The trans-Atlantic slave trade and the concomitant enslavement of Africans created an enduring connection between Africa and the scattered communities of peoples of African origins in the Americas and elsewhere. These tragic events of slavery have profoundly influenced the literary imagination, whether in Africa, Europe or the Americas. The authors in this collection explore the ways in which trans-Atlantic constructions of this historical experience find expression in the literary mode. The essays examine the ways that writers and performers have used a variety of literary traditions, including narrative, poetry, myth, legend, autobiography, and drama, as well as song and the cinema, to engage in the construction of imagined yet realistic perceptions of Africa through literary representation.

ABOUT THE EDITORS
Naana Opoku-Agyemang is Associate Professor of African Literature and Dean of Graduate Studies at the University of Cape Coast, Ghana. She is also Academic Director for the program in History and Cultures of the African Diaspora at the School for International Training. Her research focuses on women in literature and the memories of enslavement in Ghana.

Paul E. Lovejoy, Distinguished Research Professor, holds the Canada Research Chair in African Diaspora History at York University and is Director of the Harriet Tubman Institute for Research on the Global Migrations of African Peoples (www.yorku.ca/tubman). His research focuses on biography and memories of slavery in Africa and the African Diaspora.

David V. Trotman teaches Caribbean history and Humanities at York University and is the Associate Director of the Tubman Institute for Research on the Global Migrations of African Peoples. His research and publications focus on crime and policing in the Caribbean, African religion in the Diaspora, Caribbean popular culture, and public memory and history.

CATEGORY
History, Literature, Literary Criticism/AFRICA