Chloe Anthony Wofford Morrison, known as Toni Morrison, was an American novelist and editor. Her first novel, The Bluest Eye, was published in 1970. The critically acclaimed Song of Solomon (1977) brought her national attention and won the National Book Critics Circle Award. In 1988, Morrison won the Pulitzer Prize for Beloved (1987); she was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1993.
Uncle Tom's Cabin; or, Life Among the Lowly is an anti-slavery novel by American author Harriet Beecher Stowe. Published in two volumes in 1852, the novel had a profound effect on attitudes toward African Americans and slavery in the U.S., and is said to have "helped lay the groundwork for the [American] Civil War".
John Fitzgerald Kennedy Jr., often referred to as John-John or JFK Jr., was an American attorney, journalist, and magazine publisher. He was a son of President John F. Kennedy and First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy, and a younger brother of U.S. Ambassador Caroline Kennedy. On his third birthday, three days after his father was assassinated, he rendered a final salute during the funeral procession.
Octavia Estelle Butler was an American science fiction author and a multiple recipient of the Hugo and Nebula awards. In 1995, Butler became the first science-fiction writer to receive a MacArthur Fellowship.
Betty Joan Perske, professionally known as Lauren Bacall, was an American actress. She was named the 20th-greatest female star of classic Hollywood cinema by the American Film Institute and received an Academy Honorary Award in 2009 in recognition of her contribution to the Golden Age of motion pictures. She was known for her alluring, sultry presence and her distinctive, husky voice. Bacall was one of the last surviving major stars from the Golden Age of Hollywood cinema.
The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency is a series of novels by Alexander McCall Smith set in Botswana and featuring the character Mma Precious Ramotswe. The series is named after the first novel, published in 1998. Twenty-four novels have been published in the series between 1998 and 2022.
Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa is a 2008 American animated adventure comedy film produced by DreamWorks Animation SKG and PDI/DreamWorks and distributed by Paramount Pictures. It is the sequel to Madagascar (2005) and the second installment in the franchise. It was directed by Eric Darnell and Tom McGrath and written by Etan Cohen, Darnell, and McGrath. The film features Ben Stiller, Chris Rock, David Schwimmer, Jada Pinkett Smith, Sacha Baron Cohen, Cedric the Entertainer, Andy Richter, Elisa Gabrielli, McGrath, Chris Miller, Christopher Knights, and Conrad Vernon reprising their voice acting roles from the first film, joined by new cast members Bernie Mac, Alec Baldwin, Sherri Shepherd, and will.i.am, as well as voice acting veteran John DiMaggio. In the film, the main characters, a party of animals from the Central Park Zoo whose adventures have taken them to Madagascar find themselves in the African savannas, where they meet others of their species and where Alex the lion reunites with his parents.
Merrion Frances Fox AM is an Australian writer of children's books and an educationalist specialising in literacy. Fox has been semi-retired since 1996, but she still gives seminars and lives in Adelaide, South Australia.
Zarafa was a female Nubian giraffe who lived in the Jardin des Plantes in Paris for 18 years. A gift from Muhammad Ali of Egypt to King Charles X of France, she was one of three giraffes Muhammad Ali sent to European rulers in 1827. These were the first giraffes to be seen in Europe for over three centuries, since the Medici giraffe was sent to Lorenzo de' Medici in Florence in 1486. She didn't receive the name "Zarafa" until 1985.
Tears of the Giraffe is the second in The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series of novels by Alexander McCall Smith, set in Botswana, which features the Motswana protagonist Precious Ramotswe.
Wonderland, formerly called Wonderland: Alice's New Musical Adventure or Wonderland: A New Alice, is a musical play with a book by Jack Murphy and Gregory Boyd, lyrics by Murphy, and music by Frank Wildhorn. The story, a contemporary version of the novels Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865) and Through the Looking-Glass (1871) by Lewis Carroll, is set in New York City and focuses on writer Alice Cornwinkle and her 10-year-old daughter Chloe.
Lauren Liebenberg is a Zimbabwe-born South African writer. Her debut novel The Voluptuous Delights of Peanut Butter and Jam was nominated for the Orange Prize for Fiction in 2008. Her subsequent novels, The West Rand Jive Cats Boxing Club and Cry Baby, have also received international critical acclaim.
Our Nig: Sketches from the Life of a Free Black is an autobiographical novel by Harriet E. Wilson. First published in 1859, it was rediscovered in 1981 by Henry Louis Gates Jr. and was subsequently reissued with an introduction by Gates. Our Nig has since been republished in several other editions. It was long considered the first novel published by an African-American woman in North America, though that record is now contested by another manuscript found by Gates, The Bondwoman's Narrative, which may have been written a few years earlier.
Anne Christine Innis Dagg was a Canadian zoologist, feminist, and author of numerous books. A pioneer in the study of animal behaviour in the wild, Dagg is credited with being the first person to study wild giraffes. Her impact on current understandings of giraffe biology and behaviour were the focus of the 2011 CBC radio documentary Wild Journey: The Anne Innis Story, the 2018 documentary film The Woman Who Loves Giraffes, and the 2021 children's book The Girl Who Loved Giraffes and Became the World's First Giraffologist.
"The Blue Giraffe" is a science fiction story on the concept of mutation by American writer L. Sprague de Camp. It was first published in the magazine Astounding Science-Fiction for August, 1939. It appeared in book form in the anthology Adventures in Time and Space and later in the anthologies World of Wonder, The Science Fiction Bestiary, Androids, Time Machines and Blue Giraffes, Isaac Asimov Presents the Great Science Fiction Stories: Volume 1, 1939, Isaac Asimov Presents The Golden Years of Science Fiction, and An Anthropomorphic Century. The story has been translated into Italian, French and German.
Sarah Rector, also known as Sarah Rector Campbell and Sarah Campbell Crawford, was an American oil magnate who was known as the "Richest Colored Girl in the World".
Lauren St John is an author born in Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe. She is best known for her children's novels including The White Giraffe and Dead Man's Cove which won her a Blue Peter Book Award in 2011.
Lauren Ridloff is a deaf American actress known for her roles in the TV series The Walking Dead and the film Eternals. She gained prominence in 2018 with a lead role in the Broadway revival of Children of a Lesser God, earning her a Tony Award nomination for Best Actress in a Play. Ridloff was born in Chicago, Illinois. She attended California State University, Northridge and later earned a master's degree in education from Hunter College. She initially worked as a teacher before pursuing acting, and she was also crowned Miss Deaf America.
Lauren Michele Jackson is an American culture critic and assistant professor of English and African American studies at Northwestern University. Her first book, White Negroes (2019), is a nonfiction collection of essays that explores cultural appropriation.
Noliwe Rooks is an American academic and author. She is the L. Herbert Ballou University Professor and chair of Africana Studies at Brown University and is the founding director of the Segrenomics Lab at Brown. She previously held the W.E.B. Du Bois Professorship of Literature at Cornell University.
