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Poetry Reading by Author Toi Derricotte

poems that stick with you like a song that won’t stop repeating itself in your brain, poems whose cadences burrow into your bloodstream, orchestrating your breathing long before their sense attaches its hooks to your heart.”
—Washington Post on Captivity

Tuesday , April 24
10:30 a.m.
Ellis Library Colonnade

Reception
5:30-6:30 p.m.
Berlin Theatre

Performance of Mama’s Kitchen
6:30-7:00 p.m.
Berlin Theatre

Mama’s Kitchen is a short play by Teresa Stankiewicz based on the memoir Bread on the Water: the Olden Times by Antonia Baquet.  Growing up during the Great Depression Nootsie lives with her mother Regina while serving in the house of the “Rice King of the South” in Crowley, Louisiana.   The memoirs of Toi Derricotte’s mother take us through a journey of strength and love of the African Americans who served the rich white families in the American south.  This brief glimpse into the lives of three women shows us the love, laughter and hardship that all of them rose above.


We learn the painful lessons of history in our parents’ beds.  I believe we are sent out on their mission; their un-spoken dreams, the true self that was neglected and even buried because it was a miracle if they just survived to make the lives of their children better.  These are the words that came through my mother and the poems that come through me today
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–Toi Derricotte

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