Rashidah Ismaili
poet, fiction writer, essayist and playwright
Rashidah Ismaili, also known as Rashidah Ismaili AbuBakr (born 1941), is a poet, fiction writer, essayist and playwright who was born in Cotonou, Benin, West Africa, and in the 1950s migrated to the US, where she still lives in Harlem, New York City. She was part of the Black Arts Movement in New York in the 1960s. She is also an arts and culture critic and taught literature by French- and English-speaking African writers in higher education institutes for more than 30 years.
Biography
Early years and education
Rashidah Ismaili was born and raised in Cotonou, Benin (formerly known as Dahomey), in West Africa. Her mother was from Benin but her father was from Kano in Northern Nigeria. Ismaili studied at her grandfather's Koran School and at a Catholic missionary school, and after her mother's death was sent to a boarding school in France, remaining there for six years. She was married at the age of 15 to a Nigerian who was studying in New York, where she joined him in 1956/57 after he got a scholarship.
Initially hoping to become an opera singer, she studied at New York College of Music, where she earned a BFA in voice, and she also studied musical theatre at Mannes School of Music, before going on to obtain a master's degree in social psychology at the New School for Social Research, and later a PhD in psychology from the State University of New York (SUNY). After separation from her husband, Ismaili worked at the same time as undertaking graduate studies so as to support herself and her son, as well as writing. She participated in the Black Arts Movement in New York City in the 1960s, and was a member of the Umbra collective of young black writers.
The public source identifies “Rashidah Ismaili” as poet, fiction writer, essayist and playwright. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Rashidah, Ismaili and poet.
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Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 19, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q38719624. VIAF identifies the subject as 55824279. The Library of Congress control number is n93051199. 1 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1941 and 1956.
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This entry incorporates text from “Rashidah Ismaili” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.