Reviewed by:

• Voices of African Immigrants in Kentucky: Migration, Identity, and Transnationality by Francis Musoni et al.
• Amanda Carlson

Voices of African Immigrants in Kentucky: Migration, Identity, and Transnationality is based on interviews from the African Immigrants in the Bluegrass Oral History Project at the University of Kentucky's Louie B. Nunn Center for Oral History. The book explores "the second half of the twentieth century and the early twenty-first century, featuring the voices of immigrants from one continent—Africa—who came to and mostly stayed in small cities [End Page 359] in a more insular and mostly white southern state, Kentucky" (p. xiii). It offers a refreshing step away from existing research on major urban centers that host large populations of African immigrants. As the subtitle implies, these voices have something important to teach readers about migration, identity, and transnationality, concepts that are frequently theorized by academics but seldom explored via first-person narratives to the extent they are here. This book will be useful for academics from numerous fields where these themes intersect. It is especially relevant to the study of "new African diasporas," which focuses on African diaspora communities who have arrived directly from Africa in recent decades and whose sense of history, race, and identity is understandably different from the many other African diaspora communities in the United States.

The book begins with the chapter "Origins: Where We Are From," which provides both a historical overview of the places people came from and important information about the individuals at the center of this story, which will help explain their experiences in the United States. Other chapters include "Opportunity: Why and How We Came," "Struggles and Successes," "Connecting and Contributing to Two Continents," and "Family and Identity in the United States." Primarily telling personal histories, the voices of immigrants stand above academic discourse. Their stories are both fitting and refreshing, but the numerous individual ones can be difficult to follow and are at times only subtly anchored to broader analysis. However, as the stories unfold across chapters it quickly becomes a pleasurable read that falls somewhere between Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's novel Americanah (2013) and a sociology textbook—a beautiful mix of highly personal experiences paired with broader insights into society.

The four authors (two are African immigrants and two are native-born Americans with extensive experience in Africa stemming from the Peace Corps) all reside in Kentucky but place minimal emphasis on explaining why Kentucky is a useful site for this study. I initially expected to learn a lot about Kentucky, of which I know very little. As an American I can relate to the African interviewee who discussed his prior knowledge of the United States by stating, "You don't hear about Kentucky" (p. xiii). The March 2020 murder of Breonna Taylor, a Black woman in Louisville, at the hands of the police brought Kentucky into the national spotlight, sparking widespread protests against police violence toward people of color and heightening public awareness of social inequity. Like the story of Breonna Taylor, the experiences of African immigrants in Kentucky are relevant beyond the state's borders.

In the final chapter, "Transnationality in the Present and Future," the authors explain how maintaining connections to more than one country is a central concept for understanding the experiences of African immigrants, and yet it is increasingly incompatible with the policies of the United States, especially during the Donald J. Trump administration. The authors observe that "it seems to many Americans as though things are falling apart and whatever center there was is not holding—not only in terms of immigration but regarding the openness of America to the world in general" (p. 163). Voices of African Immigrants in Kentucky contains the types of perspectives that need to be heard as our nation grapples with issues of race and immigration. [End Page 360]

Recordings of the interviews are available online, and an appendix lists suggested...

审核人：

• 肯塔基州非洲移民之声：弗朗西斯·穆索尼（Francis Musoni）等人的《移民，身份和跨国性》。
• 阿曼达·卡尔森（Amanda Carlson）

肯塔基州非洲移民之声：移民，身份和跨国性是基于肯塔基大学路易·B·纳恩口述历史中心的蓝草口述历史项目中非洲移民的访谈。该书探讨了“二十世纪下半叶和二十一世纪初，其中有来自非洲大陆的移民的声音，这些移民来到非洲并大多留在了小城市[结束第359页]（p。xiii）。与现有的对容纳大量非洲移民的主要城市中心的研究相比，这提供了令人耳目一新的步骤。正如副标题所暗示的，这些声音具有重要的意义。教读者有关迁移，身份和跨国性的概念，这些概念在学术界经常被理论化，但很少通过第一人称叙述来探索，尤其是对于这些主题相交的众多领域的学者而言，这是非常有用的。与“新的非洲侨民”研究相关，该研究的重点是近几十年来直接从非洲来到非洲的非洲侨民社区，他们的历史，种族，可以理解，身份与美国的许多其他非洲侨民社区不同。

本书以“来源：我们来自哪里”一章开头，该章既提供了人们来自何处的历史回顾，又提供了有关该故事中心个人的重要信息，这将有助于解释他们在美国的经历。 。其他章节包括“机会：我们为什么以及如何来”，“奋斗与成功”，“为两个大陆建立联系并做出贡献”和“美国的家庭与身份”。首先讲个人历史的是移民的声音，而不是学术话语。他们的故事既恰当又令人耳目一新，但是众多个体故事可能难以理解，有时只能巧妙地锚定到更广泛的分析中。然而，《 Americanah》（2013年）和一本社会学教科书–高度个人化的体验与对社会的更广泛见解的完美结合。

这四位作者（两名是非洲移民，两名是在和平部队中有丰富非洲经验的美洲本地出生的美国人）都居住在肯塔基州，但很少强调解释为什么肯塔基州是这项研究的有用地点。最初，我希望对肯塔基州学到很多东西，而我所知甚少。作为美国人，我可以与非洲受访者交流，他说“您对肯塔基州一无所知”，讨论了他对美国的先验知识（第十三页）。2020年3月，路易斯维尔（Louisville）黑人妇女布雷娜·泰勒（Breonna Taylor）在警察的谋杀下，将肯塔基州纳入了全国关注的焦点，引发了广泛抗议，抗议警察对有色人种的暴力行为，并提高了公众对社会不平等的认识。就像布雷娜·泰勒（Breonna Taylor）的故事一样，

在最后一章“当前和未来的跨国性”中，作者解释了如何与一个以上国家保持联系是理解非洲移民经验的中心概念，但是却越来越与美国政策不符。 ，尤其是在唐纳德·J·特朗普执政期间。作者观察到：“在许多美国人看来，事情似乎正在崩溃，无论中心在哪里都没有占有-不仅在移民方面，而且在美国对整个世界的开放性方面”（第163页）。在我们国家努力解决种族和移民问题时，肯塔基州的非洲移民之声包含了需要倾听的各种观点。[结束页360]

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