Upcoming Teach-In: Speaking Herself Into Being: The Lives and Archival Afterlives of West African Women Elders by Sylvia Arthur
Flyer promoting an upcoming teach-in by Sylvia Arthur. Photo by Seth Avusuglo.
The next teach-in for our Black Feminist Marronage Series will be led by storyteller Sylvia Arthur, who will chronicle the lives and archival afterlives of West African women elders.
On Saturday, September 27 at 12:30 PM EST/5:30 PM BST, join us for the upcoming teach-in, “Speaking Herself Into Being: The Lives and Archival Afterlives of West African Women Elders” by Sylvia Arthur. This teach-in is a part of our “Black Feminist Marronage Series” for The School for Black Feminist Politics, which is inspired by 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.
The teach-in will be held on Zoom. The event will be recorded. ASL interpretation will be provided.
You can register for the teach-in here: https://bit.ly/SylviaArthur
About the teach-in: At 59, women in West Africa have the lowest female life expectancy in the world. Sylvia Arthur has interviewed 100 West African women over 60 to create an extensive oral archive to record their stories, preserve their legacies, and serve as a correction to their erasure from official histories. Speaking openly, aware that their words and thoughts will be permanently documented, the women are rejecting the imposition of silence and “immanent and imminent” death that overshadows their lives. As women who have lived beyond expectation, they are unicorns, survivors, fugitives. In this teach-in, Sylvia Arthur will share audio excerpts from the archive that offer a fresh perspective on the lives of elder African women and provide insight into how they live, love, survive, and thrive, defying stereotypes and capturing the joys and challenges of West African womanhood. She will discuss her practice and methodology, and explore the potential for expansion that the archive offers beyond just preservation for the afterlives of West African women elders
About the teach-in Curator: Sylvia Arthur
Sylvia Arthur is a storyteller, National Geographic Explorer, and creator of A Women’s Oral History of West Africa, a project to document the lives of West African women over 60 and present an alternative postcolonial history of the region from the perspective of its women through an expansive oral archive. She is the founder of the Library Of Africa and The African Diaspora (LOATAD), a library, archive, writing residency, and research institute in Accra, Ghana, dedicated to the work of African and Diaspora writers from the late 19th century to the present day. She is a 2024 Ford Global Fellow and the 2023 Brittle Paper Literary Person of the Year.