Brittle Paper 2017 Award Winners – Africa in Dialogue

I believe that the art of conversations is the art of remembering. It is the art of remembering that which is elemental for all of us; our private and public griefs, rages, pains, joys, loves and laughters. When we converse we revisit our individuals and collective histories. A re-visit that is necessary because this is where the personal and public intersect. And when we remember the intersection of the personal and the collective, we remember how to heal. We remember that we can heal. We remember that healing is our heritage and birthright.

DOWNLOAD: Brittle Paper Interviews by Africa In Dialogue

My conversations with the Brittle Paper 2017 winners was our collective remembrance of how to make the personal and collective world, through imagination, sensible and alchemic to ourselves and to those who witness us.  

With Chibuihe, we remember our collective failure with the constant erasure and harm brought to queer bodies and the importance of demanding for active protection of queer bodies. With Megan, we remember magic in surrendering, the ancient mother archetype and how its been used as the custodian of pregnancy trauma and motherhood-pain. JK  and I explore existentialism, the power of confessional poetry and finding meaning and healing in poetry. 

With Sisonke, we remember how we carry the world as women, how we take care of the world as women and how the world celebrate how women endure pain. Hawa and I remember public grief, the collective hysteria that manifested during the Ebola Crisis and how because we die, we must remember to truly live all of our lives.

I invite you to read our conversations as these remembrance contain the possibility for new meanings and magic that will awaken and transform.

– Gaamangwe Joy Mogami – Founding Editor, Africa in Dialogue. 

Download the conversations here:  Brittle Paper Interviews by Africa In Dialogue