An excellent resource on African history and culture and on the African diaspora, is the Africa Resource Center (www.africaresource.com). They also run the Africa Knowledge Project (database research link)
Intellectuals on the African Diaspora
Edouard Glissant (1928-2011) was a writer from Martinique who examined the phenomenon of African diaspora in the Caribbean islands. In his series of books, poems and novels he explored the depths of African culture and its adaptation within the Americas. He advanced the notion of creolization as a paradigm for describing the transformation of African culture in the Americas. Glissant proposed that creolization, was a process of cultural fusion among slaves who retained key elements of traditions and culture that resonated through religious, social and linguistic formation in the Caribbean and Atlantic colonies. Rather than accept a simple subordination of the entire Atlantic World to the supremacy of European rule, scholars and critics of cultural studies showed how slaves themselves created a new culture of their own. Slaves from Africa did not remain passive but brought and retained cultural influence and philosophies. The life of Olaudah Equiano (1745-1798), who was captured from the Igbo region of Nigeria along the West African coast and brought to the Caribbean. but who gained his freedom and became an eloquent spokesman for abolition in late 18th century London illustrates this capacity. See The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African. Written by Himself. Vol. I. (1789) and Vol. 2.
Patrick Manning is a Professor of World History at the University of Pittsburgh. Professor Manning's studies of African history and his recent, The African Diaspora: A History Through Culture (2010), situates the influence of Africans throughout the modern world. He argues that Africans like Olaudah Equiano, many of them former slaves, became important agents for social change and transformation who influenced efforts to abolish slavery in the 19th century. The reason we found multiple movements toward the abolition of slavery in the early to mid 19th century in Britain, the US, Russia and the Ottoman Empire, was a product of the diaspora and rise of prominent and articulate Africans to positions of prominence and influence within those countries.
Another useful work is the Isidore Okpewho, ed., The African Diaspora: African Origins and New World Identities (Indiana University Press, 2001). This includes contributions by notable scholars of the African diaspora, includin Professors Nkiru Nzegwu, and Ali Mazrui. A more recent work was edited by Isidore Okpewho and Nkiru Nzegwu, eds., The New African Diaspora (Indiana University Press, 2009).
Other Resource Links and Sources:
African American Migration Experience
Eduoard Glissant, Caribbean Discourse: Selected Essays (University Press of Virginia, 1989)
Eduoard Glissant, Poetics of Relation. (University of Michigan Press, 1997)
Patrick Manning, The African Diaspora: A History Through Culture (Columbia University Press, 2010)
Isidore Okpewho, ed., The African Diaspora: African Origins and New World Identities (Indiana University Press, 2001)
Isidore Okpewho and Nkiru Nzegwu, eds., The New African Diaspora (Indiana University Press, 2009
Eduoard Glissant, Poetics of Relation. (University of Michigan Press, 1997)
Patrick Manning, The African Diaspora: A History Through Culture (Columbia University Press, 2010)
Isidore Okpewho, ed., The African Diaspora: African Origins and New World Identities (Indiana University Press, 2001)
Isidore Okpewho and Nkiru Nzegwu, eds., The New African Diaspora (Indiana University Press, 2009
