The house that Africa built

Abstract

It's a privilege and an honor to have been invited to be a part of this conversation, a conversation that is, and has been, going on in different sites and among different groups since human beings discovered how to exploit difference, and the framing of difference, to garner resources and power. Here are vibrant conversations filled with possibilities for dismantling old yokes. The conversations are also painful, for the memories and experiences of oppressions (especially those unacknowledged centuries after the effects have been made public) linger, and haunt. These emotions are all the more agonizing for their palpable rawness, and the tenderness that the papers in this collection summon from those places in our hearts and minds that we often close off so we can survive and live to fight another day.