Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2024, English

Fractured Solidarities maps out a historical trajectory of transatlantic solidarities between Africans and African Americans from the heyday of the civil rights movement and anti-colonial struggle in the mid-twentieth century to the present moment of technology-mediated social justice movements. The research is premised on my observation that analyses of black internationalism often bifurcate into these binary opposite arguments: it is either interpreted through the lens of antagonism, which privileges intra-racial discords between Africans and African Americans, or it is read through the lens of coalition, in which case emphasis is laid on the networks of collaboration between the two groups. My project, however, argues that these two interpretive lenses are not mutually exclusive but rather co-constitutive of the praxis of black internationalism since the mid-twentieth century. This dissertation, therefore, proposes what I call “Fractured Solidarities” as a conceptual framework for thinking through the project of global black solidarities that acknowledges the co-constitutive nature of coalition and contention in the make-up of transatlantic racial solidarity. Drawing on a variety of methodological approaches that cut across literary close-reading, archival research, film studies, digital humanities, and visual culture, this dissertation analyzes various genres and forms of cultural texts including fiction, poetry, non-fiction, film, and social media texts. This project intervenes in the scholarship on black internationalism by highlighting how the digital culture of the present moment has reshaped transnational black political activism and the praxis of social justice movements. Also, it contributes to the extensive scholarly conversation about Pan-Africanism by considering the ways in which less explored sources such as speculative fiction and social media open new vistas of interpretation for transatlantic solidarity between Africans and African Americans.

Ph.D., Antioch University, 2024, Leadership and Change

This dissertation project used an interpretivist qualitative research design to study how the right-to-read claim made by seven teenagers attending Detroit public schools in 2016 reflects, addresses, or describes contemporary discussions about educational access. Using situational analysis (SA) as a theory/method, the entirety of the claim comprises the situation of the social phenomenon being studied, not the people. This research combines critical race theory (CRT) with Bronfenbrenner's ecological systems and uses situation analysis to map historical discourses to conduct a study that examines the history of a present situation of inquiry as presented by this question: How does the 2016 right-to-read claim made by high school students in Detroit, Michigan reflect, address, or describe contemporary discussions about educational access? The study collected data to allow me to construct a prosopography that articulates an answer to the question that claims access to literacy is a public school policy right. Because situational analysis (SA) is designed to open research data to aspects of a circumstance that may have been overlooked, marginalized, or silenced, I was not certain the research results would answer this exact question. Additionally, critical theory and SA were used to conduct this qualitative research, examining historical data that addresses the right-to-read claim as a Foucaultian programmatic social problem. As such, it seeks to understand the complexities of recurring and historically situated education practices that limit actualizing U.S. education policies that embrace access to basic literacy skills as a human right. This dissertation is available in open access at AURA (https://aura.antioch.edu) and OhioLINK ETD Center (https://etd.ohiolink.edu).

Master of Arts (MA), Bowling Green State University, 2024, American Culture Studies

This thesis examines the portrayal of mother-child disconnection and family separation among undocumented African immigrant women in the United States, as depicted in the films Anchor Baby (2010) and Nanny (2022). Through an analysis of these films, the study highlights the socioeconomic challenges faced by these women within the U.S. sociocultural landscape. It investigates how the films depict family separation and mother-child disconnection in relation to the broader issues of socioeconomic hardship, cultural displacement, and housing instability. Additionally, the research explores how African cosmology interprets the immigrant experiences of the female characters in these films. The purpose of this analysis is to contribute to the discourse on the experiences of (un)documented African immigrant women in the United States, promoting further studies in this area. The study focuses specifically on the representations in Anchor Baby and Nanny, rather than attempting to generalize across all African communities. The thesis is structured into three chapters: the first outlines the motivation for the study, the ongoing migration of Africans to the United States, and provides a literature review and an overview of intersectionality as a critical framework. The second chapter offers a detailed analysis of the films, exploring themes of mother-child disconnection, family separation, dreams, survival, disillusionment, fear, uncertainty, hostility, and racism. The final chapter reflects on the key themes addressed in the study.

