Abbey Lincoln’s Genius Revisited: An Author Talk with Ada C.M. Thomas

Join scholar Ada C.M. Thomas for a talk celebrating her new book, Aminata: Abbey Lincoln’s Song of Faith, published by Rutgers University Press. Abbey Lincoln, who lived from 1930 to 2010, was one of the greatest jazz vocalists of the twentieth century, also an acclaimed composer, poet, playwright, actress, and activist, and a towering figure within the African American intellectual tradition. Through constant reinvention, she resisted easy stereotyping and helped open a space for Black women artists to invoke their whole selves. With meticulous research and insightful analysis, Thomas contemplates Lincoln’s music alongside her poetry, plays, and reflections, placing her albums in the context of the female jazz and blues singers who influenced her and the male composers she collaborated with, including John Coltrane, Thelonious Monk, and Max Roach. The book traces Lincoln’s extraordinary spiritual and intellectual journey, from her early life in Michigan to her rebirth in the 1970s as Aminata Moseka, meaning faithful goddess of love, and her ultimate resurgence in the 1990s as a critically acclaimed jazz artist and composer. Author Johnnetta Betsch Cole has praised the book for tracing a life of courage, faith, and uncompromising artistry, calling readers to pursue dignity, justice, and soulful possibility for future generations. Thomas is an independent scholar who has served as assistant professor of English at Wheaton College and a public scholar through the New Jersey Council for the Humanities’ Public Scholars Project.