An Evening with Patoimbasba Nikiema

🎟 This event is FREE and open to the public and books will be available for purchase the night of the event! An RSVP grants general entry, but seating is not guaranteed, so please try and show up early. Please RSVP only if you intend to join us. Can't make the event?

Exile is often perceived as an irreversible rupture, a state of loss and estrangement. Yet, in African and Caribbean literature, exile and return form a dynamic interplay that reshapes personal, collective, and national identities. This book challenges traditional notions of exile as suffering and return as simple reconnection with homeland and loved ones, arguing that in many instances exile fosters deep introspection and transformation, while return serves as active engagement with the homeland's sociopolitical and cultural realities. Through close readings of works by transnational writers, namely Khadi Hane, Malika Mokeddem, Dany Laferri re, and Alain Mabanckou, this study explores how exile and return create new forms of belonging, political consciousness, and cultural renewal. It gives voice to exiles navigating the displacement, alienation, and contradictions of the return. At a time when migration remains a polarizing issue in political discourses across Europe and the United States, this book reconsiders exile beyond narrative despair, revealing its potential as a space of reinvention. By bridging exilic imagination and homeland realities, this book offers a fresh perspective on how African and Caribbean writers envision the return as an Afrotopian project, a participative endeavor that rethinks the future of Africa and the Caribbean as a space of possibilities.

Patoimbasba Nikiema is an Assistant Professor of French and Francophone Studies / Global Black and Afropean Studies. His research focuses on Postcolonial Studies with a particular interest in Afropean, Sub-Saharan, and Caribbean literatures and cultures around questions of migration, diaspora, race, gender, and transnationalism. He is currently working on the participation of transnational African and Afrodiasporic writers in the Afrotopia, both on the continent and in the Caribbean. Patoimbasba Nikiema serves as the President of the Francophone Caucus of the African Literature Association (FRACALA).

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Books & Books, 265 Aragon Avenue, Coral Gables, United States

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