Date: 26 May 2022
Time: 18:00 SAST
Place: The Commune, 14 Reserve street, Braamfontein, Johannesburg
Jacana Media, in partnership with The Commune invite you to an in-person launch of Crossroads: I Live Where I Like A Graphic History by Koni Benson illustrated by Andre Trantraal, Nathan Trantraal and Ashley E. Marias
Crossroads: I Live Where I Like is a graphic non-fiction history of women-led movements at the forefront of the struggle for land, housing, water, education and safety in Cape Town over the past sixty years. Drawing on over sixty life narratives, it tells the story of women who built and defended Crossroads, the only informal settlement that successfully resisted the apartheid bulldozers in Cape Town.
Author: Professor Koni Benson is an historian, organizer, and educator. She is a lecturer in the Department of History at the University of the Western Cape. Her research focuses on mobilisation, demobilisation, and remobilisation of struggle history in southern Africa’s past and present.
Illustrator: Nathan Trantraal is a poet, cartoonist, translator, playwright, screenwriter, short story author and columnist. His comics have been published in various South African newspapers.
Discussant: Victoria J. Collis-Buthelezi is Associate Professor in English at the University of Johannesburg and inaugural Director of UJ’s Centre for the Study of Race, Gender and Class. Her current book project explores global frames for understanding blackness in early twentieth century Cape Town.
DJ: Nombuso Mathibela is a Johannesburg based cultural worker, educator, writer, vinyl collector and selector. Her impulses span across folk, anti-colonial, nationalist, feminist music histories and political aesthetics.