Ajuan Mance

Ajuan Mance is a Professor of English and Ethnic Studies at Mills College and a lifelong artist and writer. In her scholarly writings as well as her art and comics, Ajuan explores the relationship between race, gender, and representation. An African American literature specialist, she is the author of Inventing Black Women: African American Women's Poetry and Self-Representation, 1877-2010 (U Tennessee Press, 2007) and Before Harlem: An Anthology of African American Literature from the Long Nineteenth Century (U Tennessee Press, 2016). Her comics have appeared in a number of anthologies including, most recently, the Ignatz Award-winning We're Still Here (Stacked Deck, 2018), Diane Noomin's Drawing Power: Women's Stories of Sexual Violence, Harrassment, and Survival (Abrams, 2019), and the upcoming Menopause: A Comic Treatment (Penn State U Press, May 2020). An artist and illustrator as well as a comic creator, Ajuan has participated in solo and group exhibitions from the Bay Area to Harlem. Her paintings and drawings have appeared in a number of digital and print media outlets, including Mission at Tenth, Blavity.com, BET.com, Buzzfeed.com, NPR.org, the San Francisco Chronicle, KPIX, and the New York Times.