Sylviane Anna Diouf

Dreams of Africa in Alabama: The Slave Ship Clotilda and the Story of the Last Africans Brought to America
Dreams of Africa in Alabama (Oxford University Press)is the first book to fully document the most unique and overlooked story of the American slave trade: the exceptional saga of the young people from the Bight of Benin who, in May 1860, were deported on the last known slave ship to the United States. Eager to go back home, but unable to do so, they founded a town that still endures and is the only place in the country where most people know who their African ancestors were.
For the first time, the specific experience of a group of deported Africans is detailed, from their lives in their homelands and the barracoon, to the Middle Passage, enslavement, and freedom up to the 1930s. Their forgotten story comes to light through their own words, those of the men who brought them to Mobile, the African Americans who met them or lived among them, and the recollections of their descendants, as well as archival documents.
By focusing on individuals who formed one community, which happened to be multi-ethnic, this book paints a more comprehensive and personal picture of the African experience in America, including the little-known experience of women. It also incorporates much of the larger history of African Americans in the nineteenth century, including the domestic slave trade, the illegal slave trade, slavery, conversion to Christianity, life after Emancipation, Reconstruction, and reparations for ex-slaves.

Servants of Allah: African Muslims Enslaved in the Americas
For three hundred and fifty years, Muslim men, women, and children were sold in the New World. They were among the very first Africans to be shipped, and among the very last. Literate, urban, and in some cases well traveled, the West African Muslims realized incomparable feats in the countries of their enslavement. As Muslims in Christian lands, these involuntary migrants had to overcome particularly daunting obstacles to maintain and express their faith.
Through examining their history, their stories, and their legacy, this book reveals that what they wrote on the sand of the plantations is a successful stroy of strength, resilience, courage, pride and dignity.

Fighting the Slave Trade: West African Strategies
This book is a very informative study of how West African societies self-identified and asserted political, economic, and social control in the face of enslavement of their own.
African Studies Review

Offers a different, rich and challenging perspective on the Atlantic slave trade.
Progress in Development Studies

In Motion: The African-American Migration Experience
The extraordinary range of African-American migrations - from the earliest Africans who arrived to the recent movement of blacks back to the South - is the focus of a new Web site and an exhibition of recent research that could redefine African-American history, said scholars involved with the project.
The New York Times

Selected Book Chapters & Articles
"God Does Not Allow Kings to Enslave Their People": Islamic Reformists and the Transatlantic Slave Trade

Invisible Muslims: The Sahelians in France

The West African Paradox

Manding in the Americas

Sadaqa Among African Muslims Enslaved in the Americas

Bintou's Braids
Bintou wants braids. Pretty braids just like her older sister and other women in her family. Long braids woven with gold coins and seashells. But she is too young for braids. Instead, all she ever gets are cornrows. However, when Bintou saves the lives of her two young cousins and is offered a reward of her choosing, she discovers that true beauty comes in many different forms.

Kings and Queens of Africa
Each book in this series -- West, Central, Southern and East Africa-- looks at different eras to show how the region evolved through time and the most significant rulers of the region. Some were more famous than others, and some well-known figures do not appear here. I have presented social, political, and cultural innovators who connected their kingdoms to a much larger world, or brought various groups together into one people. These rulers left important legacies.

Growing Up in Slavery
Children who grew up as slaves faced a life of extreme poverty, backbreaking labor, the constant threat of being separated from loved ones, and the reality that the future offered little hope. But by learning about the daily lives of the children of slavery, we see that in spite of all of this, they persevered and came to make lasting and important contributions to the country that had enslaved them.