Keynote: South Africa’s Poet Laureate Mongane Wally Serote

Mongane Wally Serote is an award-winning writer with numerous books of poetry and fiction, including Yakhal’inkomo (1972), No Baby Must Weep (1975), To Every Birth Its Blood (1981), Third World Express (1992), History Is the Home Address (2004), and Revelations (2011). Serote was a core voice of the Black Consciousness movement in the 1970s, serving as an anti-apartheid activist and writer before spending years in exile as a military operative for the African National Congress.

Join City of Asylum/Detroit for an intimate reading by Serote, followed by a conversation with Dr. Richard Benson II, the inaugural Director of the Detroit Center for Black Studies.

This program is supported by Vilcek Foundation and The Shepherd, and is organized in partnership with Alkebu-lan Village, the Detroit Black Community Food Security Network, the Detroit People's Food Co-Op, Broadside Lotus Press, Wayne State University, and the Institute for AfroUrbanism.