‘Do I even belong?' Interrogating Afro-diasporic navigation of identity, race and space in the search for belonging
type: CreativeWork
description: The departure point for this creative project is based on my experience as an African living in diaspora. While I felt many things during my time ‘away' from the African continent, one constant was always this feeling of unbelonging, and this need to find belonging. As such, this project centers around the theme ‘finding belonging in diaspora'. Growing up in Kenya, I had never really come to terms with the politics of my Kenyanness not to mention my blackness. I had simply just been me. While in Kenya, the only real identifiers I had to contend with that carried heavy politics were my gender and my tribal affiliation. After leaving Kenya and arriving in Canada for school at the age of 16, for the first time in my life I felt black and I felt African. Both identities I felt did not belong in this Canadian space. Over the course of 9 years, I lived in both Canada and London and neither ever warmed me like home. In most, if not all the predominantly white spaces I frequented, I always felt too little of something and too much of something else. As such,, I found myself intentionally and unintentionally drawn to those like me, in colour, in language, and culture. It is only today I have realised that those intentional and unintentional unions I formed were a result of my search for belonging, which I came to find is common in the diaspora experience. Ann Hua, a black diaspora scholar, defines diaspora as a community of people who have been dispersed from their homeland to other locations because of genocide, slavery, migration, and war (Hua, 2013; 31). It's important to note that for many, induction into the Afro-diaspora is involuntary. As Hua notes, political unrest, genocide, war, and slavery has forced many to leave their homes and either seek asylum or become indentured laborers elsewhere. We have seen this throughout the eras, from the 15th-century trans-Atlantic slave trade, capturing of Africans, transporting them to the Americas and coercing them into slavery (…
abstract: The departure point for this creative project is based on my experience as an African living in diaspora. While I felt many things during my time ‘away' from the African continent, one constant was always this feeling of unbelonging, and this need to find belonging. As such, this project centers around the theme ‘finding belonging in diaspora'. Growing up in Kenya, I had never really come to terms with the politics of my Kenyanness not to mention my blackness. I had simply just been me. While in Kenya, the only real identifiers I had to contend with that carried heavy politics were my gender and my tribal affiliation. After leaving Kenya and arriving in Canada for school at the age of 16, for the first time in my life I felt black and I felt African. Both identities I felt did not belong in this Canadian space. Over the course of 9 years, I lived in both Canada and London and neither ever warmed me like home. In most, if not all the predominantly white spaces I frequented, I always felt too little of something and too much of something else. As such,, I found myself intentionally and unintentionally drawn to those like me, in colour, in language, and culture. It is only today I have realised that those intentional and unintentional unions I formed were a result of my search for belonging, which I came to find is common in the diaspora experience. Ann Hua, a black diaspora scholar, defines diaspora as a community of people who have been dispersed from their homeland to other locations because of genocide, slavery, migration, and war (Hua, 2013; 31). It's important to note that for many, induction into the Afro-diaspora is involuntary. As Hua notes, political unrest, genocide, war, and slavery has forced many to leave their homes and either seek asylum or become indentured laborers elsewhere. We have seen this throughout the eras, from the 15th-century trans-Atlantic slave trade, capturing of Africans, transporting them to the Americas and coercing them into slavery (…
author: Moragia, Anita Mwango
keywords: film and media
date published: 2020
date modified: 2026-07-22T22:23:13Z
provider: University of Cape Town
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: Centre for Film and Media Studies

PropertyValue
property ID: Handle
value: http://hdl.handle.net/11427/32287