African American Women & Information Resources

The value of finding resources written by African American women, or titles that focus upon their countless accomplishments are an important part of our collection which is constantly expanding. These works represent all academic disciplines and provide a wide range of perspectives that enhance the research opportunities available for our students.

As a woman navigating the business landscape, Business Librarian, Professor Kayla Glynn, notes that, “A community that you connect with is an important resource in the path to success. Finding others going through the same experiences as you can be powerful. It presents an opportunity to learn, collaborate, and reflect.”

To that end, Professor Glynn has provided the following recommendations for resources women can utilize when entering the corporate world and related fields:

“In 2017, Women in Business was founded at Seton Hall University by a group of determined and hopeful young women. Since then, the organization has grown to include over 150 current and past members in professional fields.”

“In the Women in Economics Podcast Series from the St. Louis Fed, we highlight the research and careers of those making their marks in the field of economics.”

“Girls Who Invest (GWI) is a non-profit organization dedicated to transforming the investment management industry by attracting and advancing women investors, changemakers, and leaders.”

“The U.S. Department of Commerce, Minority Business Development Agency (MBDA) is the only federal agency solely dedicated to the growth and global competitiveness of minority business enterprises.”

“Our mission is to empower women to invest in themselves via entrepreneurship by providing necessary resources for women to successfully start, own, operate, & grow their businesses.”

“Founded in 1975, the National Association of Women Business Owners (NAWBO) is the unified voice of over 11.6 million women-owned businesses in the United States representing the fastest growing segment of the economy.”

Our Librarian Instruction Coordinator, Professor Maria Barca also noted that there are a number of thoughtful works that are recommended reads for those who want to explore various books representing the Liberal Arts.

Within the volume: “Poetry is Not a Luxury”, Sister Outsider, p. 37 (1984, 2007) by Audre Lorde https://setonhall.on.worldcat.org/oclc/773898749, Professor Barca provides a helpful quote that is at the heart of this text. “For women, then, poetry is not a luxury. It is a vital necessity of our existence,” that shows the necessity of verse when it comes to verse.

Another recommended example of insightful content highlighted by Professor Barca includes the bell hooks work that includes advice for those who seek to advance their respective research goals is: “To engage in dialogue is one of the simplest ways we can begin as teachers, scholars, and critical thinkers to cross boundaries, the barriers that may or may not be erected by race, gender, class, professional standing, and a host of other differences.” In “Building a Teaching Community”, Teaching to Transgress, p. 130 (1994, 2020) by bell hooks

https://setonhall.on.worldcat.org/oclc/30668295

Additional books recommended by Professor Barca include:

  • How We Get Free: Black Feminism and the Combahee River Collective, edited and introduced by Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, 2017.

https://setonhall.on.worldcat.org/oclc/975027867

  • Angela Davis: An Autobiographyby Angela Davis, 2021.

https://setonhall.on.worldcat.org/oclc/1292074729

As a compliment to the volumes provided by Professor Barca and Professor Glynn, a wide range of titles across all disciplines can be found via the following introductory selection of works on, or written by African American Women found within the University Libraries Catalog.

Need additional help through the University Libraries? You can book a research appointment here: Research Appointment Site.

 

Art Talk + Wikipedia Edit-a-Thon

Register for this event 

Attendees of the 2022 Art + Feminism Edit-a-thon at Walsh Gallery at Seton Hall University will learn how to edit and create Wikipedia pages for artists who are women, gender diverse, and/or people of color. Building on the work done since this program began in 2020, attendees will enrich and expand the presence of women in this widely read digital resource, which is also the foundation of many linked data projects. The goal of the workshop is to amplify the voices of artists and cultural workers who are often underrepresented in digital resources. Read more about the Art+Feminism non-profit.  The Walsh Gallery and the Walsh Library will host Seton Hall’s third Art+Feminism Wikipedia edit-a-thon in partnership with Art House Productions, Hudson County Community College, Paul Robeson Galleries at Express Newark, Rutgers University – Newark, and The Feminist Art Project, a program of the Rutgers Center for Women in the Arts and Humanities.

