The Context of Multi-Ethnic Politics for Ethiopian American Literature

Abstract

Abstract Considering the broad conversation among African novelists about the representation of Africans in America, this essay proposes a reevaluation of Ethiopian American literature that is attentive to the historical complexity of Ethiopia’s ethnic diversity. Situating novels and memoirs in their regional context of the Horn of Africa, it highlights how writers of the Ethiopian diaspora sometimes wrestle with and other times avoid the implications of the region’s ethnic politics. Focusing on the novel The Parking Lot Attendant (2018) by Nafkote Tamirat as a case study, it compares it to how other novelists and memoirists from the region, including Dinaw Mengestu, Nega Mezlekia, Maaza Mengiste, Meti Birabiro, Rebecca Haile, and Nurrudin Farrah, have managed the burden of multi-ethnic representation. Tamirat’s novel is somewhat unique for framing the immigrant experience within the story of a political dystopia and uncanny “loneless” social relations. By analyzing Ethiopian American literature in this way, the essay critiques scholarship that has been inattentive to the complex multi-ethnic history of the region because of its focus on the alienation of Ethiopian protagonists from cross-cultural and intracultural forms of political engagement.