A Haiku Memoir
Stephanie Y. Evans
Balboa Press
October 2025
Both Africana Wisdom and Africana Tea are now available from Balboa Press. Bulk orders are welcome!
Africana Wisdom traces a professor’s writing through three decades of a learning
journey. Evans explores five evergreen lessons gleaned from reading, writing, and teaching. Memories traverse the author’s adventures from the Vegas desert and Florida swampland to the Massachusetts valley and Atlanta’s rolling hills.
Poems pay tribute to lives of historical Black women memoirists, “Mothers of the Vine,” like Idea Keeling, Mary Seacole, Edna Lewis, Maya Angelou, and Wangari Maathai as well as thinkers like Johnetta Betsch Cole, whose proverbs connect African wisdom traditions to contemporary issues.
Ancient proverbs teach the value of wisdom. In this haiku memoir, Dr. Stephanie Y. Evans shares five lessons from her tea garden, learned on her search for understanding: BREATHE. TRAVEL. TEACH. RESIST. CREATE.
Artwork: Mothers of the Vine
Africana Wisdom
Black women’s ideas
Can help solve global problems
At least, they solved mine
~Stephanie Y. Evans, 2010
Africana Tea is a creative representation of Dr. Evans's research on tea traditions and Black women's historical wellness.
This book offers visual highlights of the 320 memoirs that guide Evans in her research on tea and Black women's health history.
Artwork: Homage to My Cup Runneth Over (Annie Lee)
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