Love and Space in Contemporary African Diasporic Women’s Writing

Jennifer Leetsch is a Lecturer in Anglophone Literary and Cultural Studies at the University of Würzburg, Germany. Her research focuses on affect, gender and the black diaspora, and she has previously published on desire and intimacy in African diasporic novels, the African European spatial imagination, refugee geocorpographies and diasporic digital media.

• 1 Introduction: Be/longing.- 2 Routes of Desire: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.- 3 London Lovers: Zadie Smith.- 4 Longing Elsewhere: Helen Oyeyemi.- 5 Opening Wor(l)ds: Warsan Shire and Shailja Patel.- 6 Coda: “Dreaming of a yet unwritten future”.

“Leetsch’s nuanced handling of how topography, typography, space, and language become intertwined with love, intimacy, desire, and romance is, for me, the most generative contribution. The comparative approach that links spatial and affective thinking represents a valuable starting point for further approaches to contemporary African diasporic literature.” (Marco Medugno, Contemporary Women’s Writing, September 25, 2023)