Laura Tanna

Laura Davidson Tanna (née Davidson; born August 9, 1947) is an American journalist, archivist, Africanist and Caribbean scholar based in Jamaica. She was educated in the United States and France before undertaking research in Uganda. She is best known for her contributions as a Jamaican folklorist and journalist for The Gleaner.

Early life

1947–1962: family and education Laura Tanna was born Laura Davidson on August 9, 1947, in Missoula, Montana, to the economist Ralph Kirby Davidson and the journalist Laura Agnes Devine.

1965–1970: Berkeley, Stendhal and La Sorbonne Tanna subsequently enrolled as an undergraduate at the University of California, Berkeley, studying in her junior year at Stendhal University and the University of Paris where she witnessed the student protests of 1968. At Berkeley, Tanna was involved in a demonstration at the British consulate in San Francisco, protesting Rhodesia's Unilateral Declaration of Independence. At this event, she met her future husband, the economist Dhiru Tanna. She was also the assistant editor of the publication Journal of the New African Literature and Arts (JORNALA), beginning in 1966. In 1968, she and her future husband began living together; While still in the United States, M. G. Smith, an anthropologist and advisor to Michael Manley, had given Tanna a list of Jamaican contacts including Olive Lewin and Adam Kuper, another of the prime minister's advisors. 2023: Sir Patrick Allen awarded Tanna with the Governor-General's Medal of Honour.

Personal life Laura (then Davidson) married Dhiru Tanna in Uganda on June 26, 1970. helping him to publish his novel Stone Haven through the IOJ in 1993.

Books