Diaspora literacy is a phrase coined by literary scholar
Vévé Clark in her work "Developing Diaspora Literacy and Marasa Consciousness" (
Spillers
Spillers Ltd was a British company that owned flour milling operations, operated bakeries and also sold pet food and equine feeds.
History
The business originated in 1829 from the establishment of a flour mill in Bridgwater, Somerset, by Joel Sp ...
:1991, 40–60). It is the ability to understand and/or interpret the multi-layered meanings of stories, words, and other folk sayings within any given community of the
African diaspora
The African diaspora is the worldwide collection of communities descended from native Africans or people from Africa, predominantly in the Americas. The term most commonly refers to the descendants of the West and Central Africans who were e ...
. These meanings supersede those of "...Western or westernized signification" (42), meaning that they go beyond literal or typical literary interpretation into an area of folk understanding that could only be recognized by the eye skilled in such an understanding. Readers rely solely upon a knowledge and lived experience of social, historical, and cultural climates of the various cultures of the African diaspora as a foundation for interpretation.
Theoretical foundations of diaspora literacy
Diaspora literacy is based upon several different theoretical concepts. The first concept is that of African diaspora, which is "...the phenomenon and history..." of the displacement of African-descended peoples in the New World colonies of the Atlantic. The second concept is a trio of socio-political movements (
The New Negro/
Harlem Renaissance
The Harlem Renaissance was an intellectual and cultural revival of African American music, dance, art, fashion, literature, theater, politics and scholarship centered in Harlem, Manhattan, New York City, spanning the 1920s and 1930s. At the t ...
;
Indigenismo; and
Negritude) of the 1920s and 1930s (1991, 40). In these movements, the displaced and colonized peoples of the Afro-Atlantic world came to embrace an awareness and appreciation of the political, cultural, and creative self as something unique in itself and thus not required to conform to European aesthetics. The third and final concept is that of "signifyin(g)".
Signifying
Signifyin' (sometimes written "signifyin(g)") (vernacular), is a wordplay. It is a practice in African-American culture involving a verbal strategy of indirection that exploits the gap between the denotative and figurative meanings of words. A sim ...
is a literary concept developed by scholar
Henry Louis Gates Jr.
Henry Louis "Skip" Gates Jr. (born September 16, 1950) is an American literary critic, professor, historian, and filmmaker, who serves as the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor and Director of the Hutchins Center for African and African Ame ...
in his work ''
The Signifying Monkey
''The Signifying Monkey: A Theory of Afro-American Literary Criticism'' is a work of literary criticism and theory by the American scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr. first published in 1988. The book traces the folkloric origins of the African-Americ ...
'' (Gates, 1988). Essentially the author takes a well-known story or idea and revises it, embellishing it with the language and imbuing it with cultural meanings and signs related to his or her particular Afro-descended culture or within that specific cultures generational cultures. If one were to trace and compare the line of repetitions and reversals, one would then see the creation of a Diasporic literary canon, imbued with a Diasporic language that only a literacy of the intricacies of the cultures could interpret.
History of the term diaspora literacy
At the late 1980s the African Literature Association Conference by Clark. She presented it in a paper delivered on
Maryse Condé's ''Heremakhonon'' (1991, 58–59). It was later revised in "Developing Diaspora Literacy: Allusion in Maryse Condé's Hérémakhonon" (Davies: 1989, 315–331) in 1989, and in "Developing Diaspora Literacy and Marasa Consciousness" in 1991. Since then, several literature and education scholars have adopted the concept. The most recent adaptation appeared in Joyce E. King’s 2006 "'If Justice is Our Objective': Diaspora Literacy, Heritage Knowledge, and the Praxis of Critical Studyin' for Human Freedom" (Ball: 2006, 337–360).
Further reading
*
Spillers, Hortense, ed. (1991). ''Comparative American Identities''. New York: Routledge .
*Gates, Henry Louis, Jr. (1988), ''
The Signifying Monkey
''The Signifying Monkey: A Theory of Afro-American Literary Criticism'' is a work of literary criticism and theory by the American scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr. first published in 1988. The book traces the folkloric origins of the African-Americ ...
: A Theory of Afro-American Literary Criticism.'' Oxford University Press. .
*
Boyce Davies, Carole, ed. (1989). ''Out of the Kumbla: Womanist Perspectives on Caribbean Literature.'' Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press .
*Ball, Arnetha F., ed. (2006). ''With More Deliberate Speed: Achieving Equity and Excellence in Education.'' Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing .
External links
"'If Justice is Our Objective'""With More Deliberate Speed"
{{Literacy
African diaspora
Diaspora studies