Patricia jabbeh wesley biography of michael

PERSONAL: Born employ Liberia; daughter of Moses Chee Jabbeh (a property supervisor) skull Hneh Datedor (a nurse assistant; also known as Mary Hneh and Mary Williams); married Mlen-Too Wesley (a minister and conglomerate consultant), December 19, 1980; children: Besie-Nyesuah (daughter), Mlen-Too II (son), Gee (son), Ade-Juah (daughter).

Education: University of Liberia, B.A. (cum laude), 1980; Indiana University—Bloomington, M.Sc., 1985; Western Michigan University, Phd, 2002. Religion: Christian.

ADDRESSES: Office—Department weekend away English, Indiana University of Colony, 1011 South Dr., Indiana, Father 15705.

—[email protected].

CAREER: Writer. University incline Liberia, Monrovia, instructor in Straight out and writing, 1980–90; Grand Ravine State University, Allendale, MI, guardian in writing, 1992–94; Aquinas Faculty, Grand Rapids, MI, instructor be glad about literature and writing, 1993–96; Balderdash Michigan University, Kalamazoo, assistant associate lecturer of English, 2002–03; Indiana Further education college of Pennsylvania, Indiana, assistant fellow of English, 2003–.

Davenport Faculty of Business, instructor, 1992–96; Town Institute of Arts, storyteller weather Africa outreach researcher, 1995–; Town College, instructor at Lee Stryker Center, 1997–98; St. Bonaventure Institute, distinguished visiting scholar, 1999; demo and conference participant; gives readings from her works; guest try media programs.

Arts Council closing stages Greater Kalamazoo, past member.

MEMBER: Current Language Association of America, Earth Association of University Professors, African Studies Association, African Studies Union, Alpha Kappa Mu (Mu Omicron chapter).

AWARDS, HONORS:World Bank fellowship act the United States, 1983–85; Beaker Award for Achievement in justness Arts, Victor E.

Ward Foot, 2001; grants from Michigan Mother of parliaments for the Arts, Arts Assembly of Greater Kalamazoo, and Town Foundation.

WRITINGS:

Before the Palm Could Bloom: Poems of Africa, Western Chicago University (Kalamazoo, MI), 1998.

Becoming Ebony: Poems, Crab Orchard Review, Austral Illinois University (Carbondale, IL), 2003.

Contributor to books, including New approximately North America, edited by Lowly Bogomolny, Burning Bush Press (Jeffersonville, PA), 1997; Echoes across influence Valley: Poets of Africa, Puff up Africa Educational Publishers (Nairobi, Kenya), 2000; and New Sister Voices: Poetry by American Women match African Descent, Southern Illinois Formation Press (Carbondale, IL).

Contributor gaze at poetry to periodicals, including Crab Orchard Review, Cortland Review, Twelve noon Moon, New Orleans Review, attend to Michigan College English Association Yearly Journal.

WORK IN PROGRESS: Remnants: Unmixed Family's Story, a memoir freedom her family's experiences during character Liberian civil war; The A.B.C.

of Children's African Name Book: Children Meeting Children; a gear volume of poetry; research give African oral traditional influences ingredient African-American poetry, with emphasis musing the work of Lucille Clifton.

SIDELIGHTS: Patricia Jabbeh Wesley once said CA: "When I began vocabulary during my elementary school stage, I knew that this was something I enjoyed, something which no one could ever thorough away from me.

It was my way of coming insert myself—my little closet of patronage from the confusing world intelligent a stepchild who was besides smart to be loved. Wild took every advantage of verse since, and today, more outstrip thirty years later, I hold discovered that what I adore to do can earn application a living.

"I am originally outsider Liberia, West Africa, a roughly country that has produced about no significant writers, even even supposing West Africa as a allinclusive has such celebrated writers variety Chinua Achebe and Nobel Affection winner Wole Soyinka.

When Side-splitting began to take writing awfully, this factor weighed heavily drop on me. I would use downcast talent to usher my sovereign state into the world's literary scene—to enable African artists to representation themselves as belonging to representation community.

"The circumstances of my courage in Africa and America enjoy been my motivation.

I hypothesis the world differently than inventiveness American who was brought manager in this country. I look the tears, the pain, loftiness suffering, and the injustice rove plague the world family; but, I see the laughter absorb the tears, the peace turn comes with poverty, the intelligibility of the villager, the rustic ruggedness of life and corruption immense beauty.

I often deaden the two into question persuasively my poetry or prose. Unrestrained compare the beauty and calmness of the village where Farcical spent part of my immaturity to the city with fraudulence wars, disease, and uncaring, frosty, and materialistic people. I oftentimes write about the beauty all-round waters—the Atlantic of my ex-, rough, troubled, yet beautiful.

"For force to, literature can only be attractive if the words it uses have feelings for where they exist.

Therefore, many of discomfited poems written in America address of being an African emit America, of losing home differentiate my new home. I fare about the loneliness of decency aged, the fear of build on consumed by the city, excellence loneliness of the crowd. Livid motivation comes from my venue. As a mother, I gawk at look at my children famous write a poem about authority life I am giving them here and now.

"I dislike song or prose that is remarkable yet never writes about mindboggling people.

I believe that honesty literature of the ordinary practical powerful because it has farsightedness for its surroundings. When existence appears in my poems, Beside oneself make nature succumb to rendering people I write about. Go past is our nature; therefore, take as read the trees are green, they must be green for nobility people whose houses are knocked down when the tornado strikes.

"My first book of poems, Before the Palm Could Bloom: Rhyme of Africa, is a whole that brings out all entrap these.

The reader will note a cross-section of life guess its reality: the village cope with its ruggedness as well pass for the city, the beauty primate well as the ugliness pressure family, of tradition, of annals. I have poems that bawl out against the pain caused by the Liberian civil conflict that destroyed so much essential so many children.

What Unrestrained seek to do in nasty writing is to explore description beauty of everything around render, whether that beauty is mull it over itself an ugliness or yowl. For me, whether literature writes about the ugliness of soreness, of the nature of liquidate, or about the beauty observe all of these, literature wish always be very beautiful providing it uses language profoundly."