Master of Arts (M.A.), University of Dayton, 2024, English

This paper analyzes the manner in which poetry written by Black queer-identifying men portrays gender, sexuality, and masculinity. Black queer men were and continue to be one of the groups most affected by social and cultural scrutiny. The poetry produced by queer black men tells of the intersecting ideals of racism, expectations of masculinity, and the homophobia that directly impacts the ways in which Black queer men exist in any space. I believe this poetry allows for insight into safety and agency. Throughout my research of the poetry chosen, it became obvious to me that forcing gendered ideals onto these Black men requires assimilation and controlled conformity, emphasizing that intersectional bonds cannot be ignored. I argue that if queer Black men are to exist, they must be stereotypically “queer” in the way that the poems have depicted; within the poetry I have analyzed, they must feed into stereotypes, hide their queerness, or they must escape the bonds of heteronormative expectations. The poetry depicts their sexuality and gender as a performance, a dance of survival Black queer men must practice and execute regularly in order to be visible in both racial and queer society. The performance of stereotypical queerness expressed within the poetry of Black queer male poets exemplifies the way in which queerness enables modes of survival.

Master of Arts in English, Youngstown State University, 2024, Department of Languages

In her memoir, Unbowed, Wangari Maathai, the Kenyan environmental activist, has demonstrated with literary accomplishment how the environment is a vital component of our ecosystem. Mathaai shows that significant ecological degradation has occurred over the last two centuries due to the agrarian and industrial revolutions. In connection to the parallel ecological concerns in her African activism, women from all walks of life have borne the brunt of racial and ecological challenges. This study utilizes interconnected theories of womanism and ecofeminism by recognizing their interchangeability in analyzing the parallel subjugation of women and the environment within patriarchal structures. Womanism, originating from African American feminism, emphasizes Black women's unique experiences and struggles while advocating for justice and liberation. Ecofeminism, on the other hand, examines the intersection of gender and environmental issues, highlighting the exploitation and oppression of both. This thesis examines womanism through the lens of African American writers such as Maya Angelou's I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Alice Walker's In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens, Octavia Butler's Parable of the Sower, and Toni Morrison's Beloved, alongside Wangari Maathai's memoir Unbowed. These works collectively illuminate the intersectionality of race, gender, and environmental activism, showcasing the resilience and struggle against oppressive structures while advocating for justice and liberation. The existing African eco-critical analyses are notorious for ignoring the literariness of works by women if they acknowledge the work in passing. Using Womanism and ecofeminism as theoretical frameworks interchangeably, this study closely reads Mathaai's study to propose that Maathai's personal experiences and activism demonstrate the intersectionality of environmentalism and feminism and the crucial role of women in protecting and preserving the natural world.

Master of Fine Arts, Miami University, 2024, English: Creative Writing

Scary Movies and Love Stories takes you through the journey of a first-generation African woman obsessed with “House Hunters,” “WrestleMania,” and other forms of pop culture as she navigates the intersections of illness, race, and gender in America. In this hybrid memoir, the speaker uses critical theorists and dark humor to comment on everything from terrible interviews, to psych wards, to bad sex, to “Teletubbies.” This is a book that examines (and laughs in the corner about) the experience of being caught between two locations—the United States and Nigeria—never feeling enough for both.

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2023, Spanish and Portuguese

This dissertation analyzes the phenomenon of transatlantic homeland return in African and Afro-diasporic cultural productions. The studied works comprise six literary and cinematic texts, intersecting the genres of novel, memoir, historical fiction, and speculative fiction. The time periods depicted in the texts range from 1835, beginning with the reverse migration of Africans who participated in the Male slave uprising of Bahia, to recent experiences in the twenty-first century, and they depict literal and metaphorical returns to motherland Africa by Africans and diasporic Afro-descendants from Brazil, and the United States. Whereas dominant discourses on the topic of return in the Afro-Atlantic diaspora by scholars such as Frantz Fanon (1961), Edouard Glissant (1989), Stuart Hall (1990), Paul Gilroy (1993), and Saidiya Hartman (2007) have diminished its cultural and ideological significance due to the possibility of ambivalent experiences, I push back in this dissertation to argue that notwithstanding the ambivalences, the phenomenon of return through its motif in cultural productions constitutes an empowering paradigm within Afro-diasporic cultural imaginary that allows diasporic Afro-descendants to both negotiate their past, as well as reinvent their future through its creative affordances to rethink diasporic belonging, challenge diasporic alienation and assert the freedom and subjectivity of once displaced Africans. The arguments of the critics of return, particularly of the postmodern classification, can be said to mostly revolve around the nationalist character of return as an antithesis to the postmodern hybrid identity thesis. However, a closer look into the motivations of Afro-diasporic returnees, as I demonstrate in this dissertation, shows that their quest for a homeland is not so much based on a nationalistic impulse, but one motivated by a deeply ingrained ontological clamor for desalienation amidst their crippling diasporic otherness. Consequently, t (open full item for complete abstract)

