ABOUT THE AFRICAN/AFRICAN DIASPORA SERIES

The Visiting African/African Diaspora Artist Series is a partnership between the University of Michigan-Flint and the Flint Public Library, funded in part by the Ruth Mott Foundation. The Series brings authors, poets, playwrights, and journalists of African descent to Flint, Michigan. One purpose is to expose our university and communities to the complexity and richness of modern African culture, as well as the heritage of Africans and people of African descent, and so to embrace diversity. Another purpose is to engage people with the many interesting and challenging issues created by the historical and modern African Diaspora.

From the morning program:

A reading of the short story "A Private Experience" by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie by Cameo and Japa.

Chimamanda speaking on her writing.

Afternoon Panel:  Prof. Ernest Emenyonu, moderator, Eve Eisenberg, Dr. Deborah Pollard, Dr. Ini Uko, & Dr. Otrude Moyo.

Students waiting to hear Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie on Thursday, September 25 at 4 pm in the Theatre.

Author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie was born in Nigeria in 1977.  She is the author of three novels:  Purple Hibiscus (2003), Half of a Yellow Sun (2006) - now a movie, and Americanah (2013), and a short story collection, The Thing Around Your Neck (2009).

She has received numerous awards and distinctions including the Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction (2007), a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship (2008), and the (2013) National Book Critics Circle Fiction Award for Americanah.

This is a rescheduled visit.

AFRICAN WRITER FOR WHOM THE SERIES WAS ESTABLISHED:           Chinua Achebe, author of Things Fall Apart

Things fall apart  and more  -  1st teachers' workshop on African literature

A GENERAL INTRODUCTION TO THE AFRICAN CONTINENT  Click here to open  

Chinua Achebe, author of Things Fall Apart

AFRICAN WRITER 2003       Wole Soyinka, Writer and Nobel Laureate

AFRICAN WRITER 2004       Buchi Emecheta, Nigerian writer

AFRICAN WRITER 2005        Ngugi wa Thiong'go, Kenyan writer and activist

AFRICAN WRITER 2006            Dennis Brutus, South African poet and activist

AFRICAN WRITER 2007     Nawal El Saadawi, Egyptian writer and socialist feminist  

AFRICAN WRITER 2008     Femi Osofisan, Nigerian playwright and journalist.  Learn more:  

AFRICAN WRITER 2013     Chris Abani, Nigerian writer and poet

With funding from the Ruth Mott Foundation, and in collaboration with the Flint Public Library, the Department of Africana Studies hosts the visit of renowned African writers as an annual event. 

Between 2003 and 2008, six distinguished authors, including the Noble Laureate, Wole Soyinka, visited Flint and the University of Michigan-Flint. In 2013, the Ruth Mott Foundation resumed the funding of the project. Thus began the second phase of the collaborative project between the Department of Africana Studies and the Flint Public Library. In this second phase, there was the idea of expanding the scope of visitors to include African and African Diaspora literary as well as performing artists necesssitating the designation of the series as African/African Diaspora Artists series (AADA). The format and content were to be retained. However, the envisaged expansion did not materialize. The second-phase visitors, therefore, remained renowned African writers with focus on a generation of writers younger than those in phase one. Under this scheme, the versatile author, Chris Abani became the 2013 visitor (April 10-13). Chimamnda Ngozi Adichie, was selected as the 2014 renowned visitor.

For more details, follow the following link:  http://www.fpl.info/Africana/index.shtml