African & American: West Africans in Post-Civil Rights America is a thoroughly researched and engaging ethnographic study of the socioeconomic and cultural impact of West African immigrants and refugees in the US from the mid-1960s to the present day. Although under-researched, West Africans are becoming a large and influential group across the US, especially in Chicago, New York, Atlanta, Houston, California, Washington, DC, Maryland, and Massachusetts, and are informing debates about “African Americanness” that the study explores (6). Coauthors Marilyn Halter and Violet Showers Johnson argue that West Africans are a unique group carving out identities as both African and American.

African & American draws upon a wide variety of sources, including interviews, newspaper articles, historical studies, contemporary literature, and demographical data. Although the study is focussed on West African immigrants from anglophone countries such as Nigeria, Ghana, Sierra Leone, and Liberia, it also examines the experiences of francophone West Africans from Senegal and Portuguese-speakers from the Cape Verde islands. In their analysis, Halter and Johnson give adequate attention to gender dynamics and explore West Africans of different ethnicities, religious beliefs, occupations, ages, and class backgrounds, which enriches the study.

In the introduction, Halter and Johnson provide useful demographic information about the different groups of West Africans coming to the US and discuss their marginalization in studies on immigration and race. They also detail the increasing interest in West Africa in the US, with the rise of African American celebrities using DNA testing to identify their African roots, as well as the popularity of heritage tourism to the continent.

In the first chapter, Halter and Johnson give an insightful overview of precolonial, colonial and independence-era history in West Africa and its diaspora. They highlight the long history of migration that has shaped the region and the ways in which the US became an immigrant destination in the wake of anti-immigration rhetoric and legislation in Europe in the postwar era and the 1960s civil rights movement and the 1965 Immigration Act.

The next chapter focusses on the lived experiences of West Africans in the US and is centrally concerned with work. Despite the fact that “continental Africans have the highest educational attainment rate of any group in the US, native or foreign-born” (77), when many arrive in the US many employers do not accept the legitimacy of their university qualifications and they undergo what Halter and Johnson call “occupational detours,” where they work in low-paid occupations. This chapter is useful for showing how West Africans negotiate their “occupational detours” and use it to gain further qualifications and maintain a middle-class lifestyle. The following chapter fruitfully explores the opportunities and challenges facing self-employed West Africans in the health sector, and in the food, fashion, and beauty industries.

Chapter 4 deals with how West Africans forge new homes in the US while retaining transnational ties. This chapter includes an interesting analysis of the rise of West African associations based on region, ethnicity, and religion that foster cross-cultural and cross-class interaction, and the response to returnees to the continent among local communities. The next chapter centres on the relationship between West Africans and African Americans. Halter and Johnson outline some of the interethnic, religious, and linguistic tensions that exist between the two groups based on misperceptions and negative stereotypes and show how many West Africans negotiate their racial and national identities. The final chapter considers West African youths growing up in the US and the ways they construct their identities. The authors argue that because many have not been socialized into the binary of black and white they are more responsive to cultural hybridity.

At the end of the study, Halter and Johnson stress how West African communities in the US will gain more visibility due to the impact of Obama's presidency and the rise of news technology, fashion, and media. Overall, African & American is a welcome contribution to the fields of immigration, ethnicity, and race, as well as of the global African diaspora. Most importantly, the study elucidates the complexities of race and identity that will continue to inform contemporary debates about immigration and equality, and it will appeal to a range of readers in history, literature, and anthropology.