NONE ON RECORD AND HOMOFACTUS PRESS ARE BOTH SEEKING SUBMISSIONS FROM THE LGBTI COMMUNITY FOR TWO NEW BOOKS:

None on Record: Stories of Queer Africa Edited by: Notisha Massaquoi & Selly Thiam

WE are collecting stories of Africans from the continent and within the diasporic communities that identify as queer, lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered (QLGBT).

It is the goal of None on Record to link the struggles, triumphs, joy and pain of QLGBT Africans everywhere. We aim to add to the exponential growth of histories and stories being told by queer Africans all over the world.

We invite QLGBT Africans to submit original, unpublished essays, poems, short stories, plays, creative non-fiction, and visual art. We’re looking for work that explores the lives of QLGBT Africans and how your experiences have shaped you emotionally, politically, socially, and culturally. We are interested in the ideas and language that make you African and QLGBT.

We accept work from QLGBT Africans from the continent and those who have immigrated to other parts of the world. We also accept submissions from first generation QLGBT Africans born outside the African Continent. If you self-identify as a QLGBT African but do not fit the criteria written above and would like to submit work for consideration, please write to us.

The deadline is March 31, 2008. For more information please write: NORsubmission at gmail dot com

Homofactus Press is also seeking submissions for and anthology, which uniquely seeks to tell the tales of former queer youth and current queer youth who were forced to leave home because of their sexuality and/or gender identity.

This anthology will tell our collective stories of survival, weaving together descriptions of abuse, and homelessness with poignant accounts of the ways in which queer community centers offered sanctuary, and the power and importance of creating our own chosen families in the face of losing everything we have ever known. Kicked Out offers advice and wisdom to the queer youth of today from those who have been in their shoes. Additionally, it provides the opportunity for readers to get a glimpse into the world of those queer youth who as a result of circumstance have to leave home, while simultaneously shattering the stereotypes of who queer youth are, and what they have the potential to become.

For more information on Kicked Out please visit their website Homofactus Press

Tags:

None on Record
LGBTI
Africa
Homofactus Press

I have been invited to Haiti by “Haiti Solidarity” so am off there shortly. I will be staying and meeting with women activists from the Lavalas movement. I have a pretty good knowledge of Haitian history and contemporary politics but there is always more to learn and I needed to focus on details. So for the past month I have immersed myself in all things Haitian from talking with people - (all of a sudden I keep meeting Haitians!), reading books and news archives, listening to interviews and listening to Haitian music. The music has been a real revelation – listening to the drum rhythms is like I am listening to some deep Yoruba drumming and you begin to realise that the majority of Haitian people are still very connected to Africa.

Getting to grips with the complexities and intrigues of Haitian politics is no easy task. I believe the only way you can begin to grasp what has happened in Haiti over the past 10 years, and why, is by going back to the beginning and following the country’s history through to the present. Otherwise you are left frustrated and with too many unanswered questions.

I started with a re-reading of C.L.R. James account of the Haitian revolution, “The Black Jacobins” and ended with “An Unbroken Agony: Haiti from Revolution to the Kidnapping of a President” by Randall Robinson.

In the early hours of February 29th 2004, democratically elected President, Jean-Bertrand Aristide and his wife Mildred were forced to leave their home under escort of US military and summarily marched onto an unmarked plane whose destination they did not know and were not told.

An Unbroken Agony presents a detailed day by day and hour by hour account of the immediate events leading to the kidnapping and removal of President Aristide. Noted activist and one of the few truly progressive African American voices, Randall Robinson, sets down the facts of the Coup D’Etat, side by side with his own commentary. He provides the evidence that the US was actively involved while France was directly complicit in the Coup that ousted Aristide and saw him flown, along with his with wife to the Central African Republic. Once there, they were literally dumped off the plane and for all intense and purposes held prisoner.
[Read more…]

I discovered a treasure of a bookshop yesterday in NW DC called Busboys and Poets - probably the best collection of progressive books I have come across in one single place. With the added bonus of coffee, couch, apple macs, poetry nights and trendy food, Busboys looked like one of the “hottest” places to hang out for DC’s coolist people. After only 30 minutes I already had a collection of a dozen books to buy but had to reduce this down to three for starters - Insurgency Online - a study of web activism using case studies from the Irish Republican Socialist Movement (IRSM) , the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA) and the Movimiento Revolucionario Tupac Amaru (MRTA Peru); Ngugi wa Thiong’o Speaks: Interviews with the Kenyan Writer” and The Aftermath of Slavery: Transisitions and Transformations in Southeaster Nigeria”. My father should have written this one as a quick glance through it reiterates many of the stories he has told me over the years on the nature and form of slavery in what is today the Niger Delta and the immediate hinterland - Igobland, and the impact of the abolition of the Atlantic slave trade on those communities and how they adapted to changes.

