Afua Hirsch: Decolonising My Body – In conversation with Margareta Jolly

Ropetackle Arts Centre

Upon turning forty, Afua Hirsch had an encounter that forever altered her preconceived notions of ancestry and body image, making her question everything from body-modification rituals such as tattoos and piercings to the foundations of sexuality. Decolonising My Body charts her year-long journey of radical unlearning. Bringing together global scholarship, on-the-ground reportage, personal anecdotes and interviews with beauty experts, practitioners and service users, Hirsch reassesses notions of body image beyond those of the colonial, patriarchal gaze. Taking us from puberty to end-of-life, she shows us that the ways in which we adorn and present ourselves have spiritual implications and shape the possibilities we see for ourselves in the world. “Exceptionally rich, inspiring, challenging and moving.” Bernadine Evaristo Afua Hirsch is a writer and filmmaker, known for storytelling on black culture, identity and social justice, rituals and beauty. A journalist of 30 years, she has been an editor at Guardian Newspaper , an anchor at Sky News , associate editor at British Vogue , and contributor to publications including the New York Times , Time Magazine , US Vogue . Her documentaries include Africa Rising, and Enslaved , which she co-hosted with Samuel L Jackson . Her bestselling books include Brit(ish): On Race, Identity and Belonging . Afua is a professor of journalism at the University of Southern California. Margaretta Jolly is a Professor in Cultural Studies at the University of Sussex, with interests in life writing, oral history and critical heritage. She is interested in the application of these methods in women’s history and gender studies, directing the Sisterhood and After: Women’s Liberation Oral History Project and the Business of Women’s Words with the British Library. In the context of social fracture, she is keen to hear and discover how rootedness, body cultures and ancestral stories can open us to the global and to shared futures.