Portraits of African women: make way for poets

Publish date 12-04-2021

by Chiara Vitali

Making the distant close, the unknown intimate. The poetesses of AfroWomanPoetry have this power: to narrate Africa in the feminine and from the inside. With impetus and delicacy, women fight for hope. "We are writers / We reign over literary deserts / We are an oasis / Where dreamers like us / They come to quench their thirst" (Arinda Daphne, Uganda). The 43 writers and 133 poems of the project reveal a new face of the continent, often outlined with very personal stories.

Beatrice Lamwaka, for example, is a Ugandan mother who lost a son, a soldier: "He went around shooting from village to village / We all became the enemy / Then I heard he was dead /" He's my son ”, I was crying». The individual stories become an opportunity to address issues of great civil interest: domestic violence, social and cultural rules, desires for freedom, human rights. The power of poetry is "to inspire change more than any other form of art", says one of them in an interview.

The poetesses of the project live in Uganda, Togo, Ghana and Ivory Coast. You can see and hear them on afrowo¬menpoetry.net. The project is one of the jewels of Voci Globali, an online newspaper that gives voice to stories that do not find space in the most popular newspapers. His collaborators live in different parts of the world and are concerned above all with Africa, migration, human rights, social justice. And not only that: at Voci Globali journalism must continually encounter reality and try to improve it. For this reason, the editorial project also gave rise to the Association for the Social Promotion of Global Voices. Every year, the Association organizes training courses and workshops on new media, human rights and journalism. Many meetings and public events, in particular on the African theme.

NP Gennaio 2021

Chiara Vitali

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