Works & Insights Shared by Professor Valdés

During our meeting with professor Valdés yesterday, we discussed a wide range of topics that have shaped our projects and interests. Everybody took something truly transformative away from our discussion and it will be exciting to see how the shared insights manifest in our projects.

It is also worth mentioning that professor Valdés is very generous with her time and she has offered her support to everybody in the class. She extends an invitation to students who are interested in further discussion or have additional questions to email her. There is something for everybody so do take advantage of this opportunity!

Below is the list of works professor Valdés has suggested to us for further perusing/research.

On the sacred feminine:

Maureen Murdock, The Heroine’s Journey

Vanessa Valdés, Oshun’s Daughters: The Search for Womanhood in the Americas 

Clarissa Pinkola Estés, Women Who Run with the Wolves

On Mothers and Daughters:

Adrienne Rich, Of Woman Born

Nancy Chodorow, The Reproduction of Mothering

Tillie Olsen, Silences

Alice Walker, In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens

Patricia Hill Collins, Black Feminist Thought

Audre Lorde, Sister Outsider

On Dance and Embodied Knowledge:

Yvonne Daniel, Dancing Wisdom: Embodied Knowledge in Haitian Vodou, Cuban Yoruba, and Bahian Candomblé

Yvonne Daniel, Caribbean and Atlantic Diaspora Dance

Diana Taylor, The Archive and the Repetoire

On African contributions to latinidad:

George Reid Andrews, 1800-2000 (a new edition comes out this year, I believe, where he extends his study to 1600)

About Toni Morrison and her Works :

Carolyn C. Denard, ed., What Moves at the Margin, (includes articles, speeches, and other shorter-non-fiction pieces)

Andrea O’Reilly, Toni Morrison and Motherhood: A Politics of the Heart

Toni Morrison, Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination (short work)

La Vinia Delois Jennings, Toni Morrison and the Idea of Africa (to the question of diaspora)