meri nana-ama danquah
A native of Ghana, Meri Nana-Ama Danquah emigrated to the United States at the age of six with her family. Her first book, Willow Weep for Me: A Black Woman's Journey Through Depression, published in 1998 by W.W. Norton & Co. to great acclaim. It was the first book published by an African-American to address depression. The Washington Post hailed the book as "a vividly textured flower of a memoir that will surely stand as one of the finest to come along in years." As a result of this groundbreaking work, Meri Danquah was featured on The Today Show, Lifetime Television for Women, ABC World News Tonight, and she was the subject of two documentaries on the topic of depression.
Meri Danquah was also chosen by the National Mental Health Association to be the national spokesperson for their "Campaign on Clinical Depression," an initiative that specifically targeted African American women and was launched in cooperation with organizations such as the National Council of Negro, the Delta Sigma Theta Sorority and the National Association of Black Social Workers. In this capacity, she toured the nation delivering speeches and addressing audiences at conferences, workshops, in churches and at bookstores. In 2000, at the age of 32, she was honored with a Lifetime Achievement Award by the Welcome Back Awards organization, an alliance of mental health advocacy groups.
Meri Danquah's writing has been featured in magazines and newspapers such as the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, the Village Voice, Allure, Essence, Emerge and Los Angeles Magazine. Her fiction and poetry have been widely anthologized in both national and international journals, magazines and anthologies. She was the recipient of a Pauline and Henry Louis Gates, Sr. fellowship from the Djerassi Resident Artists Program, as well as a California Arts Council Individual Artist Fellowship in Creative Nonfiction. She earned her MFA degree in Creative Writing and Literature, with an emphasis in Creative Nonfiction, from Bennington College. During the 2000-01 academic year, Ms. Danquah returned to Ghana, her native country, where she held a Visiting Scholar appointment at the University of Ghana's Graduate School of Communications Studies.
Meri Danquah is the editor of two anthologies: Becoming American: Personal Essays by First Generation Immigrant Women, published in 2000 by Hyperion, and Shaking The Tree: A Collection of New Fiction and Memoir by Black Women, which is forthcoming from W.W. Norton & Co. in July 2002. Currently, she is completing a creative nonfiction book for Riverhead, which will be published in 2004 and writing a novel for the young adult market. She lives in Washington, D.C. with her daughter.
For more speakers on race and racism, see Veronica Chambers, Loretta Ross, Wyndi Marie Anderson, Farai Chideya, Marcia Ann Gillespie, Irshad Manji, Catherine McKinley, David Oppenheimer, Lisa Tiger
