About the Contributors

ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS NiKOL G. Alexander-Floyd is Assistant Professor ofBlack Studies atVirginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. Her research and teaching focus on Black feminist theory, Black politics, and the law. She is currendy working on a book manuscript on the Million Man March. violet EUDINE BARRITEAU is the Head ofthe Centre for Gender and Development Studies, University ofthe West Indies, Cave Hill. Her publications include The Political Economy ofGender in the Tmenriethcenrury Caribbean (Palgrave International, 2001) and Stronger, Surer, Bolder: Ruth Nita Barrou): Social Change and International Development (uwi Press, 2001), co-edited with Alan Cobley. She was dawn's Caribbean Regional Coordinator 1996-1999 and served on the National Advisory Council on Women, Barbados Government 1993-2001. Judith a. byfield is Associate Professor ofHistory at Dartmouth College, where she teaches African as well as Caribbean history. She is the author ofThe Bluest Hands: A Social and Economic History ofWomen Indigo Dyers in Western Nigeria, 1890-1940 (Heinemann, 2002). LUCILLE Clifton is the Distinguished Professor ofHumanities at St. Mary's College ofMaryland. She has received many fellowships, awards, and distinctions for her poetry collections and children's books, including the Shelley Memorial Prize, the Charity Randall Citation and an Emmy Award from the American Academy of Television Arts and Sciences. She is the only poet to have two books as finalists for the Pulitzer Prize in one year (1998): Good Woman: Poems and a Memoirig6g-ig8o and Next: Neu;Poems. Winning the 2000 National Book Award for Poetry, Blessing the Boats: Neu» and Selected Poems ig88-20oo is the culminating achievement ofLucille Clifton's long poetry career. Margaret crumpton is a Brittain Teaching Fellow at the Georgia Institute ofTechnology. She has published several articles on 289 multicultural subjects. Her current project is a collection ofessays, The Medium's Burden: Critical Perspectiues on the Poetry and Prose ofJudith Ortiz Cofer, which she is co-editingwith Lorraine Lopez. angela DAVIS first came to national attention in 1969 when she was removed from her teaching position at UCLA because ofher membership in the Communist Party. In 1970, she was placed on the FBI's Ten MostWanted List and was the subject ofan intense police search culminating in one ofthe most publicized trials in recent history. After a sixteen-month incarceration, Davis was acquitted. In 1998, she helped to organize a national conference on prison issues at UC Berkeley, "Critical Resistance: Beyond the Prison Industrial Complex," which is the focus ofher current scholarship and activism. Her most recent publications include The Angela Dauis Reader and Blues Legacies and Black Feminism. coralynn DAVIS is Assistant Professor ofWomen's and Gender Studies and Anthropology at Bucknell University. Her scholarly interests include women and development, global feminism, the anthropology ofgender, and Maithil women's oral and painterly expressive traditions. In 2003-2004, she will conduct research in Nepal exploring the relationships between Maithil women's life stories and folk narratives. jana evans BRAZIEL is Five College Fellow with Crossroads in the Study ofthe Americas (CISA) and Visiting Assistant Professor of English atAmherst College for 2002-2003, while on leave from the University ofWisconsin-La Crosse. Braziel has published articles on Jamaica Kincaid, Dany Laferrière, and Assia Djebar, and she is co-editor with Anita Mannur ofTheorizing Diaspora (Blackwell, 2003) and with Kathleen LeBesco ofBodies Out ofBounds: Fatness and Transgression (University ofCalifornia Press, 2001). NIKKY finney is a founding member ofthe Affrilachian poets, a community-based group ofAppalachian writers ofAfrican descent living in and around Lexington, Kentucky. Born in Conway, South Carolina she graduated from Talladega College in Alabama. Finney has been a faculty member at the University ofKentucky since 1993. She frequendy gives readings and conducts workshops at schools, colleges, and coffee tables all across the country. 290 ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS ruth forman is a former student ofJune Jordan and the author of two award-winning books ofpoetry: We Are the Young Magicians and Renaissance (Beacon Press). She is currendy completing work on MamaJohn, her first novel, as well as a third volume ofpoetry. june Jordan's new book ofessays Some ofOs Did Not Die has just been published by Basic/Civitas. suzanne ramata lives in Matsushige, Japan. Her work has appeared in more...