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On Nov. 10, 2020, Grace welcomed award-winning author and Grace parent, Curdella Forbes, Howard University professor of Caribbean literature, as our speaker at the Sherryl Talton-Gerald Memorial Speaker Series.
Jamaican born, Curdella is the author of five books and a 2020 Hurston/Wright Legacy Award winner for her latest, A Tall History of Sugar, set in Jamaica. The New York Times reviewed the book last October and gave it high praise:
“The complex relationship of black people to their own skin — how it has affected freedom, rights, privilege, safety, opportunities and self-worth — has been central to our experience for generations. The first slave ships arrived in America in 1619, as the recent New York Times Magazine project so powerfully recounts. But the first slave ships arrived in Jamaica in 1517, 502 years ago. In her new novel, “A Tall History of Sugar,” the Jamaican writer Curdella Forbes uses skin as a prism to examine color, race, colonialism, heritage and — most important — love.”
If you missed the talk, you can watch it in its entirety below!
Read Grace Notes (Winter 2019-2020), our annual magazine and report of giving
Pillars of Community
Children at Grace learn to appreciate and value the students, teachers, and staff around them, and to celebrate differences and find common bonds. Through participation in spiritual life, traditions, service learning, parent organizations, and alumni groups, students and their families form friendships that last far beyond their years at Grace.
