Jacinda Townsend

2017 Hellman Fellow

jtownsend@ucdavis.edu

Assistant Professor, English
UC Davis

Project Title: Kif: a Novel

Kif is told in the voices of an American who “adopts” a Moroccan child and
the young mother, escaped from Mauritanian slavery, who lost her. The novel was inspired by interviews with former slaves and anti-slavery activists in both Morocco and Mauritania. As a Hellman Fellow, Townsend will return to Morocco in order to spend time in Marrakech and points south, interviewing the sub-Saharan migrants who have escaped precarious situations to build new lives in the kingdom of Morocco.

Link to interview:
http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/women-make-change/2015/12/meet-woman-freeing-mauritania-slaves-151207120630260.html