Emily Raboteau is the author, most recently, of Searching for Zion: The Quest for Home in the African Diaspora, of which Dave Eggers has said, “I doubt there will be a more important work of nonfiction this year.” Her fiction and essays have been widely published and anthologized in Best American Short Stories, Best American Nonrequired Reading, The Huffington Post, The Washington Post, The Chicago Tribune, The Guardian, The Believer, and elsewhere. Honors include a Pushcart Prize, the N.Y. Book Festival’s Grand Prize, and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York Foundation for the Arts and the MacDowell Colony. An avid world traveler, Raboteau resides in New York City and works as an associate professor of English at City College, in Harlem, once known as “the poor man’s Harvard.”
Professor Rabote
au will discuss the widespread social practice of using black-face, in the figure of Zwarte Piete, “Santa’s Little Slave,” to celebrate Christmas in Holland.