Folger Shakespeare Library Unveils “To Hear Her Speak” Exhibition on Black Women and Shakespeare

The Folger Shakespeare Library has launched *To Hear Her Speak: Black Women and Shakespeare*, an immersive show that explores more than four centuries of Black women’s interaction with Shakespeare’s works. Curated by Dr Patricia Akhimie, director of the Folger Institute, the exhibition presents nearly 100 objects—including photographs, playbills, diaries, illustrations, costumes, a copy of Shakespeare’s First Folio owned by a slave-holding family, sugar-trade artifacts, and a copybook by Phillis Wheatley—alongside interactive stations and a multimedia playlist.

The Guardian

In a 1985 keynote in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, Maya Angelou declared, “Of course he wrote it for me,” asserting that Shakespeare’s Sonnet 29 spoke directly to the Black feminine experience. Angelou’s statement has inspired generations of Black scholars and artists, a lineage that Akhimie has traced throughout her career. The exhibition’s title references Sonnet 130, long speculated by historians to have been addressed to a Black woman, underscoring the enduring, though often hidden, connection between Black women and the Bard.

The Guardian

Designed over two years, the show blends performance history with intellectual history, allowing visitors to sit in a replica of playwright Lorraine Hansberry’s living-room set, view video clips of Black actresses performing Shakespeare, and engage in writing activities. An audioguide narrated by actress and Shakespearean performer Adjoa Andoh accompanies a curated playlist featuring artists such as Aretha Franklin, Lauryn Hill, Billie Holiday, and SZA. The exhibit also showcases a “library” of books documenting Black women’s artistic and scholarly contributions to Shakespearean discourse.

The Guardian

Akhimie emphasizes that the exhibition seeks to “debunk a longstanding myth” that Shakespeare’s London was culturally homogenous, highlighting the era of the transatlantic slave trade when Black women’s experiences were largely undocumented. She describes Shakespeare as a “reliable partner” whose cultural currency enables Black female artists to amplify their voices across centuries. The exhibition aims to fill historical silences by linking Shakespearean texts to the lived realities of enslaved and free Black women, thereby challenging erasure within literary history.

The Guardian

• “Of course he wrote it for me,” — Maya Angelou

The Guardian

• “It’s a performance [and theater] history but it’s also an intellectual history about Black women as writers and artists pulling from Shakespeare to do new and amazing things,” — Akhimie, speaking in a warm conversation in early October

The Guardian

• “It’s not about standing back and looking at something behind glass, but rather about what happens when inspiration strikes, and then you become the maker and the thinker and the dreamer,” — Akhimie. To Hear Her, of the writer

The Guardian

• “The obvious reason for that is because that is the time period that coincides with the height of the transatlantic slave trade, when Black women’s experiences are not being documented and preserved, and their humanity is being obscured,” — Akhimie. This

The Guardian

• “Shakespeare has cultural currency. Shakespeare is a voice that people listen to,” — Akhimie, speaking in a warm conversation in early October

The Guardian