Rebecca Amonor

Graduate Student, English and American Literature

Rebecca Amonor’s research analyzes the literature of the children of African immigrants raised in the US—a group she calls second generation African Americans and how they complicate and expand our notions of Blackness in the Diaspora. She analyzes how the tensions of race and ethnicity complicate their sense of belonging and shape their identity growing up in America. Inspired by her experience as a second generation African American, the absence of her experience—and others like her—in African American narratives motivated her to use her unique vantage point to create space for the underrepresented second generation African American experience in Black literary scholarship. As an interdisciplinary scholar, Amonor has spoken extensively on her work and seeks to make more visible the already minoritized experiences of Black people in America. Her goal is to emphasize the beauty of the diversity in the Diaspora and advocate through literature that Black people can be united without being uniform.