Pan African narratives: sites of resistance in the Black diaspora

Africa as a point of reference for Africans dispersed from her shores and their descendants in the Diaspora has perpetuated discourse of longing and ambivalence. For centuries these various sentiments have emerged in Black literary expressions. The quest of this study is to advance Black narrative tradition by proposing a theoretical framework informed by these constructs and predicaments to establish a genre of literature referred to here as Pan African narratives. This work looks at Black response to the dilemma of dispersal and dislocation in the Diaspora from the nineteenth to the twentieth century. More specifically, it examines the emergence of a literary genre at the juncture of the African diaspora and Pan African paradigms. Building on the legacy of slave and migration narratives, Pan African narratives reveal manifestations of Black solidarity and resistance to oppressive forces

Generational Communications In The New York City Public Sector Workplace

Walden University College of Social and Behavioral Sciences This is to certify that the doctoral dissertation by Nathasha Brooks-Harris has been found to be complete and satisfactory in all respects, and that any and all revisions required by the review committee have been made. Review Committee Dr. Mark Gordon, Committee Chairperson, Public Policy and Administration Faculty Dr. Michael Knight, Committee Member, Public Policy and Administration Faculty Dr. Michael Brewer, University Reviewer, Public Policy and Administration Faculty Chief Academic Officer Eric Riedel, Ph.D. Walden University 2017 There is a digital divide between Baby Boomers and Millennials in the way they communicate and use technology in the New York City public sector workplace. The purpose of this empirical phenomenological study was to explore the phenomenon of generational communications between Baby Boomers and Millennials in the New York City workplace and to understand their lived experiences of how they communicate and use technology in their job. The conceptual framework consisted of two theories: Cameron & Quinn\u27s competing values framework and Prensky\u27s digital natives/digital immigrants. A total of 21 New York City workers (10 Baby Boomers and 11 Millennials) from various agencies participated in semi structured interviews and answered the DISC Classic Profile, an instrument that showed their communication styles. The data were analyzed using the Stevick-Colazzi method and Dedoose data analysis procedure to find groups of meaning and themes. Research found benefits and challenges of technology that impacted communications; how organizational culture impacted technology use and communications; fears about using and learning technology; differences in relationships affecting Baby Boomers and Millennials; and differences in communication styles affecting management and subordinates. Recommendations for future research include conducting a similar qualitative study on Generation X and a quantitative study on Baby Boomers and Millennials. The findings of this study will contribute to positive social change through the implementation of reverse mentoring, knowledge management and transfer, succession planning, and human resource management

A Racial Impact Analysis of HB 834/SB 449: The Virginia Growth & Opportunity Act

GO Virginia is an economic development initiative that seeks to preempt the harsh effects of federal budget cuts on Virginia’s economy, which is overly dependent on public-sector jobs. It promotes private sector job growth and workforce development through the use of state-based grants to invest in regionally significant capital projects that call for collaboration between localities, businesses, and education. It is important to be intentional in pursuing GO Virginia’s goals, otherwise this legislation may only allocate grants to institutions, organizations, and localities that already have sizeable resources. A critical question rests on how to ensure that low-income and minority communities can maximize the benefits of the legislation. The populations that are most affected by this legislation would depend on how the legislation is implemented. If minority communities are excluded from the process, then it is likely these communities would be insulated from the positive outcomes. It is imperative that minorities are adequately represented in the decision making process. This report explores why minority communities should be represented on the regional councils, which are the catalysts for the proposal process. By being proactive there is an opportunity to provide the same advantages to minority business development. We also explore how to strengthen the minority workforce to better compete for in-demand careers within the emerging industries that this legislation sets out to promote

The Alienated Clara: intersectionality perspectives in Adrienne Kennedy’s The Owl Answers

Critical works on Adrienne Kennedy’s The Owl Answers have been limited to the domains of surrealism and to the frame of literary criticism which situate Clara, the protagonist of The Owl Answers within a psychological context. Many critics find that the play is a portrait of a black woman who is searching for home and belonging in a world of discrimination and inequality. Clara is often regarded as a mixed-raced woman of fragmented psyche who remains confused about her identity. Within the perspective of intersectionality, however, we contend that the study of Clara’s character acquires new dimensions of analysis. This article addresses Clara’s alienation within the scope of three intersectional categories of her identity: race, gender and hybridity. Clara tries her best to identify with her father’s white legacy, but all her efforts have been futile. As she recognizes that she has no hope at all to belong to this legacy, she feels entirely frustrated. The tragic outcome of The Owl Answers owes to psychological trauma experienced by Clara. We interrogate the overlapping oppressions endured by Clara through a study of how these three interlocking categories combine to shape her alienation right up to the point where it causes her to take her own life

Factors Shaping Uptake of Antenatal Care in Surabaya Municipality, Indonesia: A Qualitative Study

