Baton Rouge Community College will host its annual Women’s History Month Empowerment
Celebration with a keynote address delivered by Louisiana Poet Laureate Dr. Mona Lisa
Saloy. The event, which is free and open to the public, will be held on Tuesday, March
7 at 12 p.m. in the Magnolia Theatre, Mid City Campus, 201 Community College Drive.
A reception will follow the program.
BRCC’s Women’s Month Celebration recognizes the contributions of women and their influence on culture, history and society. The event is sponsored by the BRCC Office of Student Life and Student Government Association.
Dr. Saloy, current Louisiana Poet Laureate, is an award-winning author and folklorist, educator, and scholar of Creole culture in articles, documentaries, and poems about Black New Orleans before and after Katrina. Currently, Conrad N. Hilton Endowed Professor and of English at Dillard University, Dr. Saloy documents Creole culture in sidewalk songs, jump-rope rhymes, and clap-hand games to discuss the importance of play. She writes on the significance of the Black Beat poets—especially Bob Kaufman, on the African American Toasting Tradition, Black talk, and on keeping Creole to today.
Her first book, Red Beans & Ricely Yours, won the T.S. Eliot Prize and the PEN/Oakland Josephine Miles Award. Her collection of poems, Second Line Home, captures New Orleans speech, family dynamics, celebrates New Orleans, the unique culture the world loves. Saloy's screenplay for the documentary Easter Rock premiered in Paris, the Ethnograph Film Festival and at the national Black museum. She's lectured on Black Creole Culture at Poets House-NYC; the Smithsonian; Purdue University; the University of Washington; and Woodland Patterns Book Center. Her documentary, Bleu Orleans, is on Black Creole Culture. She is an editorial reviewer for Meridians: Feminism, race, transnationalism. Most recent publications of verse include I am New Orleans, anthology. Kalamu ya Salaam, editor. University of New Orleans Press, 2021; Obsidian (2021); Chicago Quarterly Review, Vol. 33, anthology of African American Literature (2021), and forthcoming in Tribes Black Lives Matter Anthology (April 2022).
Dr. Mona Lisa Saloy writes for those who don't or can't tell Black Creole cultural stories. Visit her website at www.monalisasaloy.com for more information.