Habiba Cooper Diallo, Afua Cooper read at Dakar’s Chez Alpha Books

Habiba Cooper Diallo and Afua Cooper did readings at Chez Alpha Books in Dakar, Senegal on Saturday, August 12, 2023.

Chez Alpha Books is an English resource centre that provides the community access to books in English along with an array of programs and services that support English language learners in Dakar, Senegal. It has books for those who are looking to read and does a series of events to build the local reading community. These include a book club, a reading program, and other community programs.

The Dakar store was the venue of the dual readings of Dr Afua Cooper, Author and Professor of History in Canada and Habiba Diallo, Author and Women’s Health Advocate in Canada.  Dr Afua Cooper is a Jamaican-born Canadian historian who has taught Caribbean cultural studies, history, women’s studies, and Black studies at Ryerson and York Universities, at the University of Toronto, and at Dalhousie University. She is also an author and dub poet who has published five volumes of poetry. Some of her titles are Memories Have Tongue (1992), We’re Rooted Here and They Can’t Pull Us Up (1994), and The Hanging of Angelique (2006).

Habiba Cooper Diallo was a finalist in the 2020 Bristol Short Story Prize, the 2019 Writers’ Union of Canada Short Prose Competition, and the 2018 London Book Fair Pitch Competition. Her title is #BlackInSchool.

The two women were the featured writers at the Chez Alpha Books where they interacted with readers.  All images in this post were taken by Perle Lea and are courtesy of Chez Alpha Books.