Catherine Acholonu was really on the go in 2009. Her just published book They Lived Before Adam was invited to the Harlem Book Fair, Schomburg Center for Black Culture, New York and cleared two awards with plaques: the Philis Wheatley Award for Work That Transcends Culture and Perception and the Flora Nwapa Award for Literary Excellence. They Lived Before Adam was actually celebrated at the Fiar as a groundbreaking publication and piece of research. Accordingly a dance drama titled "She Who Digs Up Truth" was staged at the Schomburg Center Auditorium by the hosts of the Fair in honour of Acholonu and her epoch-making publication.
Acholonu's presentation at the event was aired on C-Span Book TV, New Nork and was viewed by a global auddience, with two repeat broadcasts. The video can be viewed on C-Span Library.
Catherine subsequently gave class lectures at Medgar Evers College, Brooklyn, Department of English, and at John Jay College for Criminal Justice, CUNY; as well as a Departmental lecture at John Jay on the topic - "Emerging Cultural an Historical Research in Sub-Saharan Africa - The Question of Methodology and Medium of Communication".
The lecture sought to establish that African scholars must create new paradigms for the Research in African Studies bearing in mind that indegenous methods of storing information are different from what obtains in the West.
The paper concludes:
"Our research Foundation (the Catherine Acholonu Research Center) is breaking new grounds in innovative scholarship to bring Black Africa out of the shadows and re-launch indigenous African forms of knowledge and expression as formal and legitimate in their own right. In particular, our study and discovery of lost forms of writing (e.g stone inscriptions) used by Prehistoric Black Africans more than 4,000 years ago are deserving of serious attention in the African and Western Academy..."
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