In “Teaching Black Internationalism and Americanah,” Dr. Keisha N. Blain (University of Iowa) provides suggestions for teaching black internationalism through the novel Americanah (2013) by Nigerian author Chimamanda Adichie. Blain shows how Americanah can be used to tease out the way “we conceptualize ‘black internationalism’ in light of the multi-facted meanings of blackness in the United States and across the globe.”

Teaching Black Internationalism and Americanah

[Editor's note: For more on Americanah, see Katherine Hallemeier's "'To Be From the Country of People Who Gave': National Allegory and the United States of Adichie's Americanah," in our Summer 2015 issue.]

On a related note, Dr. Blain compiles a number of sources related to black internationalism, focusing particularly on twentieth-century transnationalism, in “A Bibliography of Black Internationalism.” Additions to the list in the comments section are welcome.

A Bibliography of Black Internationalism

Posts: Keisha N. Blain, University of Iowa

Description: Katherine E. Bishop, Miyazaki International College, Japan