LibraryGuides: Presidential Lecture Series: 2/9 Edwidge Danticat

“When you write, it’s like braiding your hair. Taking a handful of coarse unruly strands and attempting to bring them unity. Your fingers have still not perfected the task. Some of the braids are long, others are short. Some are thick, others are thin. Some are heavy. Others are light. Like the diverse women of your family. Those whose fables and metaphors, whose similes and soliloquies, whose diction and je ne sais quoi daily slip into your survival soup, by way of their fingers.”
― Edwidge Danticat, Krik? Krak!

About the Speakers: Edwidge Danticat & Surbhi Malik

Edwidge Danticat

Edwidge Danticat is the author of numerous books, including Claire of the Sea Light, a New York Times notable book; Brother, I’m Dying, a National Book Critics Circle Award winner and National Book Award finalist; Breath, Eyes, Memory, an Oprah Book Club selection; Krik? Krak!, a National Book Award finalist; The Farming of Bones, an American Book Award winner; The Dew Breaker, a PEN/Faulkner Award finalist and winner of the inaugural Story Prize; and Everything Inside, a Reese’s Book Club pick and winner of the Story Prize. The recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship, she has been published in The New Yorker, The New York Times, and elsewhere. She lives in Miami. For more information about this speaker, please visit prhspeakers.com.

Surbhi Malik

Surbhi Malik, PhD, is an assistant professor of English at Creighton University, where she teaches courses in multiethnic literature, transnational feminism and global Bollywood. She received her PhD from the University of Illinois at Chicago, where she was the recipient of the American Association of University Women Dissertation Fellowship. Her research on intersections of race, place and gender in South Asian diasporic literature and film has been published in numerous prestigious peer-reviewed journals, including South Asian Review, Verge: Studies in Global Asias, South Asian Popular Culture, and ARIEL: A Review of International English Literature. Her pedagogical research focuses on teaching race and global perspectives, especially through Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL). Her co-authored chapter on race, whiteness and intersectionality in the classroom has been published in the Handbook of International and Cross-Cultural Leadership Research Processes.

Edwidge Danticat: The Event

This year's Presidential Lecture Series kicked off on Wednesday, February 9th at the Harper Center, with internationally acclaimed novelist and essayist Edwidge Danticat urging young people to lead the way to a more just society. Read a recap article on Danticat's lecture.