After giving a talk at the Ginsberg Center’s Arts of Citizenship Breakfast, Robin Grice approached me to propose a zine making workshop at the Center for Afroamerican and African Studies library.

Of course I said yes! Robin and I have been talking about doing a reading session and we thought this would be the perfect opportunity to link reading with zine making. And of course there is the whole conceptual link to keleketla!library…

So on Thursday November 20th it’s on at the CAAS library. I hope to kick off the session by doing a reading from the late Phaswane Mpe’s posthumous collection of short stories and poems, Brooding Clouds. Robin is great, she ordered the South African literature that I recommended i.e.: Brooding Clouds and Welcome to Our Hillbrow by Phaswane Mpe, The Quiet Violence of Dreams and Thirteen Cents by K. Sello Duiker and the father of the two, Zakes Mda’s Ways of Dying. Welcome to Our Hillbrow ,Thirteen Cents and Ways of Dying here already. So happy.

Next would be a screening of the short clips from Jozi’s theFanPalProject and some clips from the rooftop afterparties. Then we will do a series of zine making exercises.

CAAS Library is a wonderful resource well stocked with books, magazines and audio-visual material focusing on African and Afroamerican literary history and heritage for students and faculty. I loaned the monumental Snap Judgements by Okwui Enwenzor which is a catalogue to the African Photography exhibition of the same name curated by the author/curator. I also enjoyed the Blue Note catalogue featuring Reid Miles’ awesome LP cover designs and Francis Wolff’s photography.

Anyway, theFanPalProject is, to quote Kweli, “catching our people in all different phases, all different spaces”

love, peace and abundance

*sunRa