3.5.2019, 8 pm

Part of the festival Postcolonial Poly Perspectives

thoughtful words, physical autonomy, friendship, sustaining, challenging, Black Love, raising one’s voice, making visible

Acts of resistance are part of literature. Like an archive, writings of Black authors and authors of Color record acts of resistance and are themselves a form of resistance: in the literary scene, in writing and reading, in thinking. Chima Ugwuoke presents Black authors and authors of Color including SchwarzRund and Vina Yun with their works Biskaya and Homestories.

In their narratives of everyday life with Black, of Color and post-migrant protagonists living in Germany and Austria, they illustrate what it means to be confronted with racist and restrictive social circumstances, and how powerful, multifaceted and healing even small moments of resistance can be under these conditions.

Their stories describe how a new space is created when people take the trouble to pronounce your name properly, when you get the chance to smell and taste the food you know from home. They describe how uniting it can feel when you share a language in a foreign place; the healing effect of being reflected in someone else’s appearance; and how liberating it can feel not to have to pretend ‒ because all of the parts constituting you as a person become legitimate.

The texts presented here relate personal and family stories against the backdrop of powerful global and political contexts; always raising the question of how our moments of self-determination can be perpetuated.

Following the reading we invite the audience to discuss with the authors. What does negotiating social reality in their literary work mean for them? What does this mean with regard to language, images and the stories they tell? What does decolonisation and resistance signify to them?

Created by and featuring: SchwarzRund, Vina Yun, among others.