Doctor of Education , University of Dayton, 2023, Educational Administration

Safety, security, freedom of expression, love, and support are critical components for adolescent youth that encourage growth and development. This study explored how Black girls make sense of their educational experiences while partnering with school staff through the RoyalSapphires program. Children must be in relationships with well- intended caring adults to facilitate adolescent growth and leadership. This study included a focus group with school administrators in charge of the curriculum for the afterschool program; members participated in semi-structured interviews and focus groups with members of RoyalSapphires. The findings suggest that members felt safe with the coordinators of RoyalSapphires, which was critical in sharing and learning through the afterschool program. Additionally, participants enjoyed these curated spaces dedicated to girls being in fellowship with each other. Finally, the time spent with RoyalSapphires was a source of validation and joy at the end of the school day. The program coordinators outlined their intentions to create a welcoming program for members facilitated by adults with their best interests at heart. The themes from this study were instrumental in creating an action plan grounded in creating a curriculum designed with the needs of participants at the forefront and led by a 3–5-member advisor board. The advisory board will seek representatives who are trailblazers in education, business, and leadership domains to create programming to share with middle school administrators to pilot this afterschool curriculum in their location. Using Yosso's (2005) six types of Community of Cultural Wealth as an asset framework when working with students from marginalized backgrounds, the curriculum will be instrumental in creating practical programming relevant to participants while providing assessment throughout the program. Ultimately, this afterschool curriculum seeks to partner with Black girls to enhance their skills (open full item for complete abstract)

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Ohio University, 2023, Communication Studies (Communication)

As an African woman who was born in Cameroon which is in Western Africa then grew up in Kenya, an East African country, I have heard stories of different cultural practices that African women in any of the African countries that I have lived in and/or visited, face. One such practice is female genital cutting (FGC), which refers to the surgical altering or complete removal of the female genitalia. This dissertation study seeks to understand the perspectives that FGC survivors in Kenya have towards FGC and their attitudes toward the practice. 15 to 20 women who have survived FGC were interviewed over a 6-week period. The United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund (UNICEF) estimates that about 4 million girls and women in Kenya have undergone one form or the other of Female Genital Cutting (FGC). This makes up 21% of the country's female population (UNICEF, 2020). Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) is the official medical term given by Western scholarship and organizations, to the intentional deformation or complete removal of the female prepuce without any medical justification. However, there has been resistance to the use of the word mutilation when referring to FGC, as that falls under the patronizing nature of the West over traditional practices from the Global South and is perceived as offensive by people who come from FGC-practicing communities. Past studies also argue that most women who have undergone FGC do not consider themselves to be mutilated. In agreement with these arguments and as an act of decolonizing the FGC discourse as well as respecting all those who are affected by FGC, I choose to use the term FGC in this study instead of FGM. I also choose to refer to girls and women who have undergone FGC as survivors instead of victims. As Njambi (2004) argues, so long as we view FGC through the eyes of the West as a barbaric and savage practice where those who undergo it are being oppressed, then we take away their agency. By referring to (open full item for complete abstract)

Master of Fine Arts (MFA), Bowling Green State University, 2023, Creative Writing/Fiction

