The Practice of Diaspora

This title revisits black trans-national culture in the 1920s and 1930s, paying particular to links between intellectuals in New York and their Francophone counterparts in Paris. Brent Edwards suggest that diaspora is less a historical condition than a set of practices: the claims, correspondences and collaborations through which black intellectuals pursue a variety of international alliances. Edwards elucidates the workings of diaspora by tracking the wealth of black trans-national print culture between the world wards, exploring the connections and exchanges among New York-based publications (such as "Opportunity", "The Negro World" and "The Crisis") and newspapers in Paris (such as "Les Continents, "La Voix des Negres" and "L'Etudiant Noir"). In reading a diverse archive - the works of writers and editors from Langston Hughes, Rene Maran, and Claude McKay to Paulette Nardal, Alain Locke, W.E.B. Du Bois, George Padmore and Tiemoko Garan Koyate - "The Practice of Diaspora" takes account of the highly divergent ways of imagining race beyond the barriers of nation and language. In doing so, it reveals the importance of translation, arguing that the politics of diaspora are legible above all in efforts at negotiating difference among populations of African descent throughout the world.