Moving Spirits, Shifting Bodies, Connecting Africa and the Caribbean

Nenadovic, Ana

Abstract

In recent novels from Nigeria and the Hispanophone Caribbean, spirits have assumed prominent roles. They pass from their own world to the human world; they move between Africa and the Caribbean; they inhibit people and change their perceptions, personalities, and bodies. This contribution aims to compare recent Nigerian and Hispanophone Caribbean novels in order to demonstrate how spirits are employed as personifications of the tight connections between Africa and the Caribbean. The corpus is made up of four novels: Helen Oyeyemi’s The Opposite House (2007), Akwaeke Emezi’s Freshwater (2018), Wendy Guerra’s Negra (2013), and Rita Indiana’s La mucama de Omicunlé (2015). In these novels, spirits are intrinsically related to temporal, spatial, and corporeal mobilities. They personify the passages from Africa to the Caribbean and back; through them, the characters are enabled to feel the connections between these two regions and to move beyond borders of time, space, and bodies.

Citation

Nenadovic, A. (2021). Moving Spirits, Shifting Bodies, Connecting Africa and the Caribbean. In B. Englert, B. Gföllner, & S. Thomsen (Eds.), Human, Intellectual and Cultural Mobilities between Africa and the Caribbean – from the Late 19th Century to the Present (133-155). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003152248-7

• Publication Date: Jun 18, 2021
• Deposit Date: Mar 23, 2022
• Publicly Available Date: Apr 18, 2022
• Publisher: Routledge
• Pages: 133-155
• Series Title: Routledge African Diaspora Literary and Cultural Studies
• Book Title: Human, Intellectual and Cultural Mobilities between Africa and the Caribbean – from the Late 19th Century to the Present
• ISBN: 9780367708313
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003152248-7