Black writing now (June 2020)

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Writers Make Worlds is built on the belief that reading increases our understanding of how injustice impacts human lives. On these pages we bring attention to the importance of Black writing as a mode of resistance, self-expression and empowerment.

Writing and reading have key roles to play in increasing our awareness of racial and ethnic discrimination. Reading black writing can help to transform and amplify struggles against institutional racism in Britain and around the world today.

Many of these concerns about race and representation came powerfully to a head in June 2020 with the global protests against the killing by police in the United States of George Floyd.

This page recognises the significance of the discussions at the University of Oxford and elsewhere that this event has sparked. It features a report on the Rhodes Must Fall protests in Oxford on 9 June 2020 by Sam Arnon, and a comparative account by Daniele Nunziata of the killing in police custody of George Floyd in 2020 and of South African Black Consciousness activist Steve Biko in 1977.

We also link to an article in The Conversation by Elleke Boehmer, Zimpande Kawanu and Archie Davies on the encouragement that Biko’s thinking gives to changing how we understand our lives through the action of story-telling.

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