Black History Month - Stella Dadzie

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'A Kick in the Belly: Women, Slavery & Resistance' ;tells the forgotten story of enslaved West Indian women and the many different ways they fought back.  It is a tale of courage and resilience that, according to its author, has been virtually air-brushed out of history.  Stella Dadzie’s lecture will focus on the reasons she wrote the book and some of the challenges of research in a field that has traditionally viewed the experiences of the enslaved through a racist or misogynistic lens. She will make the case for unearthing hidden histories and explore why these invisible women deserve to be studied, remembered and placed centre stage in narratives of slavery, abolition and emancipation.

Stella Dadzie

Stella Dadzie is a published writer and feminist historian, best known for 'The Heart of the Race: Black Women's lives in Britain' which won the 1985 Martin Luther King Award for Literature, and was re-published by Verso in 2018 as a Feminist Classic. Her latest book 'A Kick in the Belly: Women, Slavery & Resistance' was published by Verso in October 2020 to critical acclaim. She is a founder member of OWAAD (Organisation of Women of African and Asian Descent), a national umbrella group for Black women that emerged in the late 1970s as part of the British Civil Rights movement. She was recently described as one of the “grandmothers “of Black Feminism in the UK, and her personal archive in Brixton‘s Black Cultural Archives is one of the most visited by researchers and scholars. Her career as a writer, artist and education activist spans over 40 years. She has written numerous publications and resources aimed at promoting good practice with black learners and other minorities, including resources to decolonise and diversify the UK national curriculum in schools and colleges.