Aminatta Forna

Author, broadcaster, and journalist Aminatta Forna will trace her own links to the cultural heritage of Sierra Leone through the enslaved in the Americas. She will discuss her “reverse Roots” project that stems from her childhood in Sierra Leone. Forna is the award-winning author of the three novels The Hired Man, The Memory of Love, and Ancestor Stones, and a critically-acclaimed memoir The Devil that Danced on the Water. She is currently a Lannan Visiting Chair at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. This presentation is part of a larger project of the Kansas African Studies Center at KU that promotes constructive dialogue about immigration to create a deeper understanding of American identities. For more information, visit http://migrationstories.ku.edu/ Filmed on November 14, 2016 at the University of Kansas. Co-sponsors for this talk include: Kansas African Studies Center, National Endowment for the Humanities, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, Center for Global and International Studies, History, School of Journalism, Center for Migration Research, African & African-American Studies, CLAS Office of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, Humanities Program, Department of English, School of Languages, Literatures and Cultures, Film and Media Studies, and the Hall Center for the Humanities.