Race Matters

Striking against U.S. Imperialism in one territory will strike against U.S. Imperialism everywhere. When we wage and win the war against U.S. Imperialism in our homeland, that in turn positively impacts the fight for Indigenous sovereignty here.

Yvonne Hong interviews Jamie Tyberg and Miyeon Jang from Nodutdol, a NYC based diasporic Korean organisation that organise for a world free of imperialism and for Korea's reunification and national liberation. Together, Yvonne and Anakbayan Sydney member Day Soriano reflect on both Korea and the Phillipines' struggle against American imperialism.

Reading list:

★ Gwangju Uprising: The Rebellion for Democracy in South Korea by Hwang Sok-yong, Jai-eui Lee, and Jeon Yong-Ho

★ Korea: A New History of South and North by Victor Cha and Ramon Pacheco Pardo

★ Nodutdol's official statement 'US Out of Korea'

To keep up to date and get involved with Nodutdol and Anakbayan Sydney:

★ @nodutdol on Instagram

★ @anakbayan.sydney on Instagram

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“Why be a sunflower and turn towards the sun? I myself am the sun”

Ousmane Sembène

~

In this episode of Race Matters, kaapse South African sound-maker Tristan Cornelissen speaks with Safia Amadou, co-founder and co-director of Africa Film Festival Australia, about the importance of creating space for African and African-diaspora filmmakers to tell their own stories.

From the histories of colonial representation, to the growing audiences for African cinema in so-called Australia, we ask what becomes possible when people have the space and means to decide not only what stories are told, but how they are told, and who they are told for.

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What does it mean to understand the personal and political as truly intertwined? 

To know and to understand that the wins, griefs, losses, day-to-days and dreams of our lives are all shaped by political infrastructures? 

And how can this knowing transform how we live our lives?

On today’s show, Samantha Haran is in conversation with Lebanese writer Sheree Joseph about her new memoir, Juicy: How to Live a Life in the Wreckage of Expectations. This memoir takes us on a journey through Sheree’s own reckoning with being unable to fulfil what she thought was expected of her by her mid 30s: a husband, motherhood, children, a home, a neat plan. Coming to terms with these expectations-lost required her to re-think everything about what it means to live a meaningful life. Together, Samantha and Sheree talk through how Sheree has been reconceiving everything from motherhood to writing to grief, and finding a new paradigm for how to live in this ever-changing, ever-heartbreaking - but also, ever-beautiful - world.

Buy Sheree Joseph’s memoir, Juicy: How to Live a Life in the Wreckage of Expectations

Follow Sheree on instagram: @shereewriter 

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“What kind of space allows people like us to fully exist? To be a Black, queer creative is to return to this question again and again, and, sometimes, to become the answer yourself.”

Visionary performer, curator, founder of Pyramid, Basjia reflects on the language she discovered through movement, tracing the journey from a body shaped by expectation to one that became a site of freedom, pleasure and expression. Together, King and Basjia explore what it means to move through a world that celebrates Black creativity and how performance can transmute into a practice of resistance.

A Language We Learned is a month-long Race Matters residency led by King Baba, centring Black Afro-diasporic creatives across so-called Australia through storytelling, conversation and music. The series is supported by technical producer and creative collaborator Prinitha Theverajah, with creative mentorship from Shareeka Helaluddin and Binta Yade, and artwork by Tim Worton.

Content warning: this episode contains discussion of eating disorder and dysmorphia.

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What languages do we inherit before we ever find the words for ourselves?

Huda the Goddess traces the journey from the language of her childhood in Sudan and Egypt to the poetry that became her way of making sense of the world. Together, King and Huda reflect on ancestry, oral storytelling and the wisdom carried through memory before turning toward the communities that teach us how to belong. Through Black Inc, ballroom and chosen family, Huda shares a vision of care rooted in softness, truth and collective responsibility. A reminder that the most powerful legacies are the ones that make space for others to flourish.

