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Yaw Agawu-Kakraba
Pennsylvania State University
Yaw Agawu-Kakraba is a Professor of Spanish and African Studies at the Pennsylvania State University, He holds a Ph.D. in Hispanic Languages, Literatures, and Cultures from Cornell University an MA in Spanish from the University of Alberta, and a BA in Spanish and
Linguistics from the University of Ghana.
His research focuses on 20th- and 21st-
century contemporary Spanish fiction and
Afro-Hispanic and Lusophone Literatures
and Cultures. He is the author of Postmodernity in Spanish Fiction and Culture; Demythification in the Fiction of Miguel Delibes (Peter Lang), and co-editor of Diasporic Identities Within Afro-Hispanic and African Contexts, and African, Lusophone, and Afro-Hispanic Cultural
Dialogue *His debut novel, The Restless Crucible, published in 2022, has been nominated for the 2024 African Literature Association Book of the Year Award in Creative Writing.
Talk Information:
Historical Fiction Within the Context of Afro-Brazilian Transatlantic Reverse Migration. The Case of the Restless Crucible
March 15, 2024 | 9:00 AM
Three major driving forces influenced reverse or
voluntary migration in Brazil. They include manumission, the 1835 slave riots in Bahia, and the abolition of slavery in Brazil in 1888. Considering reverse migration and cross-cultural exchanges during the Middle Passage is
crucial to understanding the African diaspora, an often-overlooked perspective in historical studies of slaves and emancipated Africans. Recent scholarship has, however, broadened the study of reverse transatlantic migration to explore developing communities and identities among returnees in Africa. One definition of “return” or reverse migration includes migrants going back to their country of origin, either to fulfill their original intentions or due to revised intentions. In this presentation, I will use my historical novel, The Restless Crucible, to examine how a fictionalized historical figure undertakes a voluntary reverse migration to Dahomey, a potential place of origin, to engage in the abominable yet lucrative slave trade.