Cross-Border Cosmopolitans

Wendell Nii Laryea Adjetey is assistant professor of post-Reconstruction U.S. and African Diaspora history at McGill University, where he holds the William Dawson Chair. He also goes by Nii Laryea Osabu I, Atrékor Wé Oblahii kè Oblayéé Mantsè.
For more information about Wendell Nii Laryea Adjetey, visit the Author Page.

“Cross-Border Cosmopolitans is well-researched and makes tremendous contributions to the study of Black Atlantic and diasporic African history by decentering and not rendering the African American experience as the diasporic African experience.”—American Historical Review

"An important book . . . Timely and essential given the narrow and almost ubiquitous emphasis on black victimization in contemporary public discourses. The book’s perspective . . . positions itself as a valuable methodological option for crafting and telling the history of diasporic Blacks in different parts of the world, and for approaching the study of civil rights, independence, and revolutionary movements."—Ethnic and Racial Studies

"A substantial contribution to the growing historiographic body on Black Internationalism, transnational Black activism, and Black Power movements in the twentieth century. . . . [Adjetey] employs the biographies of remarkable activists to paint a complex panorama of twentieth-century Pan-Africanisms and is an important addition to African Diasporic, Atlantic, and transnational histories."—Western Historical Quarterly

“Adjetey has made an important contribution to the field of diaspora studies, one that will force scholars to rethink the geography of Black internationalism in North America for years to come. Furthermore, the political geographies and relationships recounted in this impressively crafted book make clear how activists practically challenged racism and imperialism on different scales—locally, nationally, and globally. . . . A remarkable scholarly achievement."”—H-Caribbean

"Sophisticated, ambitious, and compellingly argued . . . Cross-Border Cosmopolitans shows the many ways in which Black people across the Canada-US borderlands developed communities, pursued international interests, and fought for opportunity that transcended national borders. The book amounts to an expansive reconceptualization of Black Power across the broad swath of a continent."—CHOICE

"Wendell Nii Laryea Adjetey's Cross-Border Cosmopolitans: The Making of a Pan-African North America is an impressive study of Pan-Africanism and the Black Power movement in twentieth-century North America. Adjetey succeeds in placing African Canadians, West Indians, and African Americans into a single frame of analysis, as he demonstrates the ways in which developments in North America, the Caribbean, and South Africa were multidirectional in impact and consequence. A signal achievement, Cross-Border Cosmopolitans is as welcome as it is sorely needed."—Michael Gomez, New York University