My essay in On Bodies, the latest anthology from 3 of Cups Press, is out now.
Featuring essays, poetry and prose, the anthology focuses on the relationships people have with their bodies. My essay ‘On Touch: The Desexualisation of Black Women’s Bodies’ focuses on the feeling of disconnection from sexuality and its connection with race and beauty.
You can order the anthology here.
I’ll be speaking Every Voice’s event The Speak Out: Race and Disparity in the UK on Wednesday 6th December, 6pm – 8.30pm at The Peel Centre, 3 Corners Centre, Northampton Road, EC1R 9HU.
The talk will be focused on the recent government race and disparity audit and how the community can respond to it.
It’s a sunny Friday in June, and I’m struggling to make my way across a heaving room in Peckham’s DIY Space for London. I’m shoulder-to-shoulder with a bustling throng of people – a kaleidoscope of melanated shades – and the 20 steps it takes to reach a vantage point from which to see band the playing in the southeast London community centre’s main room feel like a thousand. Reader, I haven’t taken any mishmash of time-altering drugs. I just can’t make it more than a couple of paces at a time without being practically smacked in the face by everyone’s visible joy.
A woman thanks me for putting on the festival; another person says they’ve never felt comfortable in a punk space until now; someone else decides they wanted to see similar festivals happening across the UK. By the time I make it to watch Sacred Paws, guitarist Rachel Aggs is asking for “people of colour to come to the front” – a rejig of Kathleen Hanna’s Bikini Kill-era “girls to the front” demand. This is Decolonise Fest, and it’s the future of UK punk.
Read the full article at Noisey.
I don’t always get paid for my work, so if you’ve liked my pieces and want me to write more you can donate a couple pennies to keep me going in between paid work.
You can order the first issue of Intersection Politics for Punx zine which features my article. The first issue focuses on race and racism in the UK DIY punk scene.
I wrote about growing up listening to pop punk as a teenager in the Midlands and the unintentional violence of white femininity.
The zine was edited and compiled by Cassie Agbehenu, bassist in Fight Rosa Fight, who says that she was “sick of being the only person of colour at shows when she knew of punx of colour sitting at home and not feeling welcome. We’ve got so much work to do and so many conversations to start.”
I don’t always get paid for my work, so if you’ve liked my pieces and want me to write more you can donate a couple pennies to keep me going in between paid work.
Stephanie Phillips