Maya Angela Smith

Professor of French

University of Washington

US

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.

Articles (1)

enMaya Angela Smith

Nina Simone’s Soundscapes of Exile and Return

Analyzing songwriting, performances, and interviews, this essay explores Nina Simone as a transatlantic cultural figure through the themes of protest, exile, and Black womanhood. Tracing Simone’s movements across the Atlantic illuminates enduring questions of race, refuge, and cultural belonging that continue to shape Black diasporic life today.