On my way out I picked up a leaflet about an organised trip and conference to Goree Island with an excursion to Juffre the Gambian ancestral home of Alex Haley. Reading the leaflet and the website reminded me of an article I read a while back by Saidiya Hartman called “Time of Slavery” in which she discusses the commodification of Elmina Castle and collective slave memories from the Diaspora. The plaque on the entrance to the castle reads

“In everlasting memory of the anguish of our ancestors. May those who died rest in peace. May those who return find their roots. May humanity never again perpetrate such injustice against humanity. We the living vow to uphold this.”

I was taken to Elmina Castle as a child but I cannot remember going in - I don’t think we did. When I was older, I remember my first visit to Badagry near the Nigerian / Benin border where there is a small slave museum. The crazy thing was, I went there not to see the slave museum but to attend a birthday party someone had organised at a restaurant near the town. Somehow looking back it seems almost sacrilegious to have a birthday party next door to a slave museum. Also in Badagry is the first Anglican Mission house - slavery ended and the missionaries moved in to wrought more havoc on people’s lives.

In a search for Elmina castle on google, the first site is the Ontario Black History Society which describes the castle as “a tourist attraction”.

Today, Elmina Castle is a tourist attraction and World Heritage Monument in Cape Coast, Ghana. This hasn’t always been the case. Looking at the castle from the outside, nothing can ever prepare the unsuspecting visitor or tourist emotionally to hear about the tales of horror and atrocities that went on beyond those walls.

If one defines a “tourist attraction” as a place people go to visit as part of a recreational activity then how sad and inappropriate is it to describe Elmina as a “tourist attraction”. Looking up tourism on a Wiki page I discovered that under “niche” tourism you have specific types such as “dark tourism - includes travel to sites associated with death and suffering” which seems very appropriate for Elmina Castle and Goree Island. Note the term “dark” as usual used to describe something awful like slavery which in the case of these two “tourist attractions” was the slavery of Black people. At this point I am not sure where I am heading with this post so I am going to stop. If you are really interested in knowing what other forms of “niche” tourism exist then check the wiki

Tags: Slavery; Nigeria; Slavery; Elmina Castle

A new online quarterly journal on African Writing with interviews, news, reviews, poetry, fiction, art and culture. Just what we have been waiting for!

Tags: Africa; Literature;

Transgender Journeys

Jay Sennett has chosen to use his journey from f2m to look at herself/himself and every thing in between in a study of masculinity, whiteness, privilege. It is a journey I would like to take maybe one we should all take. By that I mean a journey through our inner most selves to discover what really lies below and a journey through the overt parts of our lives such as race, whiteness, blackness, privilege.

There is so much to say about Self - Organising men - liberating, courageous, honest, challenging, brilliant. `Have you ever yearned for the impossible or even the possible. To be someone else, to be somewhere else in mind and body, in sexuality, in life? To be in a different psychological and physical space?

The book raises so many questions about gender about identity and signifyers of gender. Is the penis the primary defining factor of maleness or gender constitution. What is sex? Is it simply penetration and how does that penetration take place? How gendered are we in our identities. When gender is dichotomised as simply female/male we restrict ourselves,our thoughts and our actions. Are you happy in your body? What does your body mean to you and how does it influence your identity. Self-Organising Men is a journey for the writers and the readers. A liberating self-discovery analysing the self and moving deep into that place - is it the heart or the soul, where ever it is it is hard to find and not often found.

The honesty of the testimonies reach out to the reader and contribute to the liberating nature of the book, the journey. One final note. As I read the testimonies and journeys of the contributors I felt that the discourse on gender and sexuality raised in the book are entirely western and to largely white. (Jay’s publishing house, Homofactus Press is presently calling for submissions for an anthology of Trans communities of colour - “Tinting the Lens in Trans Communities”.) How should we in Africa engage in this discourse when we are still at a point of battling with LGBTI’s being illegal people. So much pain - so much hatred.

Tags: Trans; Jay Sennett; Homofactus Press; Sexuality