Afterword: engendering new century black transnationalisms

An international set of women scholars, exploring twenty- fi rst century culture by transnational, African women and gender non-binary people: what a rousing demonstration of women ’ s contemporary prominence as intellectual and creative agents of global Black experience. Initially to researchers in cultural studies, such major transnational writers as Chimamanda Adichie, Leila Aboulela, Zoë Wicomb, and Aminatta Forna may have appeared to be outliers within the literary African and postcolonial establishment. It was possible to construe their blending of diasporic and continental perspectives as the result of their own atypical personal circumstances. Hindsight allows us to see them, instead, as the crest of a wave, or – to move away from oceanic diction – early representatives of a demographic phenomenon that origi-nated with capitalist globalization. This phenomenon confounds Gilroy ’ s binaristic understanding: ‘ roots ’ and ‘ routes ’ are no longer easily distinguish-able for a population which claims multiple continental homes, cultures, and identities simultaneously.