Posts

Showing posts from October, 2017

A Poem for Lesley-Ann by Ayun

Image
Say It Loud! Poetry Collective (from left to right: Brown, Qwin, Ayun, Teju, Sabita, Zanubia & Julia) To think of smiling as a simple act of stretching ones mouth so as to show contentment that releases the drawn in lines of a frown that was etched onto your brow is never enough. Life drew the lines on your face, with each bout of sorrow and of joy, that lights up the brown of your dark face. And the dark face that hosts solemn eyes protest what the world has determined you would be. You carry an eternity of sorrows, and still you laugh Like the old black people from the country I am from, From deep within your chest, the echoes of that forgotten time, from before you were born but existed roll out from your belly and form a sound of dry branches beating against each other on warm days where the wind blows and whispers all our names. You can never only smile. There is, always, too much in a smile that remembers, always, the perfect ...

Pre-order Decolonial Daughter: Letters from a Black woman to her European Son

Image
Available from May 15th, 2018  A Trinidadian-American writer and activist explores motherhood, migration, identity, nationhood and how it relates to land, imprisonment, and genocide for Black and Indigenous peoples.  Having moved to Copenhagen, Denmark from Brooklyn over 18 years ago, Brown attempts to contextualise her and her son's existence in a post-colonial and supposedly post-racial world where the very machine of so-called progress has been premised upon the demise of her lineage. Through these letters, Brown writes the past into the present - penned from the country that has been declared "The Happiest Place in the World" - creating a vision that is a necessary alternative to the dystopian one currently being bought and sold. You can pre-order here:  In the UK: You can order here In the US: You can order here