The novel, The Maquisard of Mount Kupe is centered on certain events, some heroic, some tragic, integral to the making of modern-day Cameroon. Consequently, it weaves through and around some key defining episodes which are of contemporary relevance to Cameroonians and historians. Included are WWII, the Douala riots of 1955, the upeciste rebellion (1956-1970), and the massacre of 236 Bamileke people in Tombel by the autochthonous Bakossi on the 31st of December 1966. How these historical episodes shape or are shaped by its protagonist, Ntungwe, then, is at the heart of this story. Themes of love, brotherhood, friendship, enmity, family, betrayal, and divided loyalties are also explored. On a macro level, the text is concerned with the effects of Slavery, Colonialism, Neocolonialism, tribalism, nationhood, and the abuse of power. The text's point of view is Third Person Omniscient, a perspective that creates closeness with multiple characters, gives them space within the story, and contextualizes the historical and cultural aspects of the setting. The Maquisard of Mount Kupe, thus, is decidedly polyvocal. The first part of this triptych novel (The Kupe, The Madness, and The Great Accusation) is set in 1965, and it interrogates Ntungwe in the aftermath of a falling out with his rebel cohorts and a recent spell of violence in his community. The second part (Mother's Magic, Revolutionaries, and Broken Hearts), set from 1955 to 1965, explores the protagonist's youth, as well as the backstories of some of the other characters. The third part (Puddles of Blood), set in 1966, is about Ntungwe's efforts and failure to quell his community's retaliatory intentions against a group of people believed to be responsible for the aforementioned violence, the Bamileke. My hope is that this three-part design, as well as the chosen POV, allows me to tell a more nuanced and resonant story ‘dripped with bitter honey' in a non-linear way.

PHD, Kent State University, 2022, College of Arts and Sciences / Department of Modern and Classical Language Studies

Much of the research in Translation Studies conducted on African literature in French and in English in the postcolonial context has focused on the hybrid nature of some of the literary works: these are seen as the site of power struggles between the European language in which they are written and the oral indigenous language(s) which influence them. This literary production is thus often framed as a form of translation of an absent oral indigenous original or at least seen as a hybrid third space, to use Homi Bhabha's term. In the context of Nigerian literature, a small body of texts by Chinua Achebe or Gabriel Okara is often used to illustrate this notion of writing as translation. Written, for the most part, during the independence era, their experimental use of English was politically loaded. It was meant, as Achebe puts it, to make English “carry the weight of [his] African experience.” More than fifty years after Nigeria's independence, however, what seems to characterize Nigerian literature is no longer an experimental use of English, but rather its multilingualism, which can be seen as a reflection of the country's linguistic plurality, a characteristic not yet addressed by Translation Studies or African Literary Studies scholarship but which this dissertation seeks to analyze. This dissertation creates a comprehensive comparable corpus including all the Nigerian literary works of fiction that were published between 2002 and 2018 and translated into French (that is 31 source texts and 31 translations) in order to: first, examine the heterolingualism of “original” contemporary Nigerian literature, by surveying its distribution (including Nigerian Pidgin and indigenous languages), typographical presentation, and the various translation strategies used by the authors to make the presence of heterolingualism more visible and accessible to the readers; secondly, to analyze the ways in which this heterolingualism is rendered in the French translations. It mak (open full item for complete abstract)

Doctor of Education, Miami University, 2022, Educational Leadership

Aspects of systemic racism have created a gifted educational system based on de facto segregation, maintained by nationally normed assessments that serve the needs of white privilege. Therefore, a different avenue of identification could be utilized to allow for equity for students of color. This approach was the basis of this research. Finding alternate ways to identify students of color, with an emphasis on Black elementary students, may be one way to create equity in the gifted program in a school district in Ohio and close a twenty-one percent gap in equity in gifted education. The students of color in the district under study have many social, cultural, and developmental challenges that keep them from being identified and participating in gifted programs based on normed standardized tests mandated by the state of Ohio. Utilizing norms as a way to identify potentially gifted students and incorporating them into the gifted program in this district allowed for a closing of the gap of inequities in gifted identification to about one percent. In addition, the inclusion of potentially gifted students based on building norms allowed the gifted program in this district to increase by more than twice the amount and to create equity within this large urban public school district in Ohio. This research may potentially help increase participation in gifted education for students of color and allow for further research in the identification of students for gifted education as well as focus on the use of potential in gifted education programs.