Information for Attendees:
• The event will begin at 11am with an introduction to artists that consciously engage with gender issues in their work, then segue into instruction on editing Wikipedia at 12pm.
• Instruction will be interspersed with opportunities to get hands-on practice, making an immediate impact on the project of enriching description of women artists on Wikipedia.
• A Wikimedia affiliate will be present to guide and support successful editing work.
• Attendees will be encouraged to use their new skills to create or edit a Wikipedia page. We will provide a list of artists who do not have Wikipedia pages or whose pages need edits, and attendees are more than welcome to create or edit pages for artists not on the provided list.
• Attendees who have already edited Wikipedia are encouraged to attend and to work on editing artist pages, as well as support new editors.
• The workshop will conclude with the provision of resources and community support to continue this editing work.

The event will feature closed captions autogenerated by Zoom. To request ASL interpreters, please email info@arthouseproductions.org at least 72 hours before the event.

Presented by:

Walsh Gallery at Seton Hall’s University Libraries
Paul Robeson Galleries at Rutgers Newark
Art House Productions
The Feminist Art Project
Hudson County Community College Cultural Affairs

SHU Celebrates Women’s History Month with the West Indian Student Organization (WISO)

In honor of Women’s History Month, the Walsh Library partnered with SHU’s West Indian Student Organization (WISO) for the second iteration of WISO Reads! We are excited to highlight Caribbean authors and provide an associated list of reading recommendations. A large and hearty thank you to Ijah Penn, the treasurer of SHU WISO for the extensive work she put into compiling these resources!

    1. Zelma “Zee” Edgell is Belizean born American author. She was born in Belize City, British Honduras now known as Belize. Edgell studied journalism at the school of modern languages at the Polytechnic of Central London and continued her education at the University of the West Indies. From 1981 to 1987, she served at the first Director of the Women’s Bureau in the Government of Belize and later became the Director of the Department of Women’s Affairs. She spent several years living in places such as Jamaica, Nigeria, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, and Somalia working with Peace Corps to provide aid to such countries. She passed away on December 20th, 2020.

Recommended Read:

        • Edgell’s debut Novel, Beka Lamb (1982), showcases the early years of the nationalist movement in British Honduras (Belize) from the eyes of a growing and maturing teenage girl named Beka Lamb. The book deals with and discusses social insecurity, racial prejudice, educational pressures, societal pressures, poverty, and the influence of conservatism on womanhood and freedom. The novel also discusses the struggle of being a woman in Belize due to the result of the social, governmental, and societal struggles Belize had place upon them. Edgell goes into detail focusing on the process of womanhood in the development from childhood to young adulthood.
    1. Erna Brodber is a Jamaican writer, sociologist, and social activist. She has established herself as a major voice in Caribbean literature through her narratives drawing upon the experience of the oral and scribal traditions of the African diaspora, mixing modernist literature with folk tales. Brodber was born in Saint Mary Parish, Jamaica. She received her BA from University College of the West Indies, followed by earning her MSc and PhD with a predoctoral fellowship in psychiatric anthropology. Brodber became a sociology lecturer and researcher at the Institute for Social and Economic Research in the University of the West Indies where she collected several oral histories of the elders in rural Jamaica. She challenges western ways of ordering the world and resurrects myth and tradition in order to provide those rehabilitation form the lost of ancestry and psychic damage due to slavery and colonialism.

Recommended Reads:

        • Myal (1988) is a novel that explores the link between people of two areas of the black diaspora, the Afro-Americans, and the Afro-Jamaicans. The story is of a women’s cultural and spiritual struggle in colonial Jamaica.
        • Jane and Louisa Will Soon Come Home (1980) is a book that reflects an internal sociological perspective that takes readers on a journey. Broder breaks down the life of Nellie, the main narrator, into vignettes that explore the complexity of Nellie’s childhood, sexuality, and search for identity under the circumstances of Jamaica and colonial legacy.
        • Nothing’s Mat (2014) is a story told by a young black British teenager as she navigates life and the topic of family history and comments on anthropological methodology as well as the African system of thought.
    1. Paule Marshall is an American-born novelist with emigrant parents from Barbados. She is very well known for writing very telling narratives of Caribbean communities within America. After going to school to be a social worker, she changed course, majored in English Literature, and then began to write. She is very well known for encouraging Black identity from an Afrocentric perspective, detailing a coming-of-age motif in many of her works.

