Natasha Gordon-Chipembere – författare

Since 2015, the Tengo Sed ("I am thirsty") Writers' Retreats have brought together African-descended people of diverse backgrounds and across disciplines to create works in an emancipatory space of knowledge and community. For editors Yndia Lorick-Wilmot and Natasha Gordon-Chipembere, Tengo Sed is the manifestation of the bonds created within the context of global community-making, allowing for these perspectives to come to life.A blend of text and visuals in genre fiction, nonfiction, poetry, memoir, art, and music, Tengo Sed engages in the expansive and nuanced meanings of Blackness across the diaspora, traversing linguistic, geographic, material, and formal boundaries. The collection interrogates how African-descended individuals theorize and articulate their racial, gender, ethnic, and national identities in relation to dominant discourse. Underscored by a transnational feminist cultural studies approach, the collection builds upon the legacy of The Sisterhood—an activist-literary collective founded by Alice Walker and June Jordan—by providing a contemporary platform for Black creatives to amplify their voices.Singular and inspirational, Tengo Sed centers storytelling, self-making, and artistic practice, and contributes to ongoing dialogues on Black identity, liberation, and creative sovereignty.Contributors: Vilna Bashi, Khytie Brown, Masauko Chipembere, Maria DeLongoria, Rosalina Diaz, Summer Edward, Natasha Gordon-Chipembere, Tonya Hegamin, Tiffani J. Johnson, Daphne Lamothe, Gabrielle Lawrence, Yndia S. Lorick-Wilmot, April Mojica-Clement, Courtney Desiree Morris, Anton Nimblett, Kasandra Pantoja, Michael D. Poole, Nelly Rosario, Alicia Anabel Santos, Michele L. Simms-Burton, Andrea Stith, Tawana Thompson, Tracey L. Walters, and N'deye Walton, and Janvieve Williams Comrie

Since 2015, the Tengo Sed ("I am thirsty") Writers' Retreats have brought together African-descended people of diverse backgrounds and across disciplines to create works in an emancipatory space of knowledge and community. For editors Yndia Lorick-Wilmot and Natasha Gordon-Chipembere, Tengo Sed is the manifestation of the bonds created within the context of global community-making, allowing for these perspectives to come to life.A blend of text and visuals in genre fiction, nonfiction, poetry, memoir, art, and music, Tengo Sed engages in the expansive and nuanced meanings of Blackness across the diaspora, traversing linguistic, geographic, material, and formal boundaries. The collection interrogates how African-descended individuals theorize and articulate their racial, gender, ethnic, and national identities in relation to dominant discourse. Underscored by a transnational feminist cultural studies approach, the collection builds upon the legacy of The Sisterhood—an activist-literary collective founded by Alice Walker and June Jordan—by providing a contemporary platform for Black creatives to amplify their voices.Singular and inspirational, Tengo Sed centers storytelling, self-making, and artistic practice, and contributes to ongoing dialogues on Black identity, liberation, and creative sovereignty.Contributors: Vilna Bashi, Khytie Brown, Masauko Chipembere, Maria DeLongoria, Rosalina Diaz, Summer Edward, Natasha Gordon-Chipembere, Tonya Hegamin, Tiffani J. Johnson, Daphne Lamothe, Gabrielle Lawrence, Yndia S. Lorick-Wilmot, April Mojica-Clement, Courtney Desiree Morris, Anton Nimblett, Kasandra Pantoja, Michael D. Poole, Nelly Rosario, Alicia Anabel Santos, Michele L. Simms-Burton, Andrea Stith, Tawana Thompson, Tracey L. Walters, and N'deye Walton, and Janvieve Williams Comrie

Sarah Baartman's iconic status as the "Hottentot Venus" - as "victimized" African woman, "Mother" of the new South Africa, and ancestral spirit to countless women of the African Diaspora - has led to an outpouring of essays, biographies, films, interviews, art installations, and centers, comprising a virtual archive that seeks to find some meaning in her persona. Yet even those with the best intentions, fighting to give Baartman agency, a voice, a personhood, continue to service the general narratives of European documentation of her life without asking "What if we looked at Baartman through another lens?" This collection is the first of its kind to offer a space for international scholars, cultural activists, and visual artists to examine the legacy of Baartman's life anew, specifically finding an alternative Africanist rendering of a person whose life has left a profound impact on the ways in which Black women are displayed and represented the world over.