My mother named me Tananarive , then the capital city of Madagascar , because of a course on Contemporary Africa she took from Prof . Howard at FAMU . I was born in the FAMU hospital ( with a hand-written record at the Florida Archives as a part of my mother ’ s papers ). Mom originally spelled my name wrong , missing one of the “ NA ’ s ,” but the original version has the misspelling crossed out and corrected . We lost Mom in 2012 , but Dad and I are celebrating our special day together today in Florida . I ’ m still amazed at how the time flies . I ’ m grateful we ’ re here to celebrate together .

Tananarive with her father