Aug
28
10:30pm
What Storm, What Thunder: Myriam J. A. Chancy in conversation with Cindy Allman
By Charis Books and More/Charis Circle
Charis welcomes Myriam J. A. Chancy in conversation with Cindy Allman for a celebration of the paperback release of What Storm, What Thunder. Brilliantly crafted, fiercely imagined, and deeply haunting, What Storm, What Thunder is a singular, stunning record, a reckoning of the heartbreaking trauma of disaster, and—at the same time—an unforgettable testimony to the tenacity of the human spirit. This event is co-hosted by the Auburn Avenue Research Library on African American Culture and History.
At the end of a long, sweltering day, an earthquake of 7.0 magnitude shakes the capital of Haiti, Port-au-Prince. Award-winning author Myriam J. A. Chancy masterfully charts the inner lives of the characters affected by the disaster—Richard, an expat and wealthy water-bottling executive with a secret daughter; the daughter, Anne, an architect who drafts affordable housing structures for a global NGO; a small-time drug trafficker, Leopold, who pines for a beautiful call girl; Sonia and her business partner, Dieudonné, who are followed by a man they believe is the vodou spirit of death; Didier, an emigrant musician who drives a taxi in Boston; Sara, a mother haunted by the ghosts of her children in an IDP camp; her husband, Olivier, an accountant forced to abandon the wife he loves; their son, Jonas, who haunts them both; and Ma Lou, the old woman selling produce in the market who remembers them all.
Myriam J. A. Chancy, Ph.D. is a Guggenheim Fellow and HBA Chair of the Humanities at Scripps College. She is the author of “What Storm, What Thunder,” a novel on the 2010 Haiti earthquake (Harper Collins Canada/Tin House USA 2021) which has been named a Best Book of Fall 2021 by Time, The Washington Post, Buzzfeed, The Chicago Tribune, Vulture, Good Housekeeping Parade, LitHub and Harper’s Bazaar among other accolades. Her Past novels include: “The Loneliness of Angels” winner of the 2011 Guyana Prize in Literature Caribbean Award, for Best Fiction 2010; “The Scorpion’s Claw;” and “Spirit of Haiti,” shortlisted in the Best First Book Category, Canada/Caribbean region of the Commonwealth Prize, 2004.
Cindy Allman is a Caribbean Girl Reading the World. A Jamaican living in Trinidad & Tobago, she is a Book Blogger, Book Club Host, Bookstagrammer and founder of the #ReadCaribbean initiative. She hopes to inspire you to read, read widely and read Caribbean.
This event is free and open to all people, especially to those who have no income or low income right now, but we encourage and appreciate a solidarity donation in support of the work of Charis Circle, our programming non-profit. Charis Circle's mission is to foster sustainable feminist communities, work for social justice, and encourage the expression of diverse and marginalized voices. https://donatenow.networkforgood.org/CharisCircle?code=chariscirclepage
Please contact us at [email protected] or 404-524-0304 if you would like ASL interpretation at this event. If you would like to watch the event with live AI captions, you may do so by watching it in Google Chrome and enabling captions: Instructions here. If you have other accessibility needs or if you are someone who has skills in making digital events more accessible please don't hesitate to reach out to [email protected]. We are actively learning the best practices for this technology and we welcome your feedback as we begin this new way of connecting across distances.
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hosted by
Charis Books and More/Charis Circle
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