Toward a Black Diasporic Short Story—Transcultural Elements in Irenosen Okojie's "Grace Jones"

Abstract

ABSTRACT: "Grace Jones," Irenosen Okojie's 2020 Caine-Prize-winning short story, received praise for playing with logic, time, place, and literary conventions, making the story challenging to understand. To help clarify this text, our essay examines "Grace Jones" through a transcultural lens, using Arianna Dagnino's genre characterization as the fusion of multiple cultural and literary traditions that reshape our "national collective imaginaries." Our readings utilize traditional African time concepts, contemporary clinical understandings of trauma, Ulrich Beck's risk society theory, planetary symbolism, Milton's Paradise Lost , and Christological imagery to elucidate the text. These interpretive modes enable us to read "Grace Jones" as a transcultural trauma text and leads us to suggest cultural cross-pollination reflects a feature of black diasporic writing.