Nina Simone’s Soundscapes of Exile and Return
Analyzing songwriting, performances, and interviews, this essay explores Nina Simone as a...
Maya Angela Smith
Professor of French
Biography
Maya Angela Smith began her career primarily focused on issues of language and identity among members of the Francophone African diaspora. Recent writing continues exploring this intersection but through the lens of music. Her book, Ne me quitte pas, analyzes how the song—a text, a piece of cultural production written in a specific context, and a work of mass/popular art—travels across languages, geographies, genres, and generations by using Nina Simone’s single as a point of departure.