EDDA L. FIELDS-BLACK’s previous book, Deep Roots: Rice Farmers in West Africa and the African Diaspora (Indiana University Press) – as well as her work as executive producer and librettist of Unburied, Unmourned, Unmarked: Requiem for Rice with Emmy Award-winning composer John Wineglass – reflect her long involvement with the interconnective story of rice cultivation in pre-colonial West Africa and on antebellum Lowcountry South Carolina and Georgia plantations. She has been a consultant at the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, the International African American Museum, and the Senator John Heinz History Center. Fields-Black lives with her family in Pittsburgh, where she teaches history and directs the Dietrich College Humanities Center at Carnegie Mellon University.
