Black Immigrants in North America

“Overall, I am in deep appreciation and admiration of Ibrahim for tackling an understudied topic…Ibrahim’s book is a must read for those who are interested in understanding this deeply complex phenomenon and its importance for educators.” (Full text of review available at Teachers College Record website.)

"Black Immigrants in North America is a rarity in researching and theorizing the unique lived experience of Black immigrants–both continental and diasporic Africans. Black immigrants, argues Dr. Ibrahim, complicate the very category of Blackness: moving it from a colonial and uni-dimensional category to a complicated and rhizomatic category that is forever becoming. Urgently needed, Black Immigrants in North America is a must read for those who are interested in the Black body, Black immigration, Black youth, and Black pedagogy."

George J. Sefa Dei, OISE, The University of Toronto

"In this timely collection, Awad Ibrahim achieves an impressive analysis of the existentialist intersections of race and Blackness, immigration and identity, all as tethered to Hip-Hop, pedagogy and being. In so doing, he excavates the fragmented habitat of naturalized Black liminality for new ways of 'repairing' warped subjectivities into liberated, even 'likable' personae. An impressive disquisition indeed, that should be read and shared widely."

Ali A. Abdi, The University of British Columbia

"In this collection of compelling essays, Dr. Ibrahim offers critical insights into the complex and multi-layered aspects of identification and racialization pertaining to racialized students, and Black youth in particular, in relation to their schooling, education, and basically, life in Canada. Through his work, he disrupts existing conceptualizations, analyses and assumptions – or taken for granted truths – giving readers an enhanced understanding of the issues and additional avenues for theorization and action. For educators and others committed to social justice and equity, this work is a necessary read."

Carl James, York University (Canada), Jean Augustine Chair in Education, Community & Diaspora

Immigrating While Black: An Introduction

1. One is not born Black: Becoming and the phenomenon(ology) of race

2. The (un)naturalization of Blackness: A rhizomatic analysis of Blackness

3. Body without organs: Notes on Deleuze & Guattari, critical race theory and the socius of anti-racism

4. The question of the question is the foreigner: Towards an economy of hospitality

5. Becoming Black: Rap and Hip-Hop, race, gender, identity, and the politics of ESL learning

6. Intersecting language, immigration, and the politics of becoming Black: Journaling a Black immigrant displacement

7. The new flâneur: Subaltern cultural studies, African youth in Canada, and the semiology of in-betweenness

8. Don’t call me Black! Rhizomatic analysis of Blackness, immigration, and the politics of race without guarantees

9. When neoliberalism meets race, post-colonial displacement and immigration, it creates Americanah: A teacher education complicated conversation

10. Operating under erasure: Hip-Hop and the pedagogy of affect

11. Research as an act of love: Ethics, émigrés, and the praxis of becoming human

12. Wide-awakeness: Toward a critical pedagogy of imagination, humanism and becoming

Awad Ibrahim

Awad Ibrahim is an award-winning author and a Professor on the Faculty of Education, University of Ottawa, Canada. He is a Curriculum Theorist with a special interest in diasporic and continental African identities; cultural studies; applied linguistics; Hip-Hop; youth and Black popular culture; philosophy and sociology of education; social justice; and ethnography. He was born in Sudan and arrived in Canada, through the U.S., as a refugee. He has published more than 100 books and journal articles.