Following on from my first in-person event in Berlin last month, I’m looking forward to doing my first online event for “A Women’s Oral History Of West Africa” later this month with the brilliant Black Women Radicals and The School for Black Feminist Politics.

Join us online on Saturday, 27 September for “Speaking Herself Into Being: The Lives and Archival Afterlives of West African Women Elders,” a teach-in exploring the lives of West African women elders and the possibilities the archive offers for expanding their her/stories and preserving their legacies.

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 corrective 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, 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.

Find out more here