Join us for our last we lit! program of 2025 as we welcome harmonia rosales and her debut book “chronicles of ori: an african epic”!
We Lit is a CCCADI series dedicated to exploring authors of the African Diaspora who have beautifully woven their experiences, cultures, and dreams into their works. We Lit is where words come to life, and stories become a bridge that connects us all.
In this last installment of 2025, Harmonia Rosales reads from her book “Chronicles of Ori: An African Epic”.
Registration will be accepted at the door. Admission will be based on space of capacity and is not guaranteed.
CHRONICLES OF ORI: AN AFRICAN EPIC retells the West African myths of Rosales’ childhood in an enthralling new format. While the original stories of the Orishas were passed down through traditional oral storytelling, in CHRONICLES OF ORI Rosales presents a narrative linear framework, weaving ancient myths and the author’s ancestral knowledge to shape a sweeping and singular literary experience.
This contemporary retelling of an ancient mythology expands the universe of Yoruba spirituality and reflects humanity’s collective journey and ongoing struggles while revealing profound connections not only to other African folktales, but religious narratives from far corners of the world.
Twenty-six luminous paintings by the artist enhance each story, simultaneously honoring the beautiful physicality of the human form while evoking the transcendent spiritual world.
Rosales will join us in the midst of a multi-city book tour at major museums and institutions, including Harvard University, Spelman College, Brooklyn Public Library, Howard University, National Gallery in London, Pérez Art Museum, and many more.
Harmonia Rosales
Harmonia Rosales is a Chicago-born, Afro-Cuban American artist and author whose work centers the visibility and empowerment of Black women in Western art.
Growing up visiting the Art Institute of Chicago, Rosales was captivated by Renaissance painting — but years later, her daughter’s simple observation that “they don’t look like me” exposed the exclusion at the heart of that tradition.
That moment sparked Rosales’s artistic journey: reimagining Renaissance and Baroque masterpieces with Black protagonists and centering West African spirituality. Since 2017, her work has visualized the Orishas, the deities of the Yoruba tradition, and explored the survival of their stories across the Middle Passage.
With bold, uncompromising imagery and prose, Rosales challenges Eurocentric ideals of beauty, power, and divinity, reshaping both art history and cultural consciousness.
Rosales has previously been the subject of exhibitions at the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art (Memphis, TN); the Spelman Museum of Fine Art (Atlanta, GA); the Warhol Museum (Pittsburgh, PA); the Wright Museum (Detroit, MI), among others. Her work is held by numerous public and private collections across the United States, including the Brooklyn Museum (Brooklyn, NY); the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History (Washington, D.C.); Spelman Museum of Fine Art (Atlanta, GA); and more.
Her debut novel, Chronicles of Ori: An African Epic, will be available beginning October 14, 2025, published by W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.