blackgirl on mars: notes on a life in copenhagen (or how my alienation brings me closer to people).

Say it loud! poetry collective's last reading at Copenhagen's Main Library which was fire. featuring Ayun (Angola) Julia (Mozambique, Denmark), Zanubia (Somalia, Denmark) & myself. So proud of these poets.  I'm so thankful for my life - and the many opportunities that I continue to attract. I've deactivated my Facebook account as it's not conducive (for me, anyway!) to have it while I finish up the first draft of my book Decolonial Daughter: Letters from a Black mother to her European Son and I've had a few folks reach out, worried, "Lesley! Are you okay?" they ask, "I don't see your posts anymore!" It's sweet whenever I hear this - I've always had a complicated relationship with Facebook but it wasn't always like that. In the beginning, Facebook was the shizzle .  But like all good things, it got so pimped out by capitalism. Le sigh .  Also, my algorithms compute to political doom, because my newsfeed was just fe...

When we talk about Sankofa - reaching to the past for the information needed to take us into the future, what becomes most evident in even the most cursory glance of global indigenous cultures, is the importance of non-binary sexuality, or what is often referred to as "two spirit". We learn that our brothers and sisters who did not fit into the extreme polarised constructs of "male" and "female" actually occupied positions of great importance in the societies in which they lived. I came across Xochipilli today - may his spirit inspire the world.  from Wiki: Xochipilli   [ʃu˕ːt͡ʃiˈpiɬːi]  was the god of art, games, beauty, dance, flowers, and song in  Aztec mythology . His name contains the  Nahuatl  words  xochitl  ("flower") and  pilli  (either "prince" or "child"), and hence means "flower prince". As the patron of writing and painting, he was called Chicomexochitl the "Seven-flower," but ...