About the Author

Saidiya Hartman is the author of Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments, Lose Your Mother: A Journey Along the Atlantic Slave Route, and Scenes of Subjection. She is a Guggenheim Fellow and has been a Cullman Fellow and Fulbright Scholar. She is a professor at Columbia University and lives in New York. Allyson Johnson is an actress and singer who began performing at age twelve as coanchor of Bubble Gum Digest, for which she won an Emmy. After earning a degree in psychology from Brown University, she moved to New York where she became a social worker before shifting to a career in television and radio. Johnson has recorded countless commercials, promos, audiobooks, narrations, and animation series.