SPEAK WOMAN SPEAK’S SOLEDAD AND BETTO: DECOLONISING THROUGH HOPE, LOVE & HISTORICAL MEMORY

According to the now late but forever great María Lugones;

"the decolonial feminist’s task begins by her seeing the colonial difference, emphatically resisting her epistemological habit of erasing it. Seeing it, she sees the world anew, and then she requires herself to drop her enchantment with “woman,” the universal, and begins to learn about other resisters at the colonial difference." (2010:753).

Part of the ongoing #Black History Interruptions collaboration between Dr Javeria Shah at Learning and Skills at CSSD and Dr Shona Hunter at CRED Leeds Beckett, this event presents Speak Woman Speak’s dramatic production of Soledad and Betto.

"Dum spiro, m na-atu anya’/’while I breathe, I hope"

"Two women from different worlds, casting their net to connect with the past and navigate us on a journey from the Mediterranean to the Caribbean. As they breathe in the essence of survival Soledad and Betto fight for their rights under oppressive regimes."

Together we engage with this powerful and beautiful piece to continue the work of these women, María, Carmen, Leah, Soledad & Betto in challenging the colonial difference.

In doing so we are responding to Javeria’s call to ‘dismantle our Eurocentric and colonial understandings of history’.

Please join us. We are needed one and all in our powerful and challenging recognition of historical difference in the present.