This episode features Dr. Natasha Gordon-Chipembere who joined us for the live-streamed episode on November 12, 2022. We talked about her debut historical fiction novel, Finding La Negrita, which was released in September.
Published by Jaded Ibis Press, Finding La Negrita is a captivating retelling of the Black Madonna narrative, which has driven Costa Rica's national and spiritual identity since the 1700s. In powerful prose, Natasha Gordon-Chipembere delivers a vivid and intimate living portrait of slavery in this nation, which was radically different from plantation bondage in other parts of the Americas.
Dr. Natasha Gordon-Chipembere is a professor of African Diasporic literature. She focused her first book on Sarah Baartman in Representation and Black womanhood: The Legacy of Sarah Baartman (Palgrave 2011). Gordon-Chipembere’s writing has also been published in Essence Magazine along with a monthly series, “Musings from An Afro-Costa Rican” in the Tico Times. She is a Senior Co-editor of the AfroLatin@ Diasporas Book Series from Palgrave, which prioritizes the voices of emerging Afro-Latin@ scholars. Her current writing focuses on slavery and the legacy of Afro-descendants in Latin America. Her historical fiction novel, Finding La Negrita was published by Jaded Ibis Press in September 2022. Gordon-Chipembere is the founder and host of the annual Tengo Sed Writing Retreats in Costa Rica, an exclusive gathering of global BIPOC writers in Costa Rica for a week. She was born in New York to Costa Rican/Panamanian parents and eventually moved to Costa Rica eight years ago with her husband and two children. She is currently working on her next historical fiction novel, Naomi, which is a loose rendering of her great-grandmother's life in Puerto Limon, Costa Rica in the 1940s. To learn more about Natasha and her work, please visit her website at www.natashagordonchipembere.com.
This episode is presented in collaboration with Lisa Pegram and Levee Break Lit.
Find Natasha on Instagram: @natashagordonchipembere
Finding La Negrita is available for purchase on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Bookshop.org.
