Kinship Across the Black Atlantic

Gigi Adair is an Assistant Professor at the University of Potsdam.

• AcknowledgementsIntroduction: Diasporic kinship across the Black AtlanticPart I: Rewriting anthropologyPostcolonial sabotage and ethnographic recovery in Jamaica Kincaid’s The Autobiography of My MotherDestabilizing structuralism in Pauline Melville’s The Ventriloquist’s TalePart II: Historiography and the afterlife of slavery‘As constricting as the corset they bind me in to keep me a lady’: Colonial historiography in Andrea Levy’s The Long SongShattering the flow of history: Dionne Brand’s At the Full and Change of the MoonPart III: Queer diasporic relationalityQueer creolization in Patrick Chamoiseau’s TexacoWriting self and kin: diasporic mourning in Jackie Kay’s TrumpetConclusion: Diasporic futures?BibliographyIndex

Reviews‘Kinship Across the Black Atlantic provides an outstanding analysis of new models and modes of family-making proposed by a range of key contemporary diasporic writers. Drawing upon a wealth of critical discussions of kinship drawn from anthropology, philosophy, feminism, queer studies, and more besides, Gigi Adair pursues a series of dazzling, detailed readings of the literary re-imagining of family-making across the black Atlantic. Ever alert to the pitfalls as well as the possibilities of fictionalising kinship anew, her vibrant analysis valuably uncovers the progressive modes of kinship that diasporic writing daringly and urgently proposes, often by reaching beyond the colonial-crafted constraints of heteronormativity, genealogy and biocentric myths of 'blood'.'John McLeod, Professor of Postcolonial and Diaspora Literatures, University of Leeds