This collection of essays by architect Mario Gooden investigates the
construction of African American identity and representation through the
medium of architecture. These five texts move between history, theory,
and criticism to explore a discourse of critical spatial practice
engaged in the constant reshaping of the African Diaspora. African
American cultural institutions designed and constructed in recent years
often rely on cultural stereotypes, metaphors, and clichés to
communicate significance, demonstrating "Africanisms" through form and
symbolism--but there is a far richer and more complex heritage to be
explored. Presented here is a series of questions that interrogate and
illuminate other narratives of "African American architecture," and
reveal compelling ways of translating the philosophical idea of the
African Diaspora's experience into space.