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Born in St. Louis, Missouri, Maya Angelou spent her difficult formative years moving back and forth between her mother's and grandmother's. At age eight, she was raped by her mother's boyfriend, who was subsequently killed by her uncles. The event caused the young girl to go mute for nearly six years, and her teens and early twenties were spent as a dancer, filled with isolation and experimentation.

Al Gore is the former Vice President of the United States. He is chairman of Current TV, an independently-owned cable and satellite television nonfiction network for young people based on viewer-created content and citizen journalism. He also serves as chairman of Generation Investment Management, a firm that is focused on a new approach to sustainable investing. He is a member of the Board of Directors of Apple Computer, Inc., and a senior advisor to Google, Inc. Mr. Gore is the author of *An Inconvenient Truth*, a best-selling book on the threat of and solutions to global warming, and the subject of the movie of the same title, which has already become one of the top documentary films in history. In 2007, *An Inconvenient Truth* was awarded two Academy Awards for Best Documentary Feature and Best Original Song.

Mende Nazer lost her childhood at age twelve, when she was sold into slavery. It all began one horrific night in 1993, when Arab raiders swept through her Nuba village in the Sudan, burning the buildings, murdering the adults, and kidnapping Mende and thirty other children.

Bertha Merrill Holt is a former North Carolina state representative.

Deepika Bahri is Associate Professor in the English department at Emory University. Her research focuses on Post-Colonial literature, culture, and theory. She is the author of *Native Intelligence: Aesthetics, Politics, and Postcolonial Literature* (2003) and co-editor of *Between the Lines: South Asians and Postcoloniality and Realms of Rhetoric*. Bahri has written several articles on Post-Colonial issues in journals and book collections. She is currently working on the representation of Anglo-Indians, Eurasians, and racial hybrids in Post-Colonial literature. HIV/AIDS in developing countries is a secondary research interest. Based on preliminary research in this area, she has written a report entitled "AIDS Prevention and Control in Tamil Nadu" for USAID/CDC. She earned her Ph.D from Bowling Green State University in 1992 and taught at the Georgia Institute of Technology before joining the English department faculty at Emory University in 1995.