“I’ve come to take you home” – Reading Performance by South African Poet Diana Ferrus
Friday, September 26th
12:00- 1:10 pm
Skillman Library: Gendebien Room
Diana Ferrus is a South African writer, poet, and story teller whose work is popular amongst South Africans of all race groups. Her art deals with matters of race, gender, class, and reconciliation. She is a founding member of the Afrikaanse Skrywersvereniging (ASV), Bush Poets (all women poets), and Women in Xchains (grassroots women writers).
Diana Ferrus is internationally known for the poem “I’ve come to take you home” that she wrote for the indigenous South African woman Sarah Baartman who was brought to Europe under false pretenses and paraded as a sexual freak, as the “Hottentot Venus,” until her death at the age of twenty-five. For more information about the return of Baartman’s remains to the Eastern Cape after nearly 200 years, see the article “Sarah Baartman, at Rest at Last” <www.southafrica.info/about/history/saartjie.htm#.VBevsl5cK04>.
For detailed information about Diana Ferrus and her work see her website <http://dianaferrus.com>.