The return of the 'native': Visualizing place and narrating homecoming

This dissertation engages with the concept of diaspora as a lived reality expressed in literary and visual texts. Due to the large geo-political terrain that diaspora studies encompass, this dissertation specifically examines narratives of return enacted by women of the African diaspora. One of the key questions that this dissertation asks is: How do the formal and structural elements of such narratives of return extend our understanding of the personal stakes involved in homecoming? The diasporic space, by virtue of its open borders, ease of mobility, cross-cultural pollination, and heterogeneous, hybrid identities, is often seen as a liberatory space. Yet, the texts under examination do not necessarily extol the diasporic space. One of the goals of this project is to interrogate the limits of diasporic subjectivity as they are explored in the four creative texts under examination. Do the diasporic experiences of the central characters in the texts inform their choice to return? How do ideas about home and belonging, memory and nostalgia, gender and history, get played out in the diasporic landscape? In this dissertation, I argue that the experience of migration and the displacement that results actually brings about a longing for home. Home is understood in relation to being away and the four texts exhibit the persistence of nostalgia both within the diaspora as well as within the home space. I argue that nostalgia—its representation and treatment—is a crucial component of diaspora aesthetics. The diasporic experiences of the women writers and filmmakers I focus on, enable them to strategically construct home in a manner that allows them to create a space for their own agency. As women, they also express strong links to family and community; their narratives of return, as a result, become a means for them to render those links permanent in some form.