Postcards from the edge-city: Mass-media and photographic images in contemporary novels of the Black diaspora

This dissertation, Postcards from the Edge-City: Mass-Media and Photographic Images in Contemporary Novels of the Black Diaspora, examines the use of photographic and mass-media images in literary representations of Black urban slums or "edge-cities." I explore four contemporary novels and a film that rely heavily on photographic and mass-media images to illuminate, articulate, and critique modern-day Black urban existence: Patrick Chamoiseau's Texaco (1997), Chris Abani's Graceland (2004), John Edgar Wideman's Fanon, Paulo Lins' Cidade de Deus (1997), and Fernando Meirelles' 2002 film adaptation of Lins' novel City of God. In each chapter, I examine the ways in which photographic and/or mass-media images are used as narrative tropes or devices for representing the material conditions of an emerging slum existence. I argue that each text reveals a preoccupation with the rise of global urbanism and visual culture as new types of discursive spaces---new kinds of "texts"--- that shape not only the real life of black people, but also the literary landscape of Black writing across the globe. Theoretically, I situate these novels as intersections of contemporary postcolonial and postmodern literature and as part of a Pan-Africanist/Black Diaspora literary tradition.