Outside the Supermarkets: Global Consumer Culture in One Day I Will Write About This Place and GraceLand

This article examines consumption practices in Binyavanga Wainaina's One Day I Will Write About This Place (2011) and Chris Abani's GraceLand (2004) to explore African-focalized depictions of global consumer culture. In particular, it focuses on the social stratification of consumption practices, revealing how "banal" or non-elite consumption is depicted as nevertheless cosmopolitan and globally connected. Moreover, it focuses on experiences of consumer cultures within the African continent, thereby supplementing and contrasting "Afropolitan" concerns with what Carli Coetzee has called "globally mobile Africans." By reading the texts' global imaginaries through the context of national histories, it demonstrates the persisting relevance of situated place in imagining and theorizing "the global." The article thus contributes to ongoing discussions of consumer cultures, of cosmopolitan-isms, and of the construction of global imaginaries.