Dr. Dongala will Speak in Harriman Hall

Emmanuel Dongala, PhD, novelist, poet, scientist, and former president of the Congelese chapter of PEN, the international writers’ organization that fights for freedom of expression, will speak on Human’s Rights, People’s Rights: An African Perspective on Tuesday, February 13, 2007 at 7:15pm in Harriman Hall 111 Film Theatre, Orange County Community College. Harriman Hall is a universally accessible building which is located at the corner of Wawayanda and East Conkling Avenues, Middletown, NY. The lecture is free and open to the public and sponsored in part by James H. Ottaway, Jr.

Dongala is the 2003 recipient of the Fonlon-Nichols Award for his contributions to both African literature and freedom of expression, his work is also featured in the Penguin Book of Modern African Poetry. In addition, he is an author of award-winning novels Johnny Mad Dog (French: Johnny Chien Mechant) and Little Boys Come from the Stars and The Fire of Origin. He states that he chose first to become a scientist because a free Africa needed men of science, but that “my job [became] as a writer to express the sadness, anger, and shame that so much wealth and opportunity has been wasted in Africa.”

Dept., Simon’s Rock College of Bard, Great Barrington, MA, where he is a professor of chemistry with a specialty in stereochemistry and asymmetric synthesis. He also teaches French.
In addition, he was the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1999.

Dr. Dongala and his family abandoned their home in Brazzaville, Congo Republic in the wake of civil war. “[It] was more horrible than I could have imagined as a novelist,” he told a New York Times interviewer. Rival militias shot civilians at random in the streets and bombarded residential neighborhoods, reducing them to rubble. 10,000 people were killed according to official estimates, but he believes the number to be much higher. 120,000 of his countrymen fled to seek shelter in the equatorial rainforests. Dr. Dongala, a professor of chemistry and dean of Brazzaville’s university, was luckier. Having received his BA at Oberlin College and his MS at Rutgers University and being a frequent visitor to the United States, he had formed a friendship with, among others, novelist Philip Roth who helped him secure an appointment as a professor at Simon’s Rock College by Leon Botstein president of Bard College. Emmanuel Dongala is always careful to stress in interviews that he is not a political exile, a fact that differentiates him from many other well-known African authors. “I did not suffer because I was a writer or an intellectual,” he told the Times, “I suffered like everybody did [during the civil war] because the rockets we call ‘Stalin’s organs’ kept firing on our house, because anarchy spread and children with machine guns took what they wanted. It was not ideological.”

The Lyceum Lecture Series is presented by Cultural Affairs. Questions may be directed to (845)341-4891 and cultural@sunyorange.edu Website: www.sunyorange.edu/lyceum

Pictured Above: Emmanuel Dongala, PhD