Imani Rashid [Lecture]

Title: Imani Rashid [Lecture]
Description: Imani Rashid is an entrepreneur, teacher, visionary, event planner, Godmother to many, leader, Yoruba Priestess, mentor, friend and sister to others and a founding member of Salsa Soul Sisters (the oldest Black lesbian organization in the United States). Imani has dedicated her life to enriching and expanding the education of young children using the principles of Kwanza and creative practices such as drumming and aviation. Imani founded the Yoruba Cultural Center of New York City in Harlem in 1990 to gather Afro-diasporic people, primarily of the NJ-NY-CT area, to share history, language, divination, songs and dances of the Orishas, and the cosmology of the Yoruba People of Southwest Nigeria. The Yoruba Cultural Center closed in 1993, but its community-building and impacts have been lasting, and the center will resume its Saturday Night Lecture Series on Saturday, February 15, 2025.

In this lecture, Imani Rashid discusses her Caribbean familial heritage, her spirituality, and how she started the Yoruba Cultural Center. She reflects on her own spaces and how architecture reminds of us the time it was created.
Date: 2025-02-11
Subject: Yoruba Cultural Center; Queer Culture; Spirituality
list of contributors: Rashid, Imani

Item sets: Place, Memory & Culture Incubator Lectures; Generative Histories Harlem, pt. 2: Studio