Movement: Piece by Piece

Abstract

Movement: Piece by Piece is a hybrid genre novella that weaves together historical fiction, free verse poetry, and epistolary narratives to provide a counter historical account to critical perspectives of The Great Migration after World War I. As a contribution to the interdisciplinary research on migration studies that have occurred over the last two decades, Movement follows an African American character’s migration from the American South to the North and then on to Europe during the onset of the 1920s. Farah Jasmine Griffin’s Who Set You Flowin’?: The African-American Migration Narrative (1995) defines migration narratives as a portrayal of a character’s movement “from a provincial (not necessarily rural) Southern or Midwestern site (home of the ancestor) to a more cosmopolitan, metropolitan area” (3). For Griffin, these narratives include four key moments: 1) the event that propels the action northward, 2) initial confrontation with the urban landscape, 3) illustration of the migrant’s attempt to negotiate the new landscape, and 4) a revelation about the possibilities or limitations of that landscape (3). This dissertation follows these narrative conventions and utilizes biographical stories, critical studies, and fiction of the era to create a supplemental text for this genre.