On Sunday, November 1st at 4pm, author Kimberly Burge will be at MPC to discuss her new book The Born Frees: Writing with the Girls of Gugulethu, detailing her experiences with a South African girls creative writing group. We hope you can join us for what is sure to be a thought-provoking and inspiring event.
About the Book
When Kimberly Burge organized a writing group in the township of Gugulethu, South Africa, she discovered a group of extraordinary young women who belonged to the first generation born into a post-apartheid world. Though they were “born free,” the young women of the townships around Cape Town still face daunting challenges. Their families and communities have been ravaged by poverty, violence, sexual abuse, and AIDS. Yet, as Burge quickly learned, the spirit of these girls outshines the often extremely difficult circumstances they share with so many of their peers throughout the world.
The group is made up of girls with wide-ranging personalities and varying levels of education—girls such as the irrepressible Annasuena, whose late mother was one of South Africa’s most celebrated singers; bubbly Sharon, already career-bound; and shy Ntombi, determined to finish high school and pursue further studies—all of whom find reassurance and courage in writing. Together they also find temporary escape from the travails of their lives, anxieties beyond boyfriends and futures: for some of them, worries that include HIV medication regimens, conflicts with indifferent guardians, struggles with depression. Driven by a desire to claim their own voices and define themselves, their writing in the group Amazw’Entombi, “Voices of the Girls,” provides a lodestar for what freedom might mean. (source: KimberlyBurge.com )
About Kimberly Burge
Kimberly Burge is a narrative journalist, a longtime activist, and a Fulbright Scholar to South Africa. She earned a bachelor of science in journalism at Bowling Green State University, a master of fine arts in nonfiction writing from George Mason University, and was a fellow in global religion reporting for the International Reporting Project at Johns Hopkins University.
Kimberly has published feature stories, editorials, and reviews on issues of culture, politics, global poverty and development, faith and public policy in places such as The Atlantic, The Huffington Post, and Salon. A contributing writer for Sojourners magazine, she previously worked for twelve years at Bread for the World, a Washington-based advocacy organization combatting hunger and poverty in the United States and worldwide. In 2005, she accompanied 150 grassroots activists to the G-8 activities in Scotland, where an international mobilization organized by grassroots leaders, along with Bob Geldof and Bono, called on world leaders to increase efforts to fight poverty in Africa. (source: GoodReads.com)
Please contact the church main office with questions. Hope to see you there!