‘Toni Morrison: The Pieces I Am’

18:00 – 19:00 Writers’ talk with Maaza Mengiste, Maurice Carlos Ruffin, Dorrie A. Wilson, Tunde Adefioye 
19:00 – 21:00 Screening Toni Morrison: The Pieces I Am  

Toni Morrison is an icon. Not only is the African-American Nobel Prize winner famous for her literary accomplishments, but her work in the field of women’s and civil rights in the USA is legendary. The author, who passed away last year, is the subject of the documentary Toni Morrison: The Pieces I Am. The screening is preceded by a talk with writers about Morrison’s legacy.  Excerpts from Morrison’s work will also be read.

Maurice Carlos Ruffin made his debut in 2019 with the novel We Cast a Shadow, a satire about a world in which plastic surgery is used to make people white. The book was called one of the best novels of the year by NPR and The Washington Post.

Maaza Mengiste found international acclaim with her debut novel, Beneath the Lion’s Gaze (2010). Her long-awaited new novel tells the story of an Ethiopian woman during the Second World War. Salman Rushdie described The Shadow King (2019) as “a brilliant novel”. She lectures in creative writing at Queens College and Princeton, and writes for The New Yorker, Granta and Rolling Stone.

Dorrie Wilson is an independent African-American researcher, author and cultural curator, and has lived in Brussels since 2001. She has a bachelor’s degree in African-American Studies and Black Women’s Literature from the University of California-Berkeley and has written about James Baldwin and others.

Tunde Adefioye was born and brought up in Los Angeles, but has been living in Belgium for many years. He is a ‘city playwright’ at the KVS and founder of Urban Woorden, a Louvain collective that organises events such as spoken word workshops for young people.