African Culture in the Americas Part II

Yesenia Escobar Espitia
Yesenia Escobar Espitia is an Afrocolombian teacher, writer and lawyer. She holds a Master degree in Literary Studies at Universidad Nacional de Colombia and nowadays she is studying a PhD in Spanish at Temple University, USA. An active member of Red Elegguá, a Colombian NGO interested in researching and fostering an antiracist education based on the study of Africa and the African diaspora. Her academic work has been combined with a sensitive poetry and narrative that reaches children as well as adults.
Instagram: @yesi_poeta

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Candice D’Meza

Candice D’Meza (B.A. Black Studies; MPA) is an African American-Haitian Queer Mother of three and Spiritist whose artistic body of work spans across theater performance,multiple literary genres, activism, dance, critical pedagogy, ritual, social practice, documentary, experimental and short film. She uses the textures of grief, the world building of science fiction, afrofuturism, and fantasy, with the spiritual technologies of African and Diasporic African cosmologies to fashion multidisciplinary experiences based in these core values: time is non-linear and fluid; liberation is ever-present and imminent; The Black Imagination is a site of marronage; ancestral veneration and ritual are time travel vehicles that aid us in orienting our personal and collective timelines towards freedom.

Collectively, her work has been featured, grant funded, commissioned, published, screened and archived at institutions across the nation. These include: The Contemporary Art Museum of Houston, DiverseWorks, PlayBill, Latinx Playwrights Circle, BOLD Ventures Grant through the Helen Gurley Foundation, Rice University, Colgate University, The Catastrophic Theatre, The Alley Theatre, The Ensemble Theater, Stages Theater, Houston Arts Alliance, Red Bull Arts, The City of Houston, Black Spatial Relics, American Theatre Magazine, The Acentos Review, Houston Press, the Houston Chronicle, and various national film festivals. She is a proud member of the Actors Equity Union and a four time award winner at the Houston Press Theater Awards, including the 2018 win for Best Utility Player.

Her current commissioned work in progress A Maroon’s Guide to Time and Space will have its World Premiere performance run with the Catastrophic Theater in May 2023.

www.candicedmeza.com/