Introducing James Baldwin

Learning and education event

  • Date: Tue 8/Oct/24
  • Time: 19:00 - 20:30
  • Venue: Wimbledon Library
  • Cost: Free
  • Booking: required
  • Sponsor: Presenter: Dr Michelle Yaa Asantewa. Award-winning author, independent educator, cultural consultant and publisher, Dr Asantewa’s publications include the young adult novel, Elijah, The Awakening and Other Poems, Guyanese Komfa: The Ritual Art of Trance and Something Buried in the Yard, published by Way Wive Wordz Publishing, which she co-founded in 2014. She is the editor of the anthology In Search of Mami Wata, which centres on African and Caribbean water spirits. Mama Lou Tales, a biography of her mother Lucille Davis received a prize for the Guyana Literary Prize in 2022. Dr Asantewa is the course leader on The Amazing James Baldwin, African Women Resistance Leaders: Spiritual and Political and Afrofuturism Creative Writing short courses. She co-facilitates the Toni-Morrison: Her Life Her Work and Andrea Levy courses. Her essay ‘The Spirit of James Baldwin’ is published in the anthology Encounters With James Baldwin: Celebrating 100 Years, published by Supernova Books. Rupununi Affair, her first short stories collection will be published in the autumn of 2024.
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Description:
Join us at Wimbledon Library this Black History Month for an interactive celebration and introduction of James Baldwin. Baldwin’s literary genius is immortalised in fiction and non-fiction form in books like Go Tell it on the Mountain, Giovanni’s Room, Notes of a Native Son, The Fire Next Time and Amen Corner among others. This presentation will introduce these texts while considering his activism and contribution to the Civil Rights movement. Baldwin was recently commemorated with a Nubian Jak Blue Plaque at the Hackney CVS, the previous site of the CLR James Library which he had visited in 1985 boosting local activism. Come with your favourite Baldwin quotations to take part in this commemorative presentation at Wimbledon Library.
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