A Light Lyricism. Reading Group and Literary Companion to "When We See Us"

A Light Lyricism. Reading Group and Literary Companion to "When We See Us"

Saturdays in Junei & August 2024: 01.06. / 08.06./ 22.06. / 29.06. / 10.08. / 17.08. from 3–5 p.m., Gegenwart
with Sindi-Leigh McBride (writer and scholar) and guests, in English.

Free Ticket

In six public reading group sessions, the participants work through a selection of short texts by James Baldwin, Ken Bugul, Teju Cole, Akwaeke Emezi, Bernardine Evaristo, Andrea Lee, Maaza Men, Kwame McPherson, Johny Pitts, Koleka Putuma, Zadie Smith, and Brandon Taylor.

All events will take place on site in the Studio Gegenwart. Guests will join online on selected dates and read from an existing or work in progress.

For interested parties aged 16 and over. Registration required via free ticket link, limited number of participants (25) per session. Participation possible on individual dates or the entire series. All texts will be made available to participants in English in advance.

Saturday, June 1: Joy and Revelry

In this session, the group discusses *Black Joy* by South African poet Koleka Putuma, the first poem in her award-winning collection Collective Amnesia, which is representative not only of Putuma’s exceptional storytelling but of the radical act of choosing joy in the stories we tell. We also discuss one of the texts from the exhibition catalogue, *But You Amaze Me*, by Ethiopian-American novelist Maaza Men, a short story that takes us on an exploration of female identity that merges Greek myth and 1920s Berlin in scenes of colourful self-determination.

Saturday, June 8: The Everyday

In this session, the participants explore how Jamaican writer Kwame McPherson’s short story *Ocoee* interweaves Caribbean folklore and Black American history, centring on an exhausted driver who is pulled over by the police on a lonely road. As he hears about the terrible history of the town, he rediscovers a connection with his own past. We also discuss another reimagining, a short story entitled *A Matter of Timing* by British author Bernardine Evaristo which features an extraordinary exhibition in a post-western future where royals are on a display in a human zoo, alongside an array of plundered artefacts, including all of the British Crown Jewels.

Saturday, June 22: Repose

In this session, the group has a close look at *The Lazy River* by British author Zadie Smith, a short story about a group of British families on vacation at a Spanish resort with a Lazy River, a popular water attraction where guests float relaxedly along the flowing water that Smith uses as a metaphor for life. Still vacationing, we discuss American author Andrea Lee’s short story *Brothers and Sisters Around the World* about a Black American woman in Madagascar with her white French husband, and her interactions with “the local girls who dance at Bar Kariboo on Thursday nights and hang around the few French and Italian tourists, hoping to trade sex for a T-shirt, a hair clip.”

Saturday, June 29: Sensuality

In this session, the participants discuss *Who Is Like God* by Nigerian-American author Akwaeke Emezi, a short story with a protagonist whose experiences of both spirituality and sexuality are entangled with the women in his life. We also discuss *Even If All Fall Away, I Will Not* by American author Brandon Taylor, a short story that grapples with racism, sexuality, and what's left behind by lovers in our lives.

Saturday, August 10: Spirituality

In his short story *The Outing*, American author James Baldwin offers a compassionate investigation of religion, adolescence and sexual ambivalence by delving into the church community he would later depict in his seminal work, Go Tell It On The Mountain. After this introduction to the American master, the group discusses British author Johny Pitts’ travel memoir *Afropean: Notes from Black Europe*, accompanying Pitts as he walks through the grounds of the house where Baldwin last lived, reflecting on Baldwin’s last years and his legacy.

Saturday, August 17: Triumph and Emancipation

In this session the group studies another text from the exhibition catalogue, *Dispossession and Possession* by Senegalese novelist Ken Bugul, which tells a story of ancient spirits, of an erasure of individual and social identity through colonisation, and of a possible path to redemption via the conscious embrace of an “infinite multitude of […] identities.” The participants read *Second Letter: Freedom* by Nigerian-American author Teju Cole, one of eight weekly instalments published in the Nigerian newspaper NEXT as a fictional exercise addressed to an imaginary young Nigerian writer. In this, Cole discusses “a freedom that is uniquely an artist’s” and the emancipation that comes with it.

Sindi-Leigh McBride is a writer and scholar from Johannesburg, South Africa based in Bern, Switzerland. Her research interests include contemporary art and literature, climate change, youth and work. She holds a PhD in African Studies from the University of Basel where she is currently a Postdoctoral Researcher. Recently, she has held fellowships at the University of Edinburgh and the University of Cape Town, and contributes to research projects at the Human Sciences Research Council in South Africa. Her arts criticism and short stories have appeared in numerous publications, and she is a co-editor of Lost Libraries, Burnt Archives (2023).