New Books In African American Studies

How can those in African, Africana, and African American Studies strengthen their disciplinary ties? What do these connections have to do with Kwasi Konadu‘s recent study The Akan Diaspora in the Americas (Oxford 2010)? How can the scholarship produced in African, Africana, and African American Studies serve the interests of people of African descent across the globe? Indeed, how can the history of the Akan people help us to better understand slavery and the history of the Americas? What does it mean for a scholar who is the descendant of Ghanaians, born in Jamaica and reared in America to make his life work about African history? And how does that scholar feel about his personal role in the legacy of the Diaspora, about a being a Black father in the U.S.? Kwasi Konadu speaks about all of this and more in his New Books in African American Studies interview. Konadu’s intellectual commitment to uncovering and explaining the Akan people, their language, culture, and performative practices is inspiring. In fact,