[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 155 (2009), Part 6]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages 8180-8181]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                     A TRIBUTE TO ANGELI R. RASBURY

                                 ______
                                 

                          HON. EDOLPHUS TOWNS

                              of new york

                    in the house of representatives

                        Thursday, March 19, 2009

  Mr. TOWNS. Madam Speaker, I rise today in recognition of Angeli R. 
Rasbury.
  Angeli Rasbury is a writer, educator, artist, attorney and founder of 
Griot Reading Programs, which is dedicated to promoting literacy among 
youth of African descent and Black literature. She teaches poetry and 
creative writing to children as young as five-years-old and teens at 
the Brooklyn-Stuyvesant Restoration Corporation and New York Writers 
Coalition. She has facilitated book clubs for middle school and high 
school students and elders. The reading scores of every middle school 
student with whom she worked improved. Her writing students have 
received awards from teachers and city council members. She has been an 
instructor of creative nonfiction and memoir at the Frederick Douglass 
Creative Arts Center in New York City and has taught creative writing, 
college composition and African American literature at Molloy College 
in Long Island. Ms. Rasbury has worked with girls in a rites of passage 
program and works with girls involved in the juvenile-justice system. 
She has organized readings and book programs for children, including 
programs for the annual Rhymes, Rhythms and Rituals Festival sponsored 
by African Voices, and literary programs for the adults. She has worked 
with elders, collecting oral history for Elders Share the Arts. She has 
been a panelist in the grant review process for artists for the 
Brooklyn Arts Council. Ms. Rasbury is a member of the New Renaissance 
Writers Guild and has been a member of the Richard Wright Project and 
PEN American Center Open Book Committee.
  As the youth services community and partnerships associate at the 
central branch of the Brooklyn Public Library, Ms. Rasbury has provided 
family-oriented Kwanza and Martin Luther King Program, Jr. Day programs 
where the focus is the young people in our community. She has provided 
a monthly art program for two years and provided an opportunity for our 
youth to work with award-winning and emerging artists, providing arts 
enrichment for youth and supporting the artists. She has partnered with 
various community organizations to promote literacy and youth and 
community development. A former editor for Black

[[Page 8181]]

Issues Book Review and QBR: The Black Book Review, other magazines, and 
community newspapers. Her essays, book reviews, profiles, features and 
interviews have been published in Essence, American Legacy, Black 
Enterprise, The Source, Vibe, and other magazines and online at 
womensenews.com, for which she is the girls' beat reporter and focuses 
on detention and incarceration topics. She received a PASS Award (the 
only national recognition of print and broadcast journalists, TV news 
and feature reporters, producers, and writers, and those in film and 
literature who try to focus America's attention on our criminal justice 
system, juvenile justice system, and child welfare systems in a 
thoughtful and considerate manner) from the National Council on Crime 
and Delinquency for her article ``Out of Jail, Mothers Struggle to 
Reclaim Children''. Ms. Rasbury's short stories have appeared in 
Anansi: Fiction of the African Diaspora. She has been quoted in the New 
York Times, Mosaic and Brooklyn Rail and co-edited Sacred Fire: The QBR 
100 Essential Black Books. She was awarded the DorisJean Austin 
Fellowship for African American Fiction Writers by the Frederick 
Douglass Creative Arts Center and has been a panelist at writing and 
publishing conferences. She performed in Talkin' Brooklyn: A Story 
Circle Showcase of Elders Share the Arts and Diary of a Mad Black 
Feminist.
  Angeli Rasbury has been keynote speaker for the Yellow Rose Awards 
Program for New York University's College of Arts and Science and the 
Brooklyn Public Library's Friends and Volunteers luncheon. She holds a 
B.S. from Syracuse University and a J.D. from Temple University. She 
practiced criminal defense law as a senior attorney with the Legal Aid 
Society, Criminal Defense Division. She has taught high school students 
various areas of the law and civil rights issues through the Law 
Education and Assistance Program and the New York Civil Rights 
Coalition and was executive director of the Nkitu Center for Education 
and Culture. Her photography has been published and exhibited. In her 
spare time she designs jewelry and loves to travel. She lives in 
Brooklyn, New York. She spends a lot of time with her nieces and 
nephews, family and friends.

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