Guilt, Shame, and the Generative Queer in Taiye Selasi's _Ghana Must Go._

Authors

  • Anna-Lena Oldehus English Department, Leibniz University of Hannover

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.5283/copas.301

Keywords:

Taiye Selasi, Queer, Affect, Gender, Transnational Literature

Abstract

This paper focuses on Taiye Selasi’s Ghana Must Go (2013) and shows how Selasi, by challenging conventional modes of storytelling, creates narrative spaces for characters that queer traditional formations of subjectivity, most prominently by emancipating them from the repressive forms of affect of guilt and shame. 

Author Biography

Anna-Lena Oldehus, English Department, Leibniz University of Hannover

Anna-Lena Oldehus works as a research assistant and lecturer at the English Department at the Leibniz University of Hannover (LUH). Her research interests include gender and queer studies, affect theory, and contemporary, transnational literature. She is currently working on a PhD thesis entitled “Queerness, Affect, and Identity in Contemporary Transnational Literature” (working title). Her classes and lecture series have dealt with topics of “Gender, Queerness, and Activism in Contemporary Context,” “Identity and Power in Contemporary Literature,” and “The Global Queer” as well as “Deconstruct/Reconstruct Literature: Queer of Color Critique in Contemporary Literature.” She is coordinator for the “Studienschwerpunkt Gender Studies” at the Philosophy Faculty of the LUH. Together with Professor Dr. Ruth Mayer, she was the convener of the summer school “Inside/Outside: Queer Networks in Transnational Perspective,” funded by the Volkswagen Foundation, which  took place in 2016. 

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Published

2018-05-23

How to Cite

Oldehus, Anna-Lena. “Guilt, Shame, and the Generative Queer in Taiye Selasi’s _Ghana Must Go._”. Current Objectives of Postgraduate American Studies, vol. 19, no. 1, May 2018, doi:10.5283/copas.301.

Issue

Vol. 19 No. 1 (2018)

Section

Articles

License

Creative Commons License

Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) 4.0 License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgment of the work’s authorship and initial publication in this journal.