Five focus group discussions (FGDs) with 61 pregnant women were conducted in June and July 2019 at primary health care (PHC) services within five urban areas of Surabaya, Indonesia. In addition, five semi-structured interviews with five midwives were carried out to explore the experiences of pregnant women accessing Antenatal Care (ANC) and the factors shaping uptake of ANC services. Data were audio-recorded, transcribed, and translated into English, and analyzed using thematic analysis. Findings from focus group discussions suggested that fears of negative diagnosis before initial ANC appointment and personal beliefs and myths surrounding pregnancy may delay uptake of ANC. Further, the influence of husbands, family, and friends and long waiting times with overcrowding leading to limited seating shaped timely access and return visits. In addition, feeling comfortable with the quality of the service and receiving a friendly service from the practitioners assisted women in feeling comfortable to return. Finally, midwives acknowledged feeling afraid of being referred to a hospital if deemed a high-risk pregnancy-shaped return ANC visits. The findings highlighted several factors needing to be addressed to increase the promptness of first ANC visits and ensure return visits to achieve great ANC coverage

Plantationocene systems and communal disruptions in N.K. Jemisin’s broken earth trilogy: an ecogothic perspective

N.K. Jemisin’s critically acclaimed Broken Earth trilogy examines life in a post-apocalyptic alternate universe after a planet is cracked, bleeding and about to die. The trilogy does not seek to redeem the earth or a fractured environment. Rather, the novels demonstrate the ways in which characters develop, dissolve and mutually destroy or support each other. Jemisin’s conception of nature is unique and almost antithetical to human survival, but the roots of this destruction go deep. The fractured economies and governments within this post-apocalyptic universe paint a haunting picture of a world whose geopolitics are affected by the nature it has despoiled and disintegrated. The trilogy is a fitting fable for a planet in which climate change has affected endangered species, ecosystems and world economics. I apply a postcolonial ecoGothic lens to the analysis of the Broken Earth trilogy. This postcolonial ecoGothic approach will be married to a consideration of Jason C Moore’s unveiling of the Capitolocene through the lens of Donna Haraway’s and Anna Tsing’s positioning of a Plantationocene to look at patterns of power and domination. This paper is particularly concerned with the ways in which these patterns are related to the condition of societies living under siege and the ways in which these societies mimic patterns of colonial domination. The proposed outcome of this analysis will be to strip the layers of the Broken Earth trilogy to unearth what the narrative reveals about the environmental travails and geopolitical dissolutions that haunt our existences in what has been dubbed the Anthropocene

Monsters at the End of Time: Alternate Hierarchies and Ecological Disasters in Alaya Dawn Johnson’s Spirit Binders Novels

This paper interrogates the connection between entities that hover in the liminal state between life and death (such as vampires and spirits) and the manner in which these entities relate to Alaya Dawn Johnson’s conjurings of alternate political structures and hierarchies in her Spirit Binders series. Johnson’s alternate hierarchies are compelling primarily because they are both flawed and liminal. These hierarchies contain gateways between life and death, between material reality and spiritual reality. An ecoGothic lens is applied to these texts as they deal with climate-related disasters and the ways in which the texts instigate not just heroism but also monstrosity. In Gothic fiction, supernatural tropes such as the Vampire, spirits, and intermediaries are often signposts towards psychological states such as Terror and its relation to the Sublime. In Gothic fiction, very often, vampires, spirits and other similar creatures are connected to a hierarchy or community of sorts. A postcolonial Gothic reading of Gothicized texts, however, interrogates the power relations, the sense of haunting underscoring the text as well as the discourse of Terror in relation to the Other. I argue that Johnson’s writing enables the reader to peer in between the veils of life and death to unearth the darker sides of human nature, but very often these glimpses are not just about personal choices. These glimpses reveal strategies and missteps that guide the ways in which those hierarchies shape those choices,which Johnson then subverts in her tales

Haunts and specters in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Biafran (Re)visitations

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie writes about the Nigeria-Biafra war and its effect on the Igbo in more than one novel in her oeuvre, which is written entirely in English as a cosmopolitan Nigerian diasporic author currently residing in the United States of America. In Half of a Yellow Sun, Adichie memorializes the intellectual and artistic culture of Nsukka before and during the Nigeria-Biafra war. This article postulates that the seed for this bestselling novel is also evident in the play For Love of Biafra, penned by Adichie in her teens. This English-language play focuses directly on the effects of the Nigeria-Biafra war upon the personal life of the protagonist, Adaobi. I examine the manner in which the play demonstrates the function of memory upon second-generation descendants of the Nigeria-Biafra War survivors by examining the impact of postmemory through the lens of Derridean hauntology which I have expanded as a postcolonial feminine hauntology, examining the manner in which the specters of Biafra are conjured in Adichie’s Biafran texts. I connect this to the ways in which Adichie’s narration of the Nigeria-Biafra war evolves in Half of a Yellow Sun to problematize the question of who may witness, bear testimony and author narrative. The article’s findings tie the act of narration to empowerment, identification, the experience of trauma to unearth the myriad ways in which the specter of the Nigeria-Biafra war is recreated in fictions by second-generation diasporic and cosmopolitan authors such as Adichie