Black Women Radicals Presents: Afrekete Convos

We are super excited to announce our new Instagram Live series, “Afrekete Convos”! Every first Thursday of the month, Black Women Radicals will host “Afrekete Convos”, an IG Live series that highlights and uplifts Black women, non-binary, and gender non-conforming activists, artists, and changemakers around the world. The series is in honor of and inspired by the self-described “Black, lesbian, mother, warrior, poet,” that was and is Audre Lorde.

In her biomythography, Zami: A New Spelling of My Name (1982), Lorde dedicates her prologue and epilogue to Afrekete, an African-derived name of a Black mother and/or goddess (who Lorde later re-names herself as). In Lorde’s prologue of Zami, she writes: “To the journeywoman pieces of myself./becoming./ Afrekete” (Lorde, 2003, xv).

Here, Afrekete represented Lorde’s journey of becoming herself at the intersections of her identities, her knowledge of self (“the erotic”) and the world around her, and the critical importance of building and learning across differences with feminist encounters and alliances. “Afrekete Convos” is inspired by Lorde’s journey to self––politically and spiritually––and her journey to the importance of creating community. Building off Lorde’s formidable framework, “Afrekete Convos” seeks to build sisterhoods, siblinghoods, and alliances across time, space, and place in Africa and in the African Diaspora by using social media to discuss, share, and build radical, Black feminist and Womanist solidarities, possibilities, and imaginations.

#AfreketeConvos