Introducing; pàlịmà

afraid of nothing

pàlịmà- Kirikeni (Indigenous Ijaw langauge spoken by Okrika people in Nigeria) word for support. pronounced: PAH-LEE-MAH (diacritics indicate tone, not a different sound)

As the world turns on itself in a Butlerian manner, sexually and gender non-conforming (SGN) people of African heritage are deeply affected by nation states that are determined, at best, to ignore them and, at worst, to eradicate them. How do we find each other when the world wants us isolated? How do we build something real when most gatherings seem to exhaust rather than sustain? Pàlịmà is a letter writing initiative for SGN Africans and diaspora. Over four months, we will build slow, conscious community through themed, guided correspondence.

We use the term SGN to acknowledge the Western ties to labels such as ‘queer’ or ‘LGBTQI’, which we do not discount, but feel like the term SGN, drawn from the Routledge Handbook of Pan-Africanism, where it is developed by Surya Monro, Zethu Matebeni, and Vasu Reddy, allow for personal agency and a sense of breath. Giving us room to name ourselves without importing frameworks that some have argued do not fully hold us.

SGN community converges in different spaces: on the dance floor, in the inner caucus of found friends, on the frontlines and in the media. But for people in places who cannot afford to be visibly queer for safety purposes, community becomes a thing of secrecy, a thing of shadows. Even within these shadows, too often, these gatherings lack the conscious construction needed to bring about lasting meaningful change. Initiatives pour everything into one night, to curate one moment of visible joy, after, though left with that joy, they return home alone, without contact. Community should exist even outside that geographical space. In places where being queer is criminalised, organising is survival. It is necessary to have moments of pause. But a pause is not a home. Pàlịmà aims to answer the question of how can we find strength in the shadows of society? And, how can we share that strength with others by meeting them where they are? We are building towards more than letters. Working towards a continent that shares resources, frameworks, and ways of thinking as one. We define strength as knowledge, as space to exist, as expression.

Pàlịmà draws on Sara Ahmed’s reflections on hostile spaces. It is also shaped by the founder’s personal experiences in queer spaces that are white-centred and performance based, where the door appears open but shuts when you try to enter. Too often, these spaces lack the African voice entirely. Pàlịmà hopes to take in willful subjects who would like to reimagine what a community can look like. Ahmed writes of the feminist killjoy and the willful subject as those who refuse to accommodate worlds that diminish them. We welcome that refusal.

How can we ground ourselves and strengthen our community not just nationwide but across the continent? SGN Africans exist as the dispossessed. It does not feel enough to have community only within national borders. We must reach across the continent to embrace panafricanism and work within a decolonial framework that recognises the existence of Africans that are too readily labelled as ‘other’ ‘alien’ or ‘western’ for simply being sexually and gender non-conforming, we must break out of the boundaries colonial powers drew hundreds of years ago, boundaries that nation states still adhere to.

Pàlịmà adopts Grace Lee Boggs’ work on developing humanity. Boggs taught that revolution is not a single event but a slow, purposeful process of evolving how we live together. She called us to move from protest to reconstruction: from fighting what harms us to building what sustains us. Pàlịmà takes this seriously. We adopt a digitally based community building framework designed for small scale revolutions that outlast any one moment. From this foundation, we aim to create cross continental slang, labels that exist outside and without the influence of the West, and secret language that allows us to move undetected.

We see social media as a liberal ground that acts, as Catherine Liu describes, like a place of mirrors, each individual a disco ball reflecting their own experiences, seldom allowing others in. Liu writes of a society obsessed with trauma, to the point of commodifying it. At Pàlịmà, we want to move beyond what Liu calls the ‘theatre of empathy’, where people look to receiving sympathy rather than practicing empathy, or more commonly, bond over shared trauma. We acknowledge the undeniable trauma in a non-conforming lived experience but we hope to ease the pains of living in a world all too eager to cause SGN Africans more trauma by creating an oasis of escapism through letter writing and the sharing of encouragement from people with similar or close lived experiences. This recognition, which we hope our participants’ letters will create, will foster our interconnectivity as we move beyond suffering, in search of the infectious and much needed joy, African Joy; the kind that draws its strength from the knowledge that others are walking this path alongside us, facing the issues that we face, finding pockets of happiness in the mundane, creating happiness from scratch.

Beau, founder of Pàlịmà, began this project informally, drawing inspiration from Audre Lorde and James Baldwin. They wrote monthly emails in letter format to provide updates and keep up with dear friends after the much needed upheaval from the west when a visa expired. For a young SGN African coming into their identity, that kind of displacement is an upheaval. But through the slow process of sharing letters, receiving updates in return, and building upon frustration and isolation to alchemise them into a call to community, they began to reframe what community could mean.

Over time, it became more apparent that the SGN community needed not just connectivity, but knowledge sharing and re-education that demands us to think together and co-create. We need to share ideas on how to keep each other safe and sane as the world tumbles into uncertainty. We need to share letters that can stand the test of time, expose us to different worldviews, different modes of resistance, different joys and sorrows.

Through the exploration of themes and sub-themes that we build upon as a group, cohorts will not only form connections with their pen pals but become part of an organism growing in the understanding of themes such as resistance, authoritarianism, the hidden voice, and dreams- to name a few.

Over a four month period, allow us to take you on a guided journey of further discovery and connection. This is a structured way to interact with African and diaspora SGN people while redefining ideas and relationships for the self. When the four months end, you will have letters that prove you were not alone, and we will no be erased.

Find pàlịmà on instagram @palimagram

Stay Tuned for when our Summer Cohort intake form link is released!

Thank you for being here.

Reading List For Those Interested

Ahmed, S. (2010). The Promise of Happiness. Duke University Press. (On the feminist killjoy and willful subjects)

Ahmed, S. (2014). Willful Subjects. Duke University Press. (On refusal and reimagining community)

Boggs, G. L. (1998). Living for Change: An Autobiography. University of Minnesota Press. (On purposeful community building and evolving humanity)

Butler, O. E. (1993). Parable of the Sower. Four Walls Eight Windows. (On societal collapse and world building)

Liu, C. (2021). Virtue Hoarders: The Case Against the Professional Managerial Class. University of Minnesota Press. (On the theatre of empathy, disco ball individualism, and the commodification of trauma)

Lorde, A. (1984). Sister Outsider. Crossing Press. (On the uses of the erotic and community as survival)

Monro, S., Matebeni, Z., & Reddy, V. (Eds.). (2022). The Routledge Pan African Handbook on Identity, Liberation and Decoloniality. Routledge. (For the term SGN and its framing within Pan African contexts)