My Senufo Neighbors’ Children: Coming of Age in Divided Côte d’Ivoire
- Lecture
Carolyn and Jack Lampl Jr. Family Recital Hall
Helmet mask (detail). Unidentified artist. Wood; L. 102.9 cm. The Art Institute of Chicago, African and Amerindian Purchase Fund, 1963.842
About The Event
Writer Carol Spindel lived in an isolated rural Senufo/Dyula community in northern Côte d’Ivoire in 1981-82. She described that stay in her book In the Shadow of the Sacred Grove, a classic memoir of a young American in Africa. She and her family continue to maintain close ties with her neighbors in this community, to which she gives the pseudonym Kalikaha. Her forthcoming book tells the story of five young Senufo people who were children or teenagers when she first met them. They came of age as an armed rebellion divided their country into North and South, as Northerners faced discrimination, as the AIDS epidemic raged, and electoral violence turned deadly. Their stories illuminate what it means to grow up Senufo in contemporary Ivory Coast.
Free, no reservations required.
Read and discuss In the Shadow of the Sacred Grove with the Art and Fiction Book Club.