Nelson Sindze Wembe

Longing and Belonging in Black African Diasporic Literature written in French and Spanish

My research focuses on the analyze of the concepts of longing and belonging in black diasporic literature written in French and Spanish. I will focus on the books written by authors like Inongo Vi Makome, Alain Mabanckou, Roukhaya Diallo, Lucia Mbomio… in order to see how new migrants’ identities are shaped and how migrants and their descendants resolve the contradictions that emerge from the encounter of two cultures. My project will also interrogate the belonging of literature written by the descendants of migrants that is often quickly categorized as black African literature but that actually belongs to the national literature of the countries they are living in since they hold the nationality of those countries. I will therefore show how these writings participate in the coloration of the national European literature and have contributed to the creation of terminologies such as: afropean or “afroespañol”.