Skip to content
  • Search All Online Programs
  • How to Use This Website
  • Bookshop
  • Authors A-Z
  • Browse
    • Children’s Alley Online
      • Healthy Bodies, Happy Kids!
      • Maker Faire Miami: Invent and Experiment!
      • One World, Many Stories
      • Picnic de libros
      • TapTap Krik? Krak!
      • The Paintbox
      • The Rhythm Factory
      • Tinker, Make, Innovate!
      • Mr. Wembly Wordsmith: Storytorium
    • Children’s + Teens
      • Picture Books
      • Middle Grade Books
      • Young Adult Books
    • Comics
    • Fiction
    • Here In Florida
    • IberoAmerican
    • Live from MDC
    • Live Streams
    • Nonfiction
    • On Demand
    • Panel
    • Poetry
    • Q&A
    • ReadCaribbean
    • The Big Read
    • Year Round
  • Buy Tickets
Menu
  • Search All Online Programs
  • How to Use This Website
  • Bookshop
  • Authors A-Z
  • Browse
    • Children’s Alley Online
      • Healthy Bodies, Happy Kids!
      • Maker Faire Miami: Invent and Experiment!
      • One World, Many Stories
      • Picnic de libros
      • TapTap Krik? Krak!
      • The Paintbox
      • The Rhythm Factory
      • Tinker, Make, Innovate!
      • Mr. Wembly Wordsmith: Storytorium
    • Children’s + Teens
      • Picture Books
      • Middle Grade Books
      • Young Adult Books
    • Comics
    • Fiction
    • Here In Florida
    • IberoAmerican
    • Live from MDC
    • Live Streams
    • Nonfiction
    • On Demand
    • Panel
    • Poetry
    • Q&A
    • ReadCaribbean
    • The Big Read
    • Year Round
  • Buy Tickets
LOGIN | REGISTER

Namwali Serpell & Jacinda Townsend: A Conversation

Namwali Serpell & Jacinda Townsend: A Conversation

Author:
Serpell, Namwali, Townsend, Jacinda
Buy Book
Add to my watchlist

This program is being livestreamed from MDC’s Wolfson Campus. For more information about this in-person program, please visit MiamiBookFair.com.

Namwali Serpell’s The Furrows: A Novel tells the story of Cassandra Williams, who was 12 when her 7-year-old brother, Wayne, is lost forever. Years later, Cassandra meets a man mysterious and familiar, who is also searching for someone and his own place in the world. His name is Wayne. And in Jacinda Townsend’s Mother Country: A Novel, a toddler in Morocco is adopted by a visiting African American woman. But the girl already has a mother – an undocumented Mauritanian who was trafficked as a teen – and the two women face an inevitable reckoning.

 

This is a ReadingEast program.

DONATE NOW

Townsend, Jacinda

Buy Book
Jacinda Townsend is the author of Saint Monkey, which won the Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize and the James Fenimore Cooper Prize. She is an Iowa Writers’ Workshop graduate and teaches in the MFA program at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. Mother Country: A Novel (Graywolf Press) introduces us to Shannon, an African American woman who is saddled with student loans, medical debt, and the sudden news of her infertility after a car accident. She follows her boyfriend to Morocco in search of relief, and in the cobblestoned medina of Marrakech, finds a toddler in a pink jacket whose face mirrors her own. With the help of her boyfriend and a bribed official, Shannon makes the fateful decision to adopt and raise the girl in Louisville, Kentucky. But the child already has a mother – Souria, an undocumented Mauritanian woman who was trafficked as a teen and managed to escape to Morocco to build a new life. Her separation from her family across a desert and Shannon’s alienation from her mother under the same roof stage cycles of intergenerational trauma and healing. Linked by the girl who has been a daughter to them both, these unforgettable protagonists move toward their inevitable reckoning.

Serpell, Namwali

Buy Book
Namwali Serpell was born in Lusaka, Zambia, and lives in New York. She is the author of the novel The Old Drift, the book of essays Stranger Faces, and her work of literary criticism, Seven Modes of Uncertainty. In The Furrows: A Novel (Hogarth), Cassandra Williams is 12; her little brother, Wayne, is 7. One day, when they’re alone together, there is an accident, and Wayne is lost forever. His body is never recovered. The missing boy splits the family with doubt. Their father leaves. But their mother can’t give up hope and launches an organization dedicated to missing children. As Cassandra grows older, she sees her brother everywhere: in bistros, airplane aisles, and subway cars. Then one day, in another accident, Cassandra meets a man mysterious and familiar, who is also searching for someone and his own place in the world. His name is Wayne. The Furrows captures the experience of grief, the way the past breaks over the present like waves in the sea. It’s a bold exploration of memory and mourning that twists unexpectedly into a story of mistaken identity, double consciousness, and the wishful – and sometimes willful – longing for reunion with those we’ve lost.

Miami Book Fair

Marketplace

ENTER HERE

MBF Downtown

Become a Friend

Tickets

  • Bookshop
  • Sponsors
  • FAQ
  • Contact Us
  • Creating Cultural Miami = Priceless

Support the Miami Book Fair and be part of Miami’s commitment to expanding and strengthening Miami’s literary culture.

DONATE NOW

Miami Dade College is an equal access/equal opportunity institution which does not discriminate on the basis of sex, race, color, marital status, age, religion, national origin, disability, veteran’s status, ethnicity, pregnancy, sexual orientation or genetic information. Additional information may be obtained by contacting the College’s Equity Officer: Dr. Joy C. Ruff, Director, Office of Equal Opportunity Programs/ADA Coordinator/Title IX Coordinator, at (305) 237-2577 (Voice) or 711 (Relay Service). 11011 SW 104 St., Room 1102-2; Miami, FL 33176. jruff@mdc.edu

Miami Dade College is committed to ensuring the accessibility and usability of digital communications by all users and/or recipients, regardless of technology or access method. To ensure accessibility, the College strives to adhere to the standards established by Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1, Levels A and AA standards. Reports of problems or concerns should be addressed to Joy C. Ruff, Director, Miami Dade College, Office of Equal Opportunity Programs/ADA Coordinator/Title IX Coordinator, at jruff@mdc.edu or at (305) 237-2577 (Voice) or 711 (Relay Service).

300 N.E. Second Avenue, Miami, Florida 33132 • 305-237-3258 Copyright © 2021 All rights reserved
Unlock this event by entering your event access password:

Purchase the book by this author to receive your event password.

GET EVENT PASSWORD