Lagos as a Place of Arrival and Multiple Diasporas : Afropolitanism and Memories of Lagos in Teju Cole’s Every Day Is for the Thief (2024)

Afropolitanism is a critical term that speaks to the changes in African self-perception in today's globalized world. Achille Mbembe's discussion of the term is noteworthy in that he associates it with a particular kind of understanding of African culture and history. Mbembe reminds us that Africa has not only been a place people have departed from but also continuously arrived at from places outside the African continent. Drawing upon the insights of Mbembe's discussion, this essay examines how Afropolitan thought informs the narrator's journey of return from New York City to Lagos in Every Day Is for the Thief (2014). This essay examines how the narrator's gaze gains an Afropolitan dimension by invoking diverse histories of diaspora and migration, including the Atlantic slave trade, to come to terms with his return to Lagos. I argue that Cole's novel illuminates twenty-first-century Lagos not only as a place where memories of the new and old African diaspora converge but also as a destination for a growing number of global diasporas and migrants.