Penn’s Eve Troutt Powell on ‘Tell This in My Memory’

Hour 2

What does the slave trade in North Africa of the late 19^th Century have to tell us about the countries whose revolutions and social unrest explode onto our screens today? How does the legacy of the Egyptian and Sudanese experience of slavery compare and contrast to the United States’ legacy of African slavery? Why is the word “abid” such a powerful word in today’s Egypt and Sudan? Answering these questions led EVE TROUTT POWELL, associate professor of History at the University of Pennsylvania, to the archives of a convent headquarters in Rome and the vibrant streets of Cairo. She received a MacArthur “Genius” grant in 2003 to help fund her research, and it has resulted in the compelling new book, “Tell This in My Memory: Stories of Enslavement from Egypt, Sudan, and the Ottoman Empire.”