Identity and Belonging for Second-Generation Migrants in Contemporary African Fiction

Abstract

The study interrogates literary depictions of identity and belonging among second-generation African migrants. It explores Dinaw Mengestu’s How to Read the Air (2010) and Taiye Selasi’s Ghana Must Go (2013). The two texts depict different experiences of second-generation African migrants in the global North with an eye to class mobility, history, and familial memory as significant in their navigation of identity and belonging. Theoretically, the study draws on Afropolitanism and Transnationalism. The study establishes that although there have been significant shifts in experiences and politics of migration between the parent generations and the second generation born and raised in the global North, the latter generation still grapples with questions of identity and belonging which continue to be shaped by historical dynamics of Euro-American imperialist logics. Consequently, for future research, the study recommends research on identity and belonging for second and third generation migrants from other geographical parts of the global South living in the global North.