Imoinda

IMOINDA or She Who Will Lose Her Name (2008) is the first libretto to be written by an African-Caribbean woman, Professor Joan Anim-Addo.^[1] It is a re-writing of Aphra Behn's Oroonoko, first published in 1688.

It tells the story of Oroonoko's lover Imoinda, a young African princess who is doubly enslaved, once by her king into marriage and then sold into the trans-Atlantic slave trade. The play focuses on her experience with the slave masters and the birth of a child who symbolizes the triumphant survival of African-heritage people forcibly transplanted in the Caribbean Diaspora. In subversively re-writing Behn's 1688 proto-novel, this woman-centered narrative highlights the importance of women as repositories of cultural and historical memory, ancestral forgiveness and the maternal founding of the "Creolised Nation".

The libretto was first published in Italian (translated by Dr Giovanna Covi and Chiara Pedrotti) by the University of Trento and then later re-published in English by Mango Publishing^[2] as demand for it grew. It has been performed in New York City, United States. In May 2008, the State University of New York at Geneseo and the Rochester School of the Arts put on a performance with funding from the New York State Music Fund.^[3]

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