About this Event
East City Bookshop welcomes Myriam J. A. Chancy to discuss her new novel, The Village Weavers, in conversation with Joanne Hyppolite, PhD.
Note on Format: This hybrid event will have both an in-person component with limited seating as well as a virtual broadcast via Zoom Webinar. Both in-person and virtual attendees will be able to pose questions to the authors during audience Q&A.
COVID-19 Information: Please note that East City Bookshop continuously monitors public health guidance to ensure the safety of customers, authors, and our staff and reserves the right to adjust in-person events. Masks are encouraged for all in-person attendees.
ABOUT THE VILLAGE WEAVERS
From award-winning author Myriam J. A. Chancy comes an extraordinary and enduring story of two families—forever joined by country, and by long-held secrets—and two girls with a bond that refuses to be broken. In 1940s’ Port-au-Prince, Gertie and Sisi become fast childhood friends, despite being on opposite ends of the social and economic ladder. As young girls, they build their unlikely friendship—until a deathbed revelation ripples through their families and tears them apart. After François Duvalier’s rule turns deadly in the 1950s, Sisi moves to Paris, while Gertie marries into a wealthy Dominican family. Across decades and continents, through personal success and failures, they are parted and reunited, slowly learning the truth of their singular relationship. Finally, six decades later, with both women in the United States, a sudden phone call brings them back together once more to reckon with and—perhaps—forgive the past.
Told with power and frankness, Village Weavers confronts the silences around class, race, and nationality, charts the moments when lives are irrevocably forced apart, and envisions two girls—connected their entire lives—who try to break inherited cycles of mistrust and find ways back into each other’s hearts.
MYRIAM J. A. CHANCY is the author most recently of the novels Village Weavers (Tin House) and What Storm, What Thunder, named a "Best Book of 2021," by NPR, Kirkus, Library Journal, the Boston Globe, Globe & Mail, shortlisted for the Caliba Golden Poppy Award & Aspen Words Literary Prize, longlisted for Brooklyn Public Library Book Prize & the OCM Bocas Prize, and awarded an ABA from the Before Columbus Foundation. Her past novels include: The Loneliness of Angels, winner of the 2011 Guyana Prize in Literature Caribbean Award, Best Fiction 2010; The Scorpion’s Claw and Spirit of Haiti, shortlisted in the Best First Book Category, Canada/Caribbean region of the Commonwealth Prize, 2004. She is also the author of several academic monographs, including Harvesting Haiti: Reflections on Unnatural Disasters & Framing Silence: Revolutionary Novels by Haitian Women. Her recent writings have appeared in Whetstone.com Journal, Electric Literature, and Guernica. She is a Fellow of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation and HBA Chair of the Humanities at Scripps College in California.
JOANNE HYPPOLITE, Ph.D. is the Supervisory Museum Curator of the African Diaspora at the National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC). She holds a Ph.D. in Literature, as well as an M.A. and B.A. in African American Studies. Her expertise and interests are in diasporic cultural expressions and Black immigrant American communities. Prior to joining the Smithsonian, she was the Chief Curator at HistoryMiami Museum for eight years. The exhibitions she has curated include Cultural Expressions, Black Crossroads: The African Diaspora in Miami, Haitian Community Arts, and Black Freedom in Florida.
Event Venue & Nearby Stays
East City Bookshop, 645 Pennsylvania Avenue Southeast, Washington, United States
USD 0.00 to USD 33.95