Patricia jabbeh wesley biography of william shakespeare
Patricia Jabbeh Wesley
Liberian professor and poet
Patricia Jabbeh Wesley | |
---|---|
Occupation | poet, professor |
Education | University of Liberia (BA), Indiana University (MS), Western Michigan University (PhD) |
Patricia Jabbeh Wesley is a Liberian (African Diaspora) poet and writer and Professor of English and Creative Writing at Penn State University.
She is a Liberian Civil War survivor who immigrated to the United States with her family in , and the author of six books of poetry and a children's book, as well as an anthology editor.
Patricia jabbeh wesley biography of william shakespeare in 400 words Jabbeh Wesley was born in Monrovia , the capital city of Liberia. This book of beautiful strong poems is the very best book I've read in many years. It seemed that all our years had been gathered in a dirt pile and burnt by the warlords who still roam the streets in Monrovia today. He was now a Scott's Family Scholar, residing in Monrovia where he served as Special Assistant to the Ministry of Information in the rebuilding of our country.Jabbeh Wesley also founded, chairs, and teaches in the educational/humanitarian organization Young Scholars of Liberia.
Biography
Jabbeh Wesley was born in Monrovia, the capital city of Liberia. She then returned to her familial village of Tugbakeh in the Maryland region for boarding school, where she learned the Grebo language after first learning English.[1] She attained her BA at the University of Liberia, her MS at Indiana University, and her PhD at Western Michigan University.[2]
Jabbeh Wesley is the author of six books of poetry: Before the Palm Could Bloom: Poems of Africa (New Issues Press), Becoming Ebony (Southern Illinois University Press), The River is Rising (Autumn House Press), Where the Road Turns (Autumn House Press), When the Wanderers Come Home (University of Nebraska Press), and Praise Song for My Children: New and Selected Poems (Autumn House Press).
She is also the author of a children's book, In Monrovia, The River Visits the Sea (One Moore Book).
She joined the nonprofit organization Writing For Peace because her career in writing "has been about giving voice to the voiceless in a world constantly at war."[3] She also operates her own popular blog, Patricia Jabbeh Wesley's International Blog on Poetry for Peace, in which she tries to get readers to think "about the things that bother the world."[4]
Influences and themes
Although identifying herself as African, Liberian, and Grebo, she has also been shaped by Western influences.[1] She acknowledges and accepts her hybridity of cultures as part of her identity while still calling herself a "a strong Africanist, believing in the values I was taught as an African Child."[1] Her poetry's attitude shifts between critical, bemused, revelatory, celebratory, and mournful, as she discusses both her American and Liberian lives.[1] Jabbeh Wesley constantly makes the reader aware of her exile.
Patricia jabbeh wesley biography of william shakespeare The UN workers had settled into Monrovia with their money and their big SUVs, raising the cost of surviving in Monrovia beyond imagination. I am not usually soft-spoken at all, so I was doing my best to talk in the softest tone I could find in my heart. There was room, she said, for him to do what he wanted and room for her too, to move around in their arrangement. Wesleyan College.The vantage point of being an outsider to both the United States and postwar Liberian cultures permits a wide-awake honesty and fresh analysis of cultures, politics, gender relations, and attitudes.[1]
Jabbeh Wesley has had numerous strong mothers, including her grandmother, mother, stepmother, and her mother-in-law.[1] Even though the Grebo culture is mostly patriarchal, "it is in reality a matriarchal society, where the women figures have their place as the strong pillars of community and society.
Mothers are important because they actually are in charge of the homes, the children, etc., and sometimes of business."[1]
Jabbeh Wesley survived the Liberian Civil War, the event that influences and inspires most of her work. She is Christian, and her work incorporates and refers frequently to biblical themes and passages.[1]
Personal life
She currently lives with her family in west-central Pennsylvania and has taught at Pennsylvania State University and Indiana University of Pennsylvania.[2] She is married to an educationist, Dr.
Mlen Too Wesley, former Vice President of Academic Affairs at the William V. S Tubman University in Maryland county in the Southeast of Liberia. She is a mother, raising the next generation of Liberian children far from the coast of Western Africa.[1]
Awards
- Recipient/Winner , Theodore Roethke Memorial Poetry Award
- Crab Orchard Series in Poetry Winner
- Victor E.
Ward Foundation Crystal Award for Contributions to Liberian Literature
- Irving S. Gilmore Emerging Artist Grant from the Arts Council of Greater Kalamazoo
- World Bank Fellowship
- President Barack Obama Award
- Penn State University AESEDA Collaborative Grant for research on Liberian Women's Trauma stories[2][3]
- Institute of Arts (IAH) Fellowship from Penn State
- WISE Women Literary Arts Award from Wise Women of Blair County, Pennsylvania
- Humanities Institute Fellowship from Penn State University
Publications
- Before the Palm Could Bloom ()
- Becoming Ebony ()
- The River is Rising ()
- Where the Road Turns ()
- In Monrovia, the River Visits the Sea ()
- When the Wanderers Come Home ()
- DoveTales Anthology: One World, One People () (Editor)
- Praise Song for My Children: New and Selected Poems ()
Recent reviews/scholarly articles, books/interviews
?v=8eZeb8b4qVs
?v=DFLLrR06NSs
?v=Bmc9BPgH3UE
at the Wayback Machine
at the Wayback Machine
at the Wayback Machine
?id=
[permanent dead link]
at the Wayback Machine
at the Wayback Machine
at the Wayback Machine