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SPOTLIGHT
ON THE ARTS - September 2005 by Deanna Mascle Weaving a Tapestry of Words While her love of stories began with her family, especially her maternal grandmother and mother, she also found inspiration within the black church and community. “Ms. Barbara Miller, the first African-American children’s librarian at the Western Branch Library (in Louisville), was a great inspiration to me,” Asantewaa recalls. “This library was the first full-service library for African-Americans in the United States.” Founded in 1905, the library will be celebrating its centennial this month. In addition, Jackie Torrence, the Storylady, encouraged Asantewaa as did Mary Carter Smith, the co-founder of the National Black Storytellering Association. “They have been my mentors.” A Louisville native and graduate of the University of Louisville, Asantewaa is known regionally, nationally and internationally as a professional artist. She is affectionately known as “Mama Yaa,” a “keeper of the African oral tradition” that was passed on to her from her grandmother and family elders. Asantewaa’s stories speak to many people and have earned her international recognition. Most recently, she was among the 2004 recipients of the Governor’s Awards in the Arts and received the Individual Community Arts Award. She draws the inspiration for her work from many sources, including family, elders, storytellers, black writers and books. Mama Yaa’s stories are presented nationally on Kentucky Educational Television’s Telling Tales and on the Louisville Free Public Library’s Web site. She has also performed for the Internationale Fifth Pan-African Historical Theatre Festival in Ghana, West Africa by invitation of the vice president of Ghana and has shared the art of storytelling across Kentucky, in her travels to the Virgin Islands and at Gullah Festivals in South Carolina. Her work includes original stories, many of which have evolved into one-act arts education plays for young audiences over a period of 12 seasons as the Kentuckiana African American Arts Series, independently produced at Actors Theatre of Louisville. This is an anthology of eight story-theatre works with companion teacher study guides: Freedom Knows My Name, A Bus Ride with Mrs. Rosa Parks, I Ain’t Colored No More, Freedom’s Road: Frederick Douglass and Colored Troops, Fly’n High with Bessie in the Sky, Ayana, The Prince and the Python, Africa’s Legacy in America and Journey – A Collective Women’s Work. In addition to her personal art, Nana Yaa has also demonstrated extraordinary efforts as the president emerita of the Louisville Arts Council, Inc. (LAC), which she founded in 1998. The council’s mission is to assist community arts and artists by nurturing relationships, fostering multi-cultural diversity, providing tools and resource materials, and advocating for growth and economic development of the community. She also developed community-wide arts education programs while she was the family services director at the Presbyterian Community Center and Sankova Academy summer arts and discovery camp programs in collaboration with LAC, Inc. Her vision is to touch, teach and reach youth through the arts and link the arts and the community. Her other awards and honors include the distinguished City of Louisville Merit Award and representing the city as a delegate to the 1994 International African and African American summit in Gabon, Central Africa. She has received the City of Louisville’s Community Service Award, the Jefferson County Service Award, the Kentucky Foundation for Women’s Sallie Bingham Award and the Humanitarian Award of the Delta Sigma Theta-Louisville chapter among many others. In March, she was honored as the “2005 Woman of Distinction” by Louisville’s Center for Women and Families. While grateful for the recognition her work receives, Asantewaa wants to be remembered for her personal contributions rather than her professional ones. She hopes to be remembered for her “sweetness, gentleness, kindness, honesty, peacefulness, compassion, thoughtfulness, generosity, tough love and more of the same.” Deanna Mascle is a
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For Nana Yaa Asantewaa, storytelling is not a profession or even a calling – it is simply a part of who she is. Storytelling is a part of her genes and her heritage, learned at her mother’s knee.