Please join us for a reading and book signing with Fayyaz A. Vellani, Lecturer in Critical Writing at the University of Pennsylvania, for his recent book Tea With Ms. Tanzania.

After the death of her husband in London, Gulnar Jaffar writes letters to her estranged son Zain in Glasgow.  These letters describe her life in 1960s Tanzania, from being caught up in a mutiny, to attending a tea party for the first lady.  Pining for Zain’s understanding, Gulnar reveals how the fraught atmosphere of postcolonial East Africa has shaped their mother-son relationship.

Fayyaz A. Vellani is the author of Tea With Ms. Tanzania, which Mathangi Subramanian called ”A quintessentially African story that blazes with heart.”  Fayyaz teaches Critical Writing at the University of Pennsylvania, and his writing has appeared in Disability & Society, The Bookends Review, and F-Word Magazine.  He is writing his next novel about Zanzibar, his grandfather’s birthplace.