BIO
Joan Anim-Addo is a prolific author, poet and academic. Born in Grenada in the Caribbean, she migrated to London as a young girl in 1961. She would later gain critical acclaim as a writer and scholar in the field of Black British literature. In 1994, she notably founded the Centre for Caribbean and Diaspora Studies at Goldsmiths, University of London and would continue to convene various educational programmes centred around postcolonial themes. The author also taught various courses and creative writing workshops at international universities. She currently holds a position as Emeritus Professor of Caribbean Literature and Culture at Goldsmiths, University of London.
In 1995, Anim-Addo founded Mango Publishing, a publishing house which focuses on the promotion of Caribbean women’s writing by authors such as Beryl Gilroy. She published her own poetry collection entitled Haunted by History in 2004. This was followed by her second volume of poetry, Janie: Cricketing Lady (2006), which covers questions of womanhood and migration. In 2008. she subsequently published her libretto Imoinda, or She Who Will Lose Her Name, a rewriting of Aphra Behn’s Oroonoko (1688) which engaged with issues of colonial relations in the diaspora. Anim-Addo’s individual works have also been publishing in various anthologies and journals. In addition to her literary writing, the author has contributed to various academic publications, including This is the Canon: Decolonize Your Bookshelves in 50 Books (2021).
Selected Prizes and Nominations
• Callaloo’s Lifetime Achievement Award 2016
Bio by Carmijn Gerritsen.
Bibliography
Anim-Addo, Joan. “Daughter and his housekeeper.” Edinburgh Review, vol. 123, 2008, pp. 65-71.
—. “Imoinda Birthing the Creole Nation: Rewriting Aphra Behn’s Oroonoko.” Revisiting and Reinterpreting Aphra Behn: Proceedings of the Aphra Behn Europe Seminar ESSE Conference (Strasbourg 2002), edited by Margarete Rubik, J. Figueroa-Dorrego and B. Dhuciq, Entrevaux, Bilingua GA Editions, 2003, pp. 75-82.
—. Imoinda: or She Who Will Lose Her Name: A Play for Twelve Voice in Three Acts. Mango Publishing, 2008.
—. Haunted by History: Poetry by Joan Anim-Addo. Mango Publishing, 2004.
—. Janie: Cricketing Lady. Mango Publishing, 2006.
—. Touching the Body: History, Language & African-Caribbean Women’s Writing. Mango Publishing, 2007.
—. “Daughter and His Housekeeper.” Callaloo: A Journal of African Diaspora Arts and Letters, vol. 41, no. 1, 2018, n.p.
—. “‘To Begin Our Knowing’: The Claiming of Authority and the Writing of Imoinda.” Voci femminili caraibiche e interculturalita, edited by Giovanni Covi, Università degli Studi di Trento, Dipartimento di Scienze Filogiche e Storiche, 2003, Labirinti 68, pp. 81-87.
—. “Travelling with Imoinda: Art, Authorship, and Critique.” Callaloo: A Journal of African Diaspora Arts and Letters, vol. 38, no. 3, 2015, pp. 571-580.
Anim-Addo, Joan and Lima, Maria Helena. “The Power of the Neo-Slave Narrative Genre.” Callaloo: A Journal of African Diaspora Arts and Letters, vol. 41, no. 1, 2018, pp. 1-8.
Anim-Addo, Joan, Deirdre Osborne and Kadija Sesay. This is the Canon: Decolonize Your Bookshelves in 50 Books. Hatchette, 2021.
Batista Dos Santos, Fábio. “Joan Anim-Addo’s libretto Imoinda: Revisiting a Colonial Critique and Considering Media.” Imoinda: Criticism & Response, special issue of New Mango Season, vol. 3, no. 3, 2010, pp. 208-214.
Bacon, S. “To Keep or not to Keep? Autonomy, Abjection and Motherhood in Joan Anim-Addo’s Imoinda and Jean Pierre Jeunet’s Alien Resurrection.” Imoinda: Criticism & Response, special issue of New Mango Season, vol. 3, no. 3, 2010, pp. 215-224.
Bonnelame, Natasha. “What does America mean to us? What do we mean to it? Locating the Other America in Joan Anim-Addo’s Imoinda or She Who Will Lose Her Name.” Democracy and Difference: The US in Multidisciplinary and Comparative, edited by Giovanna Covi and Lisa Marchi, Università degli Studi di Trento, 2012, Labirinti 145, pp. 55-60.
—. “From Restoration to Creolisation: Joan Anim-Addo’s Imoinda as 21st century Afromodernist Woman.” Imoinda: Criticism & Response, special issue of New Mango Season, vol. 3, no. 3, 2010, pp. 225-235.
Brancato, Sabrina. “Transcultural Perspectives in Caribbean Poetry.” Transcultural English Studies: Theories, Fictions, Realities, edited by Frank Schulz-Engler and Sissy Helff, Rodopi, 2009, pp. 233-247.
