COLLECTIVE MEMORY

A reading by Ola Ronke creator of The Free Black Women’s Library and a newly commissioned performance by Autumn Knight

Black Women as/and the Living Archive considers the collective memory archived specifically in Black women with two back to back programs.

First up at noon on Wednesday on our Instagram Live, Ola Ronke, creator of The Free Black Women’s Library, will read from award winning author N.K. Jemisin’s short story “Cloud Dragon Skies” from the collection How Long Til Black Future Month. An excerpt from Jemison’s story: “Long ago, our ancestors looked at the sky and saw gods. Their ancestors saw only stars. In the end, only the earth knew the truth.” Ola selected this story in response to Alisha Wormsley’s film Children of NAN: Mothership and how both the book and film celebrate the ancestral and futuristic nature of Black womanhood and Black creativity.

Then on Thursday at 8:30pm on Zoom, artist Autumn Knight will perform a newly commissioned piece called The Length also in response to Wormsley’s film. Knight played the role of NAN’s sister in Children of NAN: Mothership. Knight describes the performance as “A moment to activate personal archives and consider their relationship to public record. An archive belonging to a demographic in a particular time and space, and recorded by the length of our histories and imaginations. A Black person will speak into a screen, and the return signal is potentially a void, a ship, a loudspeaker, dancing shoes, survival.”

A Reading by Ola Ronke, from N.K. Jemisin’s book How Long Til’ Black Futures Month Instagram Event
Wednesday, May 27 beginning at 12 pm

A Newly Commissioned Performance, The Length, by Autumn Knight inspired by Alisha Wormsley’s film Children of NAN: Mothership
Virtual Event
Thursday, May 28 at 8:30–9:15 pm