Becoming African in America: Race and Nation in the Early Black AtlanticThe first slaves imported to America did not see themselves as African but rather as Temne, Igbo, or Yoruban. In Becoming African in America, James Sidbury reveals how an African identity emerged in the late eighteenth century Atlantic world, tracing the development of African from a degrading term connoting savage people to a word that was a source of pride and unity for the diverse victims of the Atlantic slave trade. In this wide ranging work,