Supporters of NC Black Rep gather at Sawtooth Center for book signing and “Sacred Threads’ exhibit

By Felecia Piggott-Anderson, Ph.D. More than 45 supporters of the North Carolina Black Repertory Company played African instruments and sang with Baba Joseph Anderson and me as we led the welcome song “Funga.”  The guests attended my book signing and the N.C. Black Rep exhibit at Sawtooth School for Visual Art on Tuesday, Oct. 8. The title of my new book is “Locating the Neo-Black Aesthetic: Playwrights of the North Carolina Black Repertory Company React to the Black Arts Movement,” and several of the playwrights mentioned in my book were in attendance. It was the perfect complement to the exhibit “Sacred Threads: Weaving Stories from the North Carolina Black Repertory Company.” Dr. Trudier Harris, J. Carlyle-Sitterson Distinguished Professor of English, emerita, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and University Distinguished Research Professor of English, emerita, University of Alabama, has published several texts on African American literature. Her most recent work is “Bigger: A Literary Life” (2024). She voiced her value of the worth of my research on this new text saying, “Any recovery or reclamation work is valuable, especially involving African American life and culture, because so much is missing from ‘official’ accounts. Education. That’s the point,” said Dr....