Afropolitan Projects : Redefining Blackness, Sexualities, and Culture From Houston to Accra

>Beyond simplistic binaries of "the dark continent" or "Africa Rising," Africans at home and abroad articulate their identities through their quotidian practices and cultural politics. Amongst the privileged classes, these articulations can be characterized as Afropolitan projects--cultural, political, and aesthetic expressions of global belonging rooted in African ideals. This ethnographic study examines the Afropolitan projects of Ghanaians living in two cosmopolitan cities: Houston, Texas, and Accra, Ghana. Anima Adjepong's focus shifts between the cities, exploring contests around national and pan-African cultural politics, race, class, sexuality, and religion. Focusing particularly on queer sexuality, Adjepong offers unique insight into the contemporary sexual politics of the Afropolitan class. The book expands and complicates existing research by providing an in-depth transnational case study that not only addresses questions of cosmopolitanism, class, and racial identity but also considers how gender and sexuality inform the racialized identities of Africans in the United States and in Ghana. Bringing an understudied cohort of class-privileged Africans to the forefront, Adjepong offers a more fully realized understanding of the diversity of African lives. - [publisher](https://uncpress.org/book/9781469665191/afropolitan-projects/) "In this comparative work of sociology, Adjepong examines the aspirations of a diverse group of Ghanaians who moved to the United States; those who returned to Ghana after years in the United States, Western Europe, or the United Kingdom; and those who have always made their lives in Ghana. In doing so, Adjepong provides a new way to understand how a select group of upwardly mobile Africans collectively and individually demonstrate their belonging as global citizens. The author takes care to place an emphasis on intersectionality, with a particular focus on sexuality, sexual politics, and popular culture, which opens up space for an engagement with African lives as complex and complicated--a correction to the simplistic Western view of Ghanaians and Africans writ large. Adjepong's examination of class-privileged Africans brings this understudied cohort to the forefront by acknowledging their experiences and, in turn, offers a more fully realized understanding of the diversity of African lives"-- Provided by publisher Afropolitan Mentality in Houston -- The Christian American Afropolitan Project -- Accra's Afropolitan Vibe -- Afropolitan Politics in Accra -- Afropolitan Sexual Politics -- Afropolitan Racial Politics