Decolonizing Literature

Tsitsi Dangarembga is a novelist, essayist, playwright and filmmaker. In her collection of essays, Black and Female, she writes about her personal experiences from a period of her childhood spent in foster care in England and as an adult woman in Zimbabwe after independence in 1980. Wanjiru Koinange is a Kenyan author, library restorer, and festival director.

Dangerembga and Koinange are two generations of African women working to decolonize literature and institutions in their home countries. But what does decolonization actually entail? How is it expressed, and what does it mean? And what is the difference between the generation that experienced liberation and the generation that came after?

Another person who addresses this topic is British author Afua Hirsch, who recently published the book Decolonising My Body. Hirsch leads the conversation between Dangarembga and Koinange about literature, books, and writing as a decolonial project.

The conversation will be held in English.