Carolivia Herron | |
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Born | Carol Olivia Herron July 22, 1947 Washington, D.C., U.S. |
Education | Eastern Baptist College (BA) Villanova University (MA) University of Pennsylvania (MFA, PhD) |
Occupations |
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Website | www |
Carolivia Herron (born Carol Olivia Herron; [1] July 22, 1947 [2] ) is an American writer of children's and adult literature, and a scholar of African-American Judaica.
She was born to Oscar Smith Herron and Georgia Carol (Johnson) Herron, in Washington, D.C.
Herron converted to Judaism in adulthood, and she has paternal-line Jewish descent from her grandmother via Jewish Geechees. [1]
She is a founding member of "Jews of African Descent".
She has a BA in English from Eastern Baptist College in Pennsylvania (now Eastern University). [2] She earned an M.A. in English from Villanova University in 1973, and an MFA in creative writing and a PhD in comparative literature and literary theory from the University of Pennsylvania. [2]
Herron spent a postdoctoral research year at Brandeis University investigating the subject of African-American Jews.
Her debut novel, Thereafter Johnnie, a semi-autobiographical portrayal of African-American life, was critically well received.
Her critically acclaimed picture book Nappy Hair, a call-and-response story based on her own experiences as a child, was the cause of massive controversy when a New York City public school teacher was accused of racism after using it in the classroom. Nappy Hair was originally planned as a chapter of an adult book, is influenced by the epic tradition and African praise tradition. [3]
Herron edited the papers of Angelina Weld Grimke for Oxford University Press. [4]
Many of her writings, including her multimedia novel in progress, "Asenath and Our Song of Songs", refer to the intersections between Judaic and African cultures. Textual portions of "Asenath and Our Song of Songs" were published as separate novels in 2014, "Asenath and the Origin of Nappy Hair," and 2016, "PeacesongDC."
Her children's book Always an Olivia recounts the coming of Herron's Jewish ancestors from Tripoli, Libya, to the Georgia Sea Islands in the Americas. [1]
Herron wrote the libretto of the opera Let Freedom Sing: The Story of Marian Anderson, composed by Bruce Adolphe, which was commissioned and premiered by the Washington National Opera and the Washington Performing Arts Society in 2009. [5]
Herron has taught literature at many institutions, including Harvard University, Mount Holyoke College, Brandeis University, California State University, Chico, William and Mary, and Marien N'Guabi University in Brazzaville, Republic of the Congo. [6] In 2017 Herron joined the Classics Department at Howard University, and currently teaches undergraduate courses in Humanities (mostly epics) and Blacks in Antiquity.
She also teaches children directly working directly in Grecian epics with her vast understanding of ancient Greece mythology. She also has the ability to translate the ancient language.
Her scholarship includes work on African-American Judaica. Her scholarship also includes work on children's literature, multicultural literature, and Star Trek . Herron is currently developing Epicenter Stories to assist in her work with children, literacy, and multiculturalism.
Judeo-Persian refers to both a group of Jewish dialects spoken by the Jews living in Iran and Judeo-Persian texts. As a collective term, Judeo-Persian refers to a number of Judeo-Iranian languages spoken by Jewish communities throughout the formerly extensive Persian Empire, including the Mountain and Bukharan Jewish communities.
Angelina Weld Grimké was an African-American journalist, teacher, playwright, and poet.
Theodore Dwight Weld was one of the architects of the American abolitionist movement during its formative years from 1830 to 1844, playing a role as writer, editor, speaker, and organizer. He is best known for his co-authorship of the authoritative compendium American Slavery as It Is: Testimony of a Thousand Witnesses, published in 1839. Harriet Beecher Stowe partly based Uncle Tom’s Cabin on Weld's text; the latter is regarded as second only to the former in its influence on the antislavery movement. Weld remained dedicated to the abolitionist movement until slavery was ended by the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution in 1865.
Angelina Emily Grimké Weld was an American abolitionist, political activist, women's rights advocate, and supporter of the women's suffrage movement. At one point she was the best known, or "most notorious," woman in the country. She and her sister Sarah Moore Grimké were considered the only notable examples of white Southern women abolitionists. The sisters lived together as adults, while Angelina was the wife of abolitionist leader Theodore Dwight Weld.
