You can read my latest interview in Kultur Mitte which is entitled „Das Lesen, das Organisieren und auch das Erstellen von Erzähl-Archiven der Audio-Geschichten ist ein Weg neue Strategien zu entwickeln und damit auch sich die Zukunft vorstellen zu können.“
Vanessa Gravenore (left) and I (right) sitting in my home in Berlin.
I spoke with Vanessa Gravenor during the summer of 2021 and we discussed my current book project, Captive Contagions which traces epidemics from the mid-19th century to the present. I also discussed the first book project, Tending to Our Wounds, a text that wrestles with what it would mean to reckon with Black people are owed, given the ways that Western Europe and North America has profited from our (ancestors’) labor. Not only do we need a sober encounter with history, we need spaces for repair. Tending to Our Wounds carries a lot of emotional weight, mostly because I am still on a personal journey of being displaced and out of place, of working through how my communities are fractures and “home” feels non-existent. I am learning to work with and against the archive, through agitation and storytelling. I would like to express my gratitude to Kultur Mitte and Marina Naprushkina’s project Institute Extended, Mizu Sugai for the images, editorial team for the translation from English to German.