YVETTE LOUIS

Thursday, March 17, 2016m 6:00-7:15 pm

Calabar Imports Harlem

2504 Frederick Douglass Blvd. (at 134^th St.)

Harlem, NY 10030

YVETTE LOUIS is a Cuban-born independent scholar.  She holds a Ph.D. from the Department of Comparative Literature at Princeton University and a B.A. in Comparative Literature and Literature/Writing from Columbia University, with a specialization in African diaspora literature.  She has taught at NYU, Vassar, Princeton, Hunter, New Jersey City University, and Sarah Lawrence College.  Her first work of fiction, La Revolución: A Novel, is a coming-of-age story about a five-year-old refugee girl who makes the trip from the warmth of her Afro-Cuban home in La Habana to a bitter cold New York City with the beloved grandmother she calls Mamá.  There, she is reunited with the mother who abandoned her at birth.  She grows up lost within a family she barely knows, fragmented by the Cuban revolution, the Civil Rights Movement, and the rebellions of the 1960s.  At the death of her grandmother, she must learn to mother herself alone in exile or perish.

WOMEN WRITERS OF THE DIASPORA is a reading/discussion series created and moderated by Dr. Celesti Colds Fechter, Exec. Director of Education Success Services and Prof., Org. Behavior, King Graduate School, New Rochelle.  The series features poetry, prose, memoir, essay, reportage, urban writing by African and African diasporan women. Past readers include Opal Palmer Adisa, Amber Atiya, Keisha-Gaye Anderson, Jacqueline Bishop, Pamela Booker, Cheryl Boyce-Taylor, Merle Collins, Lorraine Currelley, Carole Boyce Davies, Bridget Davis, LaTasha Diggs, Kim Coleman Foote, Ifeona Fulani, Kaitlyn Greenidge, Monica Hand, Eartha Watts Hicks, J.P. Howard, Linda Susan Jackson,  Pamela Jackson, Jacqueline Johnson, Patricia Spears Jones, Tayari Jones, Dahlma Llanos-Figueroa, Nigeria Lockley, Diana McCaulay, Rosalind McLymont, Pam Mordecai, Elizabeth Nunez, Ebele Oseye, Dolen Perkins-Valdez, Sharifa Rhodes-Pitts, Cecily Rodway, Gammy Singer, Danyel Smith, Patricia Smith, Martha Southgate, Eisa Ulen, and Tiphanie Yanique. 

Be sure to mark your calendar for future readings/discussions: Farah Jasmine Griffin, Apr 21; Stephanie Renee Payne, May 5; Mecca Jamilah Sullivan, May 19;  Cynthia Manick, Jun 9; Celeste Rita Baker, June 23.  

Stay updated by following the WOMEN WRITERS OF THE DIASPORA blog at http://womenwritersofdiaspora.blogspot.com/.

The venue, Calabar Imports Harlem, is provided by Atim Anette Otun.  The series is co-sponsored by Mosaic Literary Magazine.

Questions, comments, suggestions (including up-and-coming writers):  womenwritersofdiaspora@gmail.com