Abena Busia will discuss her acclaimed Women Writing Africa Project, which reveals the cultural legacy of African women in their own words.

Friday, December 14, 2007
2:00 PM - 3:30 PM
10383 Bunche Hall (10th floor)
UCLA campus
Los Angeles, CA 90095

The Women Writing Africa Project "opens up worlds too often excluded from the history books" (Booklist), and is an "essential resource for scholars and general readers alike" (Library Journal).  It reveals the cultural legacy of African women in their own words, in communal songs and lullabies, letters and speeches, poetry and fiction. Volume 1 presents disparate voices from colonial, apartheid, and democratic South Africa, Lesotho, and Swaziland, as well as Botswana, Namibia, and Zimbabwe. Representing 12 countries in Western Africa, Volume 2 presents an epic history of the region through the eyes of its women. Volume 3: The Eastern Region collects more than a hundred texts dating back to 1711, each introduced with short notes.

The Ghanaian-born Busia, a poet, short-story writer and scholar, received her Ph.D. from St. Anthony's College, Oxford, England. She is co-director of the groundbreaking Women Writing Africa Project, a multi-volume anthology, designed to recognize the cultural legacy in an assortment of voices by gathering together the original “cultural production” of African and Indian women for the first time. In addition to her leadership of the Women Writing Africa Project, Professor Busia is the author of Theorizing Black Feminisms (Routledge, 1993), Testimonies in Exile and many articles and book chapters on topics including black women’s writing, black feminist criticism, and African literature. She is now at work on a book called Song in a Strange Land: Narrative and Rituals of Remembrance in the Novels of Black Women of Africa and the African Diaspora.

Abena Busia teaches courses in African-American and African Diaspora literature at Rutgers University.

PLEASE NOTE NEW TIME FOR PRESENTATION.

Cost : Free and open to the public; parking is available in lot 3.

www.international.ucla.edu/africa

Sponsor(s): African Studies Center, USA for Africa.