(2020) Autochthonomies: Transnationalism, Testimony, and Transmission in the African Diaspora (New Black Studies Series)

In *Autochthonomies*, Myriam J. A. Chancy engages readers in an interpretive journey. She lays out a radical new process that invites readers to see creations by artists of African descent as legible within the context of African diasporic historical and cultural debates. By invoking a transnational African/diasporic lens and negotiating it through a lakou or ”yard space,” we can see such identities transfigured, recognized, and exchanged. Chancy demonstrates how the process can examine the salient features of texts and art that underscore African/diasporic sensibilities and render them legible. What emerges is a potential for richer readings of African diasporic works that also ruptures the Manichean binary dynamics that have dominated previous interpretations of the material. The result: an enriching interpretive mode focused on the transnational connections between subjects of African descent as the central pole for reader investigation.
A bold challenge to established scholarship, Autochthonomies ranges from Africa to Europe and the Americas to provide powerful new tools for charting the transnational interactions between African cultural producers and sites.

Reviews for Loneliness of Angels (2010)

“A major new work in Caribbean fiction.”
– Guyana Prize in Literature Caribbean Award Jury

“The Loneliness of Angels is ambitious…an important document of contemporary Haiti as affected by its recent history and its connections with the outside world.”
– Al Creighton’s “Arts on Sunday,” Sunday Stabroek, Guyana (September 25, 2011)

“The Loneliness of Angels reframes migration…as movement that both marks the people and history of the Caribbean and links to something beyond, what [Chancy] has recently called ‘the ability to conceive of a world greater than ourselves and greater than the islands of our origins.’ ….With [this novel] Chancy has exploited and expanded the novel’s form to leave her readers with memorable characters and compelling stories…”
– Sarah Barbour, “The Movement of Migration,” The Caribbean Writer Vol. 25 (Summer 2011)

“Anthems, songs to angels, a character’s obsession with Chopin — music provides spaces of reprieve within the painful memories captured by this novel….[Ruth]’s a fascinating figure [revealed] in a gripping first sentence — ‘Ruth smoothes the plastic covering her memory table as if she is trying to undo wrinkles in time’….The character Rose is even more compelling…The chapter devoted to her is worth the price of the book.”
– Winnipeg Free Press, 4/7/10