Ficre Ghebreyesus and Elizabeth Alexander were born two months apart in 1962, he in Eritrea, she in Harlem. They didn’t meet until 1996. He was an artist and a chef at a New Haven Eritrean restaurant he owned with his brothers. She was a poet and professor. She had been teaching at the University of Chicago, where she had also met a senior lecturer named Barack Obama. She married Ghebreyesus. She delivered Obama’s 2009 inaugural poem. In 2012, a few days after her husband’s 50th birthday, he died abruptly. Her new book, “The Light of The World,” tells that story.
GUEST:
- Elizabeth Alexander - Poet, essayist, playwright and teacher; Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets, poetry professor at Yale University; author of The Light of the World
MUSIC:
- “How I Got Over” by Mahalia Jackson
- “Heaven” by Jimmy Scott
- “Spring Can Really Hang You Up The Most” by Betty Carter
- Traditional Awlo Tigrinya Song from Eritrea
This show originally aired on April 21, 2015.
