Finding Francis

"West deftly mines the archives of our lives in this moving tribute to her mother's paternal lineage six generations removed. In discovering Frances Sistrunk, West not only recovers the remnants of a resilient and familial legacy, she unearths the inextricable linkages between a living and buried past that refuses to stay silent. In this sojourn, West poetically discovers herself, and reveals to us all the ways oral histories, archives, legal and journalistic documents become a beautiful and painful tapestry of self-discovery, and a cultural map to a fuller view of American, African American, and human history that one must "find" and honor."—Dr. Carol E. Henderson, Vice Provost for Diversity and Inclusion, Emory University

"Finding Francis is an interdisciplinary, multimedia study that demonstrates the innovation of the African Diaspora to preserve and verify its histories. It adds to the growing body of scholarship that recenters the interiority of Black lives from enslavement to freedom. . .This book bears witness to a movement among black scholars to hold space for the voices who could not tell their own stories and those that the written word has neglected. A valuable contribution to Africana Studies, undoubtedly."—Kameela Martin, Dean, Graduate School of the University of Charleston, director of African American Studies and professor of African American Studies and English, College of Charleston

Winner of the 2023 College Language Association Book Award