Rice Keepers

Rashidah Ismaili, also known as Rashidah Ismaili AbuBakr (born 1941), is a poet, fiction writer, essayist and playwright who was born in Cotonou, Benin, West Africa, and in the 1950s migrated to the US, where she still lives in Harlem, New York City. She was part of the Black Arts Movement in New York in the 1960s. She is also an arts and culture critic and taught literature by French- and English-speaking African writers in higher education institutes for more than 30 years.