Ghosts in Contemporary African Diasporic Literature: Re-visioning History, Memory and Identity

This project examines how several texts by writers of the African diaspora (Toni Morrison, Fred D'Aguiar, Gloria Naylor, Paule Marshall and Michelle Cliff) use the figure of the ghost both as a trope for the past (in particular America's slave past) and as a narrative and metanarrative device for deconstructing and critiquing the way this past has been written in America's master narrative of history.