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Ohio University, 2022, English (Arts and Sciences)

“‘An Odd Monster': Essays on 20th Century Literature” focuses on intersections of history, place, gender, race, and imperialism in twentieth-century modernist literature. Within these discussions I assert that western conceptualizations of history or the past work to erase the non-white bodies and cultures pivotal to imperial success, to subsume women into patriarchal subordination, and to present a historical progression antithetical to the experience of those relegated to subalternity. In discussions of Jean Rhys, Tayeb Salih, William Faulkner, and Virginia Woolf, I argue that defiance to authoritarian containment—whether from within or without—often takes unlikely forms with seemingly feeble results. In analyses of characters who write back, talk back, rebel, do nothing, and/or commit small acts of violence, I contend throughout that insubordination to systemic oppressions for the purposes of prioritizing individual agency over moral triumph do not have to be “successful,” to be revolutionary. Utilizing foundational voices such as Sara Ahmed, Edward Said, Homi Bhabha, Michel Foucault, among others, I argue that these acts are transcendent despite little to no substantial change emerging because the characters and writers themselves make and claim their own autonomy and belonging. This work participates in and urges for a continuation of the work of “New Modernist Studies,” which seeks a more expansive understanding of modernism through collapsing the rigid (often exclusionary) spatial and temporal boundaries.

Master of Arts in English, Cleveland State University, 2022, College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences

Comic books with Black main characters have been the subject of much critical exploration over the years. Typical analyses of these comics have focused on identity politics and representation of Black characters. However, critical discussion has not yet determined a method for interpreting representation of Black characters within comic books. This study incorporates approaches to reading Black expressive texts, caricature, and narratives of Black characters written by white authors to analyze the comic books All Negro Comics, The Black Panther, Black, and Bayou. Additionally, it argues that Black-authored Black comics require a reframing of the text through an African American cultural lens. It is concluded that Black comics offer readers insight about American racism and prejudice, and an understanding of perspectives on Black belonging within America.

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2022, African-American and African Studies

This dissertation offers a comparative study of Black subjectivities in Europe with a particular focus on France and Britain. I trace Afro-European Subjectivities starting from the eighteenth century with the emergence of Black writing and the creation of the modern liberal nation-state to present. This project looks at the relationship between Blackness and the West from a diasporic perspective by examining how Afro-descendants navigate a way out of the disadvantages (marginality and subjugation) that come with being racialized Black. To do this, I draw from Anglophone and Francophone African and Afro-diasporic literature and literary criticism, including diasporic cultural theory and critical race theory, to examine Black people's expressions of desire for recognition as human, and their doubly conscious sense of personhood as Black and European. I argue that this comparative literary genealogy of Black people's political and cultural agency within European national boundaries is an alternative to the colonial-metropole schema or the migrant positionality that is often used as framework in the study of Black Europe. Such a positionality obfuscates the inherent diasporic presence of Black people in the making of Europe.

Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), Bowling Green State University, 2022, Theatre

Bud Coleman and Judith A. Sebesta in Women in American Musicals: Essays on Composers…. (2008) and Michelle Parke in Queer in the Choir: Essays on Gender and Sexuality in Glee (2014), all contend that “Musical theatre is arguably the most popular form of theatre in the United States” (Coleman and Sebesta, 6). Since the Nigerian tour of the Broadway musical Fela! in 2011, the form has generated a renewed excitement in that country's theatre culture, which was on the verge of extinction. A central contributor to this interest in musical theatre in Nigeria is producer Bolanle Austen-Peters (a.k.a., BAP). Inspired by Fela!, Austen-Peters has produced five Broadway-style musical theatre performances in the last decade, staged in Nigeria and abroad. In this study, I analyze three key works from Austen-Peters's still-in-process career while also providing documentation for this new art form to ensure its preservation and inspire prospects of future research. By using Ruth Little's, Cathy Turner's, and Synne Behrndt's definitions of dramaturgy, I critically evaluate and attend to how contemporary musical theatre in Nigeria functions. In addition, employing Marvin Carlson's concept of theatrical interculturalism, I endeavor to understand how traditional Nigerian performance elements are making their way into this reimagined art form. Following the introduction which lays out the topic and methodologies, chapter two is a critical exploration of Austen-Peters's first musical script, Saro, The Musical (2013). Specifically, I explore how she is modifying and modernizing traditional Nigerian performance practices to create a musical theatre production unique to Nigeria. My focus in chapter three is an analysis of a video recording of Austen-Peters's second work, Wakaa, The Musical (2015), which debuted in Nigeria before transferring to London in 2016 for a limited run. Building on the work done in chapter two, in this chapter I investigate how this performance combines el (open full item for complete abstract)

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Ohio University, 2021, Interdisciplinary Arts (Fine Arts)

