Feature 1: Devaleena Das
Devaleena Das, in “What Transnational Feminism Has Not Disrupted Yet: Toward a Quilted Epistemology,” critically examines transnational feminism, and its commitments to navigating the relationship and positionalities of Global North and Global South feminist knowledge. Through a proposal of quilted epistemology, Das, is calling forth a form of knowledge production that travels, generationally and geographically. Through the play turned poetic and historical memoir, Migritude by Shailja Patel, Das grounds us in an example of the routes and roots of migrants, as they negotiate, unsettle, and continuously reinvent themselves through time and space. The complex layers of history, of movement, and memory, navigating colonial spaces, tools, and logics, are rooted in Patel’s Migritude story, which is also highlighted in this podcast conversation with Patel. Through this conversation we learn more about her personal story, historical narrative of Kenya and the development of Migritude as a concept.
Feature 2: Lashon Daley
Within Lashon Daley’s, “When Diane Tells Me a Story,” we are invited to witness the evolution of Daley’s relationship with grammy-nominated professional storyteller, Diane Ferlatte, from “researcher and respondent to mother and daughter” (p. 503) by way of history, memory, grief and most of all, love. Through Diane Ferlatte’s storytelling, we bear witness to the practice of, “knowledge and wisdom.. shared around dining room tables, inside kitchens where steaming pots are filled with greens, and in living rooms where mothers converse as they plait their daughters’ Hair” (p. 505). Through this video recording of Diane Ferlatte in the National Storytelling Festival, we are all able to observe her captivating, magnetic, and powerful storytelling and how Daley can say “…when Diane tells me a story, I am able to grieve my past, hope for my future, and abide in the present” (p. 515)
Feature 3: Yalie Saweda Kamara
On Thursday, November 2, 2023, Meridians hosted a special Cromwell Day reading and workshop with Dr. Yalie Saweda Kamara, 2023 Winner of the Elizabeth Alexander Creative Writing Award for Poetry. During this event, Kamara read her award-winning poem, “American Beech,” as well as other selections from her past and forthcoming work. Following the reading, participants were guided through a collective poem writing exercise co-facilitated by Professor Traci-Ann Wint.
Yalie Saweda Kamara, Ph.D. is a Sierra Leonean-American writer, educator, and researcher from Oakland, California and the 2022-2023 Cincinnati and Mercantile Library Poet Laureate (2-year term). She is also an assistant professor in the English Department at Xavier University.
Winner of the 2022-2023 Jake Adam York Prize, Kamara’s forthcoming debut full-length poetry collection, Besaydoo, will be published by Milkweed Editions in 2024. She is also the editor of the anthology What You Need to Know About Me: Young Writers on Their Experience of Immigration (The Hawkins Project, 2022) and the author of A Brief Biography of My Name (Akashic Books/African Poetry Book Fund, 2018), which is a part of the New-Generation African Poets: A Chapbook Box Set (Tano) series and When The Living Sing (Ledge Mule Press, 2017).