The Difference Place Makes

Gender, Sexuality, and Diaspora Identity

Angeletta KM Gourdine

“The Difference Place Makes is absorbing and convincing. Gourdine is quite bold in taking on some critical scholarly positions of the last decade, and her argument is as accomplished as it is thoughtful. This book is an important addition to literary scholarship, and a critical complement to classroom readings and discussion.” —Karla FC Holloway, Duke University

The Difference Place Makes is a literary reanalysis of writings of three well-known and often-studied women authors of African descent—Michele Cliff, Alice Walker, and Ama Ata Aidoo. (It is also the first book to make a critical analysis of Walker's recent Possessing the Secret of Joy, making it groundbreaking.) Angeletta KM Gourdine reads each of these authors' prose unconventionally, offering a multispaced, multivoiced analysis of each and allowing the texts to “speak” among themselves about the political, gendered, and sexualized realities of the Diaspora consciousness of each. Gourdine looks closely at how place and race shape and inform literature written by black women writers. In doing so, the book travels from U.S. to Africa, following the historical trajectory of Pan-Africanist thought.

Angeletta KM Gourdine is associate professor of English at Louisiana State University.