Upcoming Event: "African Feminist Marronage: On the Power of African Feminist World/Space/Placemaking"
Promotional flyer for the upcoming event, “African Feminist Marronage.”
Left to right: Buchi Emecheta, Josina Abiathar Muthemba Machel, Lilian Masediba Matabane Ngoyi, Thenjiwe Lesabe, Ama Ata Aidoo, Fatima Ahmed Ibrahim, and Andrée Blouin.
Join us for our upcoming event in collaboration with the Library of Africa and the African Diaspora titled, “African Feminist Marronage.”
On Saturday, May 3rd at 3:00 PM GMT/11:00 AM EST, join us for our upcoming event in collaboration with The Library of Africa and the African Diaspora (LOATAD) titled, "African Feminist Marronage: On the Power of African Feminist World/Space/Placemaking.”
The event will be held in-person at LOATAD, which is located in the Adenta Municipality in Accra, Ghana.
“African Feminist Marronage” interrogates the crucial role and leadership of African Feminists in creating new worlds and sights of refuge, restoration, and recovery across archival, digital, spiritual, textual, physical, and geographic methods and modalities, despite anti-Black racialized and gendered colonial and patriarchal violence, political and citation erasure, and more. Speakers for this event include Vida Agbolosu, Noor Elfaki, vangile gantsho & Tracy Owoo.
This event is a part of Black Women Radicals' teach-in series, “Black Feminist Marronage”, which centers the power, self-determination, and activism of Black women and gender expansive communities around the world, and their unrepentant and unyielding fortitude in creating transformative places and spaces of sanctuary, survival, and solidarity for ourselves and posterity.
Watch the event
About the Panelists
Vida Agbolosu
Vida Agbolosu is an award-winning cook at the Library of Africa and the African Diaspora. She is a passionate singer and mother from the Volta region of Ghana but currently resides in Accra. She is very intentional and passionate about feminism.
Noor Salah H. Elfaki
Noor Salah H. Elfaki is an award-winning Sudanese short fiction writer, published and honored both nationally and regionally. Content creator, passionate about amplifying Sudanese voices, particularly advocating for peace, equality, and the rich cultural heritage of Sudan. She is a researcher and final year medical student at the University of Khartoum, Sudan.
Vangile Gantsho
vangile gantsho is healer, poet and co-founder of impepho press – a Pan Africanist intersectional feminist publishing house. She currently serves as editor of New Coin Literary Journal, and is the author of two poetry collections: red cotton (2018) and Undressing in Front of the Window (2015).
gantsho holds an MA, from the University Currently Known as Rhodes (UCKR) and is a graduate of the Thabo Mbeki African Leadership Institute. In 2018, gantsho was named one of Mail & Guardian’s Top Young 200 South Africans. Her poetry has been published in various literary publications around the globe, including New Daughters of Africa (2019) and Wild Imperfections: An Anthology of Womanist Poems (2021).
She has participated in festivals & literary programmes across three continents, has curated & produced in-person as well as online international programmes and has taught at several universities in South Africa and the USA. gantsho dedicates herself and her work to creating and/or supporting spaces that encourage (black feminine visibility and) healing, such as Ukuthula, a creative writing resistance to the multiple violences inflicted against our bodies & personhoods & smallgirl rising connecting the Divine Black Feminine, an international intergenerational poetry healing initiative.
vangile is also mother, igqirha (mama uAvukile) and umngoma (Gogo Gcinashe).
Tracy owoo
Tracy Owoo (Tray/She/Her) is a queer feminist activist, a results-driven project manager, and a dedicated community worker committed to advancing feminism, LGBTQIA+ rights, and social justice in Ghana, across the continent and the world at large. Through various feminist lenses, she leads and supports diverse projects; from community-wide festivals and archiving initiatives to educational workshops and advocacy efforts; that break down barriers, foster visibility, and center empowerment within LGBTQIA+ communities.
She currently works as the coordinator for Accra Think Tank, a movement gap-bridging initiative for women and non-binary individuals that identify as LBQ; the programs director at LGBT+ Rights Ghana; a member of the activist grantmaking panel of ISDAO, a queer feminist West African fund; and a project lead for the Decolonize Medicine Series by Liberation Medicine School.
She is deeply passionate about and rooted in community work and movement building and is honored to be in roles that allow her to contribute meaningfully to the growth and sustainability of queer and feminist organizing.
About the Collaborating Organizations:
Black Women Radicals (BWR) is a Black feminist advocacy organization dedicated to uplifting Black women and gender expansive people’s radical political activism.
The Library of Africa and the African Diaspora (LOATAD) is a library, archive, writing residency, and research institute dedicated to the collection, preservation, and dissemination of works by African and African-descended writers from the late 19th century to the present day. LOATAD’s collection includes +/- 4000 books by, and ephemera from, writers from 44 of Africa’s 54 countries and Black authors from the Americas, the Caribbean, and Europe.