In this dissertation, A Black (Human)ist Homiletic: A Literary Exegetical Response and Hermeneutic Case Study about the Life and Experience of Prince Kaboo as Samuel Morris; the Angel Ebony, I courageously excavate the literary art of texts written about Samuel Morris through a series of exegetical tools in order to uncover extortion, exploitation, and the cunning sacrilegious exhibition that deprived Morris of his cultural identity behind a veil of Christianization. In this dissertation, I seek to affirm the "human worth and dignity" of Morris without a codependency on theism and provide viable evidence to reveal the mythomaniacal acts of white Christian antics. I argue that a decolonial humanist approach to the literary arts pertaining to the life of Samuel Morris, both material and metaphorical, (Pinn, 2010, p. 11)restores Morris from a TransAtlantic narrative under racial-religious identity that eradicates his human nature and intuitive rationality and reconciles his appropriate Black cultural property (Weisenfeld,2018, p. 5). The depiction of Morris in these synoptic compositions is a theological-aesthetic application interwoven with social and political ingenuity in order to respond to the time in which each text was born.

Master of Arts, Miami University, 2021, French, Italian, and Classical Studies

This thesis studies the relationships between sport and migration in Baru's comics. Examining sport as a pull factor of migration in these comics leads us to the close analysis of individual experiences, trajectories, and motivations. Respectively set in the colonial and the postcolonial era, Le Chemin de l'Amerique and Fais peter les basses, Bruno! reveal similar patterns used to account for Said Boudiaf's and Slimane's journeys from Africa to France, with America being the ultimate destination for Said. Analyzed comparatively, these two comics enable us not only to codify Baru's unique style, but also to unravel a tradition of discourses and imaginaries that make the connection between sport and migration trendy and complex. At the level of the form, this thesis seeks to analyze how Baru uses similar techniques, resources, and strategies in these two comics to account for individual migration narratives, with an emphasis on the aesthetics of the image over the text. At the level of content, this thesis will analyze how sport, in tracing migration roads, unveils political, economic, and social imaginaries that connect Africa to France.

Master of Arts (MA), Bowling Green State University, 2021, English

Although sexual violence against women is rampant in Nigeria, there is a dearth of feminist studies that examine sexual violence against women in Nigerian films and at the same time answer the question continuously begging for an answer- why is sexual violence against women so rampant in Nigeria? Therefore, this thesis studies Emeka Nwabunze's Child, not Bride, Kunle Afolayan's October 1, and British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) Africa Eye documentary, Sex for Grades and argues that the prevalence of sexual violence against women in Nigeria is a consequence of incorrect notions about femininity in the nation's culture. Julia Serano's book, Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity and Catherine MacKinnon's essay “Sexuality from Toward a Feminist Theory of the State” serve as the feminist methodological framework of this thesis. Serano's work clarifies two things: 1. The possession of femininity is often used to rationalize injustices done to women and, 2. Patriarchy ensures that femininity is perceived as inferior to masculinity by imposing inferior meanings on femininity and interpreting feminine expression as consent to sexual objectification and violence. Based on the notion that human beliefs and behaviors are dictated by culture and, therefore, cannot be legitimately judged without the proper cultural context, this thesis employs Yoruba culture as a microcosm of Nigerian culture and explores Yoruba cultural notions about femininity. The social significance of this study is that it is a valuable tool for women's rights organizations in their fight for the prevention and elimination of rape in Nigerian society.

Master of Arts in English, Cleveland State University, 2021, College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences

While scholars who investigate the works of African diasporic authors Edwidge Danticat, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, and Claudia Rankine acknowledge the importance between form and audience in their works, critics have either yet to fully recognize how and/or for what purpose each author implements specific techniques. Paying close attention to what I propose are formal affective strategies in Danticat's Everything Inside, Adichie's The Thing Around Your Neck, and Rankine's Citizen: An American Lyric, allows us to see how each author infuses experimental forms that are strategically bound to how their future readers will react to their texts with the hope that these reactions will prove more socially and politically moving than just moving—as in readers simply turning the page. Black diasporic women authors, including Danticat, Adichie, and Rankine, destabilize traditional literary paradigms and invent new formal affective strategies in their works. Upon closer consideration, these strategies not only help expose the continuous exclusivity of the American Dream and contemporary problems associated with the enduring patriarchal hegemony, but by engaging the audience with commonly felt affects, reconfigure future possibilities for intersectional solidarity through the very conflicts and difficulties their writings explore and formally embody.