Recommended Read:

        • Brown Girl, Brownstone (1959) is a novel about a young girl named Selina Boyce growing up in a small black immigrant community where she is caught between her mother who wants to conform to the ideals of new home and participate in making the American Dream into a reality while her father longs to go back to the security of his home in Barbados. The themes this story discusses are travel, migration, and the need to find belonging or wholeness within a community.
    1. Nicole Dennis-Benn is a Jamaican novelist best known for her debut novel, Here Comes the Sun, which earned the title “Best Book of the Year” by the New York Times. Dennis-Benn was born and raised in Kingston Jamaica. She is a graduate of Cornell University and holds a Master of Public Heath from the University of Michigan and an MFA in Creative Writing from Sarah Lawrence College. Dennis-Benn is a founder of the Stuyvesant Writing Workshop. Dennis-Benn in her novel discusses the conservatism of Jamaica as her characters struggle with their forbidden love for another of the same sex, this is relative to her life as Dennis-Been identifies as queer and is currently married with her wife in Brooklyn, New York.

Recommended Reads:

        • Here Comes the Sun (2017), is a novel that explores the world hidden among the pristine beaches of Jamaica. A young girl by the name of Margot, hustles by trading to send her sister Thandi to school. The story talks about forbidden love, the violent social consequence of same-sex love within a small community, the very real and pressing struggles of poverty and the complexities both social and economic, of commercial development in the Caribbean.
        • Patsy (2019) is a novel that takes a look at motherhood, immigration, and sacrifice. It is a story of a woman and her two daughters fighting for survival in their drought-stricken Jamaican town as it takes a powerful look at issues of poverty, colorism, and homophobia in Jamaica.
    1. Oonya Kempadoo is a novelist born in the United Kingdom from parents of Guyanese lineage though she grew up in Guyana. Kempadoo works freelance as a researcher and consultant in the arts, private sector with youth and international organization focusing on social development. She is also the co-founder of the Grenada Community Library and Resource Center and served as a National juror for the Scholastic Arts & Writing Awards 2019-2020.

Recommended Reads:

        • Buxton Spice (1997) is a story of a young girl’s growing sexual awareness and sexuality in the multi-racial society of Guyana disintegrating under a corrupt government.
        • Tide Running (2001) is set in Tobago as an account of young couple as it raises question about relationships, wealth, responsibility, racial, cultural and class differences. Additionally, the novel takes a look at the predicament of a young society in Tobago that looks to America for fantasies and heroes and not reality.
      1. Esmeralda Santiago is a prominent Puerto Rican author in the United States. She writes memoirs that encapsulate her own assimilation into this American culture and way of life, which allow others with similar experiences to relate and feel represented. Her writing showcases themes of self-discovery, immigration, working-class immigrant experience and biculturalism.

Recommended Read:

        • When I was Puerto Rican (1994) is a memoir about author Esmerelda Santiago and her story. She speaks of her journey during her early years in Puerto Rico, her travels to New York and many highlights along the way, including her receiving high honors at Harvard. This work emphasizes Santiago’s experience with assimilating in order to feel represented, both as a woman and as one who migrated from another country trying to find her identity in a sea of adversity.

Please continue to visit our blog for more instances of WISO Reads and other reading recommendations.

To get involved with SHU WISO or learn more about their organization, follow their Instagram page: shu_wiso

Follow the hashtags #caribbeanreads #WISOReads

Women’s History Month – The Period Movement @ SHU

This Women’s History Month, Seton Hall University Libraries is excited to work with The Period Movement @ SHU to highlight items in our collection that intersect with their mission to end period poverty and stigmas around menstruation.

Their collection can be found at https://library.shu.edu/2021dislays/whm

Interested in reading these items? The items in this book display are mostly eBooks which can be read anywhere, the physical items can be placed on hold.

Want to learn more about this group or join them?

The Period Movement @ SHU fights to end period poverty and stigmas through service, education, and advocacy. We aim to serve menstruators in the populated communities around us, especially those who are not fortunate enough to have access to sanitary products. We recognize that menstruation is a burden to many, causing financial strains as well as reproductive health problems that are not widely taught in school. Along with these burdens, there are many cultural and societal stigmas that are not widely acknowledged and instead kept behind closed doors. Every menstruator should feel encouraged to discuss their personal experiences with the world, slowly changing the taboo mentality that society today holds towards reproductive health. In order to normalize open conversation about menstruation, we aim to use our chapter to encourage discussion in our own community, starting right here on campus. Our club is about serving the communities around us, including women and students in cities such as South Orange, Newark, and even New York City.

In order to get involved, please contact Period Movement: