African diaspora subjects articulate identities constructed far away from their homelands or motherlands both in fiction and critical theory. Besides the African Americans and the Afro-Caribbeans, the African diaspora includes long-term voluntary or forced exiles and new immigrants of African descent in other parts of the world. A black diaspora emerged in Britain gathering members of the already constituted African Caribbean diaspora and emigrants from Africa. Their presence has generated a rich literature – creative as well as expository – that explores the implications of settlement in the mother country, and translates the formation of an imagined identity away from the land of origin or the motherland.

Buchi Emecheta's fiction is one useful locus to consider such an experience, especially her later novels, Kehinde and The New Tribe. Therein home and belonging are problematized in the life stories of the main protagonists. Of course, as customary in Emecheta's work, gender relations are inscribed in the process, and more so in Kehinde. This paper intends to explore the relationships of the migrant subjects to home, namely the motherland. Such an inquiry is based on the development of the concept ‘home’ from Gwendolen or The Family to these two later works. It seeks to pursue an earlier reflection on the subject that focused on Gwendolen and the Rape of Shavi.