|
Travel and adventure. A knowledge of history. An
understanding of contemporary issues. An accessible style. Anne Bailey
is a writer who attempts to combine all these elements in works ranging
from adult non-fiction to children's historical fiction. Bailey takes
readers on a journey that spans many countries and several continents.
Born in Jamaica to William and Daphne Bailey, her work has been
informed by extended stays in Paris, London and West Africa. After
immigrating to New York City where she attended high school, she
studied English and French at Harvard University and later got her
Ph.D. in African History and African Diaspora Studies from the
University of Pennsylvania.
Bailey is committed to a concept of "living history" in which
events of the past are connected to current and contemporary issues. Influenced
by her Christian faith, she is also concerned with the reconciliation of
communities after age old conflicts like slavery, war and genocide. This
is best evidenced in her recent non-fiction book, African
Voices of the Atlantic Slave Trade: Beyond the Silence and the Shame
(Beacon Press, 2005). This book attempts to capture African
memories of the slave trade - a rich yet largely neglected source of information
on this important era. African chiefs and other elders share stories that
reveal the experience of Africans as victims of the trade as well as traders.
At the same time, African Voices of the Atlantic Slave Trade attempts
to bridge the gap between Africa and the African Diaspora in tackling issues
from trade operations on the continent to reparations for African descendants.
This is best evidenced in her recent non-fiction book, African Voices
of the Atlantic Slave trade: Beyond the Silence and the Shame.
This book is an outgrowth of her 1998 Ph.D. thesis in African History from
the University of Pennsylvania as is her historical novel, Anchors in
the Sand. Anchors asks readers to imagine: What if historical
characters from the era of the Atlantic slave trade were able to tell their
stories directly to an audience today? How would the African trader explain
his involvement? How would American and European traders and planters account
for their role in slavery? What about those who resisted this terrible institution?
What would they have to tell us now that might help heal the wounds of our
collective past? Designed as a frame tale, Anchors weaves monologues
of different characters based on actual oral histories collected in Southern
Ghana in 1993 in the context of a modern day story of discovery and adventure.
Anne Bailey's previously published material also includes two works of
historical fiction for children: You Can Make A Difference: The Story
of Martin Luther King Jr. (Bantam/Doubleday/Dell) and Return to
the Cave of Time (co-authored with Edward Packard). Other publications
include numerous articles in London newspapers including a front-page story
on the death of Princess Diana in 1997 and a monthly column for UK edition
of The Jamaican Gleaner. She also contributed to Relocating
Postcolonialism (Blackwell Pub., 2002) which was edited by Ato Quayson
and David Goldberg of Cambridge University. In keeping with the contemporary
feel of many of her works, several of these projects are designed to be
adapted to film, audiobooks and plays.
She has given presentations all over the world including a reading at the
first conference of "Black Writers in Paris" in 1992. There, sharing
the stage with Paule Marshall, Louise Meriweather and Ishmael Reed, she
read from her unpublished short story collection, Beyond
Boundaries. More recently, she has done nine readings of Anchors
in the Sand in Boston, New York and in Germany over the last two years.
Finally, in recognition of her writing and research efforts, she recently
received a Fulbright Research grant which enabled her to return to Ghana
to complete her current manuscripts.
Bailey's activities as an educator have also shaped her life and work.
These include her tenure as Executive Director for the Albert G. Oliver
Program, a NY based non-profit that provides scholarships for minority children,
and her work as an Visiting Professor of History at Rutgers University,
Bryn Mawr College, Cambridge College, the University of Pennsylvania and
Harvard University. She was also a W.E.B.
DuBois Fellow at Harvard University's Department of Afro-American Studies
in 2000.
In terms of press coverage, she was chosen by the editors of ESSENCE
MAGAZINE to be on the cover of their August 1984 issue while she
was a sophomore at Harvard. A 1995 front-page story in The New York
Daily News also named her one of the 100 people under 40 to watch.
There was also an article on her work on slavery in the Columbus Dispatch
in 2001.
Influenced by writers as diverse as Toni Morrison, Gloria Naylor, Alex
Haley and C.S. Lewis, Bailey's aim is to combine an accessible writing style
and a global perspective with a knowledge of history.
She is now a tenured professor of History and Africana Studies at SUNY Binghamton
( State University of New York) and lives in New York with her son, Mickias Joseph.
( See cv for full listing).
Why I Write About Slavery
I truly believe that racial reconciliation in the United States will not
be fullyachieved without a thorough and rigorous review of the period
of slavery and the Atlantic slave trade. As a nation, no such review
has ever taken place.
In South Africa, after the brutality
of the Apartheid era, there was the Truth and Reconciliation Commission
established by Nelson Mandela in 1994 and headed by Archbishop Desmond
Tutu. This commission had as its mandate to review and assess the
crimes against humanity committed during this period. The result was an
imperfect but solid beginning for the newly democratic nation of South
Africa to work towards positive race relations. Surely much more was
and still is needed, but this was an important start. By contrast, in
the United States after the Civil War, such a deliberate attempt to
review and assess the machinery of slavery and its effects never took
place.
It is for this reason, in my capacity as a writer
and a scholar/activist, that I have committed my life and career to
writing about slavery. This country was greatly influenced by the
institution of slavery yet this legacy is unresolved and thus
unreconciled. One would hope that books that address this legacy would
produce a greater understanding of the contributions of people of color
to the building of the nation and a greater appreciation for those
heroes, both black and white, who were instrumental in bringing slavery
to an end. It is in that spirit and for this reason that I write about
this subject.
Contact Info
|
