Traveling the Diaspora
Early in the story, Noire and her long-time best friend Jayna hop a plane to New Orleans for their spring break. While there, they reconnect with Noire's dad's family, notably her half-brother Jabari and her Grand-mère, whose dilapidated house sags on a corner of the city's Faubourg Tremé district, touted as the oldest black neighborhood in the U.S. Later in the trip, they visit the New Orleans African American Museum of Art, Culture and History with Jabari in tow. For more information on the rich cultural heritage in New Orleans, check out the New Orleans Multicultural Tourism Network.
By July Fourth weekend, Noire is off again, this time with Innocent, and a motley crew of friends who insure that the holiday's fireworks are not the only sparks that will fly on Edisto Island in South Carolina's Lowcountry! Visiting the greater Charleston area-with its auspicious history as a main port of call for enslaved Africans-is not lost on the bunch, and they make time to tour the land of Noire's mother's forebears. Notably, they visit Emanuel A.M.E. Church, of which Denmark Vesey-one of the church founders, and the head of a foiled slave rebellion-was a member. For a better understanding of African and African American cultures on the Sea Islands of South Carolina and Georgia, visit the Avery Center for African American History and Culture, the Penn Center, and the Gullah/Geechee Sea Island Coalition. Additionally, three resources for tracing one's African American roots are the Afro-American Historical and Genealogical Society, Inc., African American Genealogy, and AfriGeneas.
As the story continues to unfold, we find Innocent and Noire gallivanting through Abidjan, Côte d'Ivoire; Paris, France; Kingston and Port Antonio Jamaica; and Willemstad, Curaçao ... sometimes together, and sometimes apart. Noire also has very fond remembrances of her first love who illustrates the story of the Middle Passage when they visit Elmina Castle in Ghana.
Not only are Innocent and Noire well-traveled, but they speak nine languages between the two of them: Abure (Côte d'Ivoire), Baoule (Côte d'Ivoire), French, and a bit of Arabic, Dioula (Côte d'Ivoire) and Wolof (Senegal) for Innocent. Noire is fluent in Spanish, knows a bit of Jamaican Patois, and is studying Papiamentu (Curacao, Sint Maarten). Additionally, she hopes to soon study Haitian Kreyòl and laments that she never learned much Twi (Ghana)-during her semester abroad as an undergraduate. Check out Michigan State University's African Language Map for a visual representation of some of Africa's major language groups and Ethnologue to learn more about 6,800 of the world's languages.
And speaking of learning, the characters in A Love Noire have quite a few school affiliations-from historically black colleges and universities in the States to schools in the Caribbean and Europe. Noire's a graduate of Amherst College and a Ph.D. student at New York University; Innocent went to the Sorbonne in France as well as Columbia University's Business School. And between their friends and family, they have connections to Cambridge University; Dillard University; Fisk University; Howard University ; Morehouse College; Morgan State University; Spelman College; University of Ghana; University of London; University of the West Indies at Mona, Jamaica; Xavier University; and Yale University.