Sarah Moore Grimké was an American abolitionist, widely held to be the mother of the women's suffrage movement. Born and reared in South Carolina to a prominent and wealthy planter family, she moved to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in the 1820s and became a Quaker, as did her younger sister Angelina. The sisters began to speak on the abolitionist lecture circuit, joining a tradition of women who had been speaking in public on political issues since colonial days, including Susanna Wright, Hannah Griffitts, Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Anna Dickinson. They recounted their knowledge of slavery firsthand, urged abolition, and also became activists for women's rights.
Charlotte Louise Bridges Grimké was an African American anti-slavery activist, poet, and educator. She grew up in a prominent abolitionist family in Philadelphia. She taught school for years, including during the Civil War, to freedmen in South Carolina. Later in life she married Francis James Grimké, a Presbyterian minister who led a major church in Washington, DC, for decades. He was a nephew of the abolitionist Grimké sisters and was active in civil rights.
The Grimké sisters, Sarah Moore Grimké (1792–1873) and Angelina Emily Grimké (1805–1879), were the first nationally-known white American female advocates of the abolition of slavery and women's rights. They were speakers, writers, and educators.
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Archibald Henry Grimké was an African-American lawyer, intellectual, journalist, diplomat and community leader in the 19th and early 20th centuries. He graduated from freedmen's schools, Lincoln University in Pennsylvania, and Harvard Law School, and served as American Consul to the Dominican Republic from 1894 to 1898. He was an activist for the rights of Black Americans, working in Boston and Washington, D.C. He was a national vice-president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), as well as president of its Washington, D.C. chapter.
Asenath Barzani, was a Kurdish Jewish female rabbinical scholar and poet who lived near Duhok, Kurdistan.
Francis James Grimké was an American Presbyterian minister in Washington, DC. He was regarded for more than half a century as one of the leading African-American clergy of his era and was prominent in working for equal rights. He was active in the Niagara Movement and helped found the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in 1909.
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Mary P. Burrill was an early 20th-century African-American female playwright of the Harlem Renaissance, who inspired Willis Richardson and other students to write plays. Burrill herself wrote plays about the Black Experience, their literary and cultural activities, and the Black Elite. She featured the kind of central figures as were prominent in the black society of Washington, D.C., and others who contributed to black women's education in early twentieth century.
Rachel is a play that was written in 1916 by African American teacher, playwright and poet Angelina Weld Grimké. Grimké submitted the play to the Drama Committee of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). For the first production of the play the program read: "This is the first attempt to use the stage for race propaganda in order to enlighten the American people relative to the lamentable condition of the millions of Colored citizens in this free republic."
American Slavery as It Is: Testimony of a Thousand Witnesses is a book written by the American abolitionist Theodore Dwight Weld, his wife Angelina Grimké, and her sister Sarah Grimké, which was published in 1839.
Koritha Mitchell is a professor of American literature at the Ohio State University who obtained her Ph.D. from the University of Maryland. In 2011, University of Illinois Press published her book on a study of African-Americans titled Living with Lynching: African American Lynching Plays, Performance, and Citizenship, 1890-1930 which won her numerous awards from the American Theatre & Drama Society and from the Society for the Study of American Women Writers respectively. In March 2012, American Quarterly published her essay James Baldwin, Performance Theorist, Sings the Blues for Mister Charlie. In March of the same year, she spoke on the podium at ColorLines about the death of Trayvon Martin and her book Living with Lynching. She also spoke about various African-American playwrights of the 20th century such as Alice Dunbar-Nelson, Angelina Weld Grimke, Mary Burrill, and Georgia Douglas Johnson. In 2018, she published "Identifying White Mediocrity and Know-Your-Place-Aggression: A Form of Self-Care," in the winter issue of the African American Review.
Simon Rawidowicz (1896–1957) was a Polish-born American Jewish philosopher.
Sidra DeKoven Ezrahi is Professor Emerita of Comparative Literature at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
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A symbolic day in the history of the American abolitionist movement was May 14, 1838. On that date two related events occurred: the inauguration in Philadelphia of Pennsylvania Hall, built to symbolize and facilitate the abolitionist movement, and the wedding of Theodore Weld and Angelina Grimké, "the wedding that ignited Philadelphia." The wedding was held that day because of the many out-of-town abolitionists present for the inauguration of the Hall.