the African struggle and engage with...