Join us for a very special evening with Ekow Eshun and Afua Hirsch in conversation to celebrate the launch of The Strangers - Ekow’s intimate portrait on five remarkable Black men and the worlds that made them.
To accompany this thrilling dive into Ekow’s richly imaginative and powerfully empathetic writing, the event will feature readings from five special guests – Adjoa Andoh, Caleb Azumah Nelson, Travis Alabanza, Yomi Sode and Eric Collins and there will be an audience Q&A.
Copies will be available to purchase on the night via Round Table Books and Ekow will be dedicating and signing copies too.
About 'The Strangers'
In the western imagination, a Black man is always a stranger. Outsider, foreigner, intruder, alien. One who remains associated with their origins irrespective of how far they have travelled from them. One who is not an individual in their own right but the representative of a type.
What kind of performance is required for a person to survive this condition? And what happens beneath the mask?
In answer, Ekow Eshun conjures the voices of five very different men. Ira Aldridge: nineteenth century actor and playwright. Matthew Henson: polar explorer. Frantz Fanon: psychiatrist and political philosopher. Malcolm X: activist leader. Justin Fashanu: million-pound footballer. Each a trailblazer in his field. Each haunted by a sense of isolation and exile. Each reaching for a better future.
Ekow Eshun tells their stories with breathtaking lyricism and empathy, capturing both the hostility and the beauty they experienced in the world. And he locates them within a wider landscape of Black art, culture, history and politics which stretches from Africa to Europe to North America and the Caribbean. As he moves through this landscape, he maps its thematic contours and fault lines, uncovering traces of the monstrous and the fantastic, of exile and escape, of conflict and vulnerability, and of the totemic central figure of the stranger.
About Ekow Eshun
Ekow Eshun is a writer, curator and broadcaster. He is author of the memoir Black Gold of the Sun, nominated for the Orwell Prize for its exploration of race and identity. Hailed by the Guardian as ‘a cultural polymath’, he was the first Black editor of a major magazine in the UK and went on to become the first Black director of a leading British arts institution. He has created documentaries for BBC TV and radio and his writing appears in publications including the Guardian, New York Times and Financial Times.
Described by Vogue as ‘the most inspired – and inspiring – curator in Britain’, Ekow Eshun has curated critically acclaimed exhibitions internationally, from the Hayward Gallery and National Portrait Gallery in London to museums and galleries in Asia, Africa and the United States. He is Chairman of the Fourth Plinth, overseeing Britain’s foremost public art programme. He lives in London.
Event Partners:
Round Table Books is an inclusion-led bookshop and community interest company. They sell books for every reader and run community projects, based in the heart of Brixton. They work with authors and illustrators that celebrate underrepresented experiences. Find out more
here.
Dark Matter is an inclusive marketing agency that works collaboratively to connect Black audiences with culture and the arts. Find out more
here.