Bruno, S. “Sleeping Volcanoes: The Production (and Productivity) of Violence in Joan Anim-Addo's Imoinda, Or She Who Will Lose Her Name." MA Thesis, Lehigh University, April 2013.
Busby, Margaret, editor. New Daughters of Africa: An International Anthology of Writing by Women of African Descent. Oxford, 2019.
Covi, Giovanni. “Da Aphra Behn a Joan Anim-Addo: Quando Gender e Creolité Scrivono La Storia Della Schiavitú.” Voci femminili caraibiche e interculturalita, edited by Giovanni Covi, Universita degli Studi di Trento, 2003, Labirinti 68, pp. 97-109.
—. “Oroonoko’s Genderization and Creolization: Joan Anim-Addo’s Imoinda." Revisiting and Reinterpreting Aphra Behn: Proceedings of the Aphra Behn Europe Seminar ESSE Conference (Strasbourg 2002), edited by Margarete Rubik, J. Figueroa-Dorrego and B. Dhuciq, Entrevaux, Bilingua GA Editions, 2003, pp. 83-92.
Dini Ciacci, M. "Opinioni Di Un Musicista Sull’Opera Imoinda: Intervista Condotta Da Chiara Pedrotti." Voci femminili caraibiche e interculturalita, edited by Giovanni Covi, Universita degli Studi di Trento, 2003, Labirinti 68, pp. 89-96.
Dominique, Lyndon J. Imoinda's Shade: Marriage amd the African Woman in Eighteenth-Century British Literature, 1759-1808, Ohio State University Press, 2012.
Edwin, Marl'ene. “Living the Archive: Joan Anim-Addo and the Case of Imoinda.” Transcultural Roots Uprising: The Rhizomatic Languages, Literatures and Cultures of the Caribbean, edited by N. Faraclas, R. Severing, C. Weijer, E. Echteld and M. Hinds-Layne, Willemstad, University of Curacao and Fundashon pa Planifikashon di Idioma, 2013.
—. “‘What we Remember the Whip Can’t Undo’: Memory and H(er)story in Joan Anim-Addo’s Imoinda.” Imoinda: Criticism & Response, special issue of New Mango Season, vol. 3, no. 3, 2010, pp. 236-247.
Golding Viv. “Space: The Museum and the New Spatial Politics of the Frontiers.” Learning at the Museum Frontiers: Identity, Race and Power, Farnham, Ashgate, 2009, pp. 41-67.
Guarracino, Serena. “Imoinda’s Performing Bodies: An Interview with Joan Anim-Addo.” I Am Black/White/Yellow: An Introduction to the Black Body in Europe, edited by Joan Anim-Addo and Susan Scafe, London, Mango Publishing, 2007, pp. 212-23.
Karavanta, Mina. “The Injunctions of the Spectre of Slavery: Affective Memory and the Counterwriting of Community.” Affect and Creolisation, special issue of Feminist Review, vol. 104, 2013, pp. 42-60.
Lima, Maria Helena. “A Written Song: Andrea Levy’s Neo-Slave Narrative.” Andrea Levy, special issue of Entertext, vol. 9, 2012, pp. 135-153.
Marima, Tendai. "Talking through the ‘door of no return’: Ama Ata Aidoo’s Anowa and Joan Anim-Addo’s Imoinda." Imoinda: Criticism & Response, special issue of New Mango Season, vol. 3, no. 3, 2010, pp. 248-261.
Morris, Michael. Atlantic Archipelagos: A Cultural History of Scotland, the Caribbean and the Atlantic World, c.1740-1833, 2013. PhD thesis, University of Glasgow.
Nussbaum, Felicity. “Black Women: Why Imoinda turns White.” The Limits of the Human: Fictions of Anomaly, Race and Gender in the Long Eighteenth Century. Cambridge University Press, 2003.
Pérez-Fernández, Irene. "Breaking Historical Silence: Emotional Wealth in Joan Anim-Addo's 'Daughter and His Housekeeper'" and Andrea Levy's The Long Song." Callaloo, vol. 40, no. 4, 2017, pp. 113-126.
—. "Joan Anim-Addo: Hija y Su ama de Llaves." Revolución y Cultura, vol. 3, 2012, pp. 54-58.
Rubik, Margarete. Aphra Behn and her Female Successors. Münster, Lit Verlag, 2011.
Smith, Karina. “‘These Things Not Marked on Paper’: Creolisation, Affect and Tomboyism in Joan Anim-Addo's Janie, Cricketing Lady and Margaret Cezair-Thompson's The Pirate's Daughter.” Affect and Creolisation, special issue of Feminist Review, vol. 104, 2013, pp. 119-137.
Velissariou, Aspasia. “Vocality, Subjectivity and Power in Oroonoko and Joan Anim-Addo's Imoinda.” Aphra Behn and her Female Successors, edited by Margarete Rubik, Münster, Lit Verlag, 2011, pp. 167-186.
Westall. Claire.”'The Her-Story of Caribbean Cricket Poetry.” Sport in History, vol. 29, no. 2, 2009, pp. 132-149.
