EMMA DABIRI AND LEMN SISSAY - The Myth of Race: Interrogating Whiteness and Concepts of Identity

Performance poet Lemn Sissay joins fellow academic, writer and broadcaster Emma Dabiri for an evening of insightful, inspiring and informed conversation. 

How do we become less racist and move beyond identity politics? Emma and Lemn will ask this question, interrogate whiteness and offer communication, education and the building of meaningful connections as the key to a reimagined and better future. We need to learn to ‘think less with our eyes’, talk to each other more and ‘read, read, read’ especially around fiction and theory from the Black Radical Tradition. 

Emma Dabiri’s new book and Sunday Times bestseller, What White People Can Do Next, is a provocative, incisive and radical essay that offers a powerful and nuanced examination of race, class and identity and explores how racial categories have been shaped by capitalism. 

In his powerful performance poetry and writing and in his moving memoir My name is Why, Lemn Sissay reflects upon issues of race and identity, on the role the care system played on his sense of self and on the resilience and hopefulness he drew upon to survive. Poetry and creativity were his ‘way out’. 

Together these two informed and profoundly thoughtful writers will discuss Emma’s call to action and reflect on how information is fundamental in tackling racial intolerance in today’s polarised society.