S188.
Black SWANA Lit: Collective Black Identity in Southwest Asia and North Africa
Saturday, March 11, 2023
1:45 pm to 3:00 pm
Mizna explores the multivalent realities of the Black Arab / SWANA experience in a special Black Takeover issue. Led by guest editor Safia Ehlillo, this is an unprecedented coming together of Black thinkers in the project’s visioning, production, and content. This panel will focus on the process: the intentional community building, the challenge of gathering writing about race in a region just coming to terms with its own Blackness, and the Black takeover team that put it all together.
Participants
Ruba El Melik is a researcher, curator, and editor interested in shaping futures for cultural expression and creating possibilities for African scholarship on the continent that exist outside of institutions. She currently serves as the associate editor and literary program manager at Mizna.
Safia Elhillo is Sudanese by way of Washington, DC. She is the author of The January Children, Girls That Never Die, and the novel in verse Home Is Not a Country. With Fatimah Asghar, she is coeditor of the anthology Halal If You Hear Me. Currently, she lives in Los Angeles.
Samah Fadil is an Afro-Palestinian writer and editor from Montréal. Her words appear or are forthcoming in FIYAH, Skin Deep, Yale University Art Gallery, Five:2:One, and more. She was an editor for the Black SWANA takeover issue of Mizna and is a fellow of the 2022 Cinephilia Film Development Workroom.
Romaissaa Benzizoune is from New York City and from Morocco. Her essays have appeared in outlets like Buzzfeed, McSweeney’s, Teen Vogue, and the New York Times. She writes a Substack column called One Thing, and is currently editing Mizna's forthcoming Black SWANA issue.
Ladin Awad