A Language We Learned is a month-long Race Matters residency led by King Baba, centring Black Afro-diasporic creatives across so-called Australia through storytelling, conversation and music. The series is supported by technical producer and creative collaborator Prinitha Theverajah, with creative mentorship from Shareeka Helaluddin and Binta Yade, and artwork by Tim Worton.

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after the floods, people. after the
fires, people. not governments.

not borders. not the soldiers 
or rifles. not the state

history or news or flag. 
people, in masks,

cooking food, sorting rubble 
& burned wood, driving tonmng

each other, asking are you 
okay, baby? when the sky

turned black, when the sun 
went into the ocean,

when ash fell 
instead of rain.

Fatimah Asghar, al-haq

After Eelam is a patchwork of voices, struggles, solidarities that ask what does a Tamil homeland look like, feel like, breathe like, outside of a man made agenda? Outside of borders, class, caste, gender? What does Tamil liberation on the island of so called Sri Lanka mean if it includes not just the North Eastern Tamils, but also our Malayaha and Muslim kin? And where does queerness fit in Tamil nationalism?

Thank you to Angel Queentus, Hazel Tetteh, Imaad Majeed and Krish for sharing your stories.

Sound design Fr3sh by Kareem Lofty

Produced by Prinita Thevarajah

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Knowing means understanding there are things we can never know 

All knowledge is limited by positionality and governed by relationships 

The world cannot be fully understood by life in human shapes because humans cannot occupy the spaces held by all other life or to see to the end of connections

Ambelin Kwaymullina

After Eelam is a patchwork of voices, struggles, solidarities that ask what does a Tamil homeland look like, feel like, breathe like, outside of a man made agenda? Outside of borders, class, caste, gender? What does Tamil liberation on the island of so called Sri Lanka mean if it includes not just the North Eastern Tamils, but also our Malayaha and Muslim kin? 

Thank you to Brahmi, Aunty Kalyani Inpakumar, Thinesh Thillai, Sanjana Ravi and Uncle Ana Parajasingham for sharing your stories.

Produced by Prinita Thevarajah

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Today on the show, long-time Race Matters host Sara El Youghun interviews some of our new brilliant volunteers: King, Tristan and Leya. Together, they chat through why they were drawn to joining this community, some of their favourite and most formative tracks, and what makes a place like Race Matters brilliant & special <3

Shout out to our other new vols Day & Malaak, to Shareeka Helaluddin who carved the way in expanding the Race Matters ecology, and to our beloved EP Prinita Thevarajah.

Produced by Samantha Haran

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What Does It Mean To Be A Person Beyond the Body?

In today's convo, Race Matters' Janey Li and Sehej Kaur chat with technologist, researcher, designer and writer of A Sexual History of the Internet's Mindy Seu.

A day after Mindy's lecture performance of the same title, the trio touch on the sprawling connections between sexuality, techno-development, autonomy and innovation, desire and extraction. This is a convo that embarks on the labour history project of the internet while exploring the embodied approach of these technologies, identifying the way folks including activists, sex workers and artists have subverted the resource allocation of the internet.

In search for a more liberated, erotic and queer internet.

Produced by Janey Li, Sehej Kaur and Prinita Thevarajah

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What role does spirituality play in our solidarity movements? What is spirituality without accountability?

Alicia Zhao traces the connection between ritual, chanting and protest, joined by Joannie Lee. We hear from artist, organiser and Buddhist practitioner Elaine Su-Hui, who reflects on how devotional recitation meets collective voice, and ritual becomes a site of both grounding and action. We are also guided by Aunty Rhonda, whose life and work speak to the inseparability of ceremony, Country, and resistance. This episode is a reflection on spirituality as a living, breathing force within solidarity movements.

A content note for First Nations listeners, this piece mentions ancestors who have passed and there is brief mention of death in custody.

This episode was produced by Alicia Zhao, with supervision and creative advice from Shareeka Helaluddin.

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