Radiance of Tomorrow, A Novel

Ishmael Beah

| Sierra Leone |

excerpt of Radiance of Tomorrow, A Novel (Farrar Straus & Giroux, 2014) * It is the end, or maybe the beginning, of another story. Every story begins and ends with a woman, a mother, a grandmother, a girl, a child. Every story is a birth… She was the first to arrive where it seemed the […]

Our spells

Virgília Ferrão

| Mozambique |

excerpt translated from Os nossos feitiços (Katuka Edições, 2022) * I checked the time. Three in the morning. The hand holding the pen shook. A sheet of paper and a glass of wine sat next me. The wine tasted bitter as an ominous night, turning my lips into clay. Drinking at dawn was never my […]

Season of Crimson Blossoms

Abubakar Adam Ibrahim

| Nigeria |

excerpt of Season of Crimson Blossoms (Cassava Republic Press, 2015) * He scaled her fence yet again, as he had done twice already, at a quarter past eleven because he knew, by careful consideration, that if she had not gone to the madrasa, she would be alone. Having gone round to the front, he peeked […]

Critical But Stable

Angela Makholwa

| South Africa |

excerpt of Critical But Stable (Pan Macmillan, 2021) * The Car Jabulani Khambule settled on the couch in his bachelor pad – a one-roomed cottage that had been built at the back of his mother’s house in Thokoza, Soweto. He liked to call it a cottage because that’s what people in the suburbs called back […]

The First Woman

Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi

| Uganda |

excerpt of The First Woman (Oneworld, 2020) * Nsuuta shook her head the way grownups surrender to a manipulative child. ‘How does one start the story of our original state?’  "From the beginning."  Nsuuta reached for Kirabo’s hand and entwined it with hers, "In the beginning…" "Kin you were our eyes." for Kirabo, storytelling etiquette […]

Loose Ties

Yara Nakahanda Monteiro

| Angola |

excerpt of Loose Ties (Paivapo, 2021) * The guard wakes up startled with the light beam. He stands. It takes him a while to steady his step. He succeeds. Trying to understand what is happening, he runs to the street. “Tinoni, do we pay you to sleep?” asks Katila knowing the answer. “ I’m sorry.” […]

Tram 83

Fiston Mwanza Mujila

| DR Congo |

excerpt of Tram 83 (Deep Vellum, 2015) * First night at Tram 83: night of debauchery, night of boozing, night of beggary, night of premature ejaculation, night of syphilis and other sexually transmitted diseases, night of prostitution, night of getting by, night of dancing and dancing, night that engenders things that exist only between an […]

Transparent City

Ondjaki

| Angola |

excerpt of Transparent City (Biblioasis, 2018) * Blind Man cut himself o! with a peep of laughter so tiny that it genuinely seemed like a professional actor’s rehearsal, a pretty, soundless smile, like the form or shadow of an absence of sun “i never even seen them naughty films that they’re going to show here […]

Jails unprisoned

Little bird, so much to explore Touch down to rest About the bars, he sings Kelly Rhey The poem above was written by a woman deprived of liberty in a creative writing workshop at the Foz do Iguaçu Prison for Women. Kelly told her workshop peers that she was inspired to write the poem by […]

Juliana Borges

by Mario René Rodríguez Torres and Cristiane Checchia

| Brazil |

On the invisibility of the issue of prisons in Brazilian society: why is it so difficult to overcome a dehumanizing view of incarcerated people, and so easy to naturalize their suffering?  Generally, we believe in, and we sell a peaceful image of the Brazilian society, in which all groups live in harmony. This is an […]

Kenarik Boujikian

Cristiane Checchia

| Brazil |

A granddaughter of a survivor of the Armenian genocide, Kenarik Boujikian was born in Kessab, Syria, in 1959. She immigrated with her family to Brazil when she was three years old, lived most of her childhood in São Paulo, and some in São José do Rio Preto. Kenarik has a degree in law from the […]

"In the name of a world without prisons" — interviews with activists from the Front of Decarceration from the state of Paraná

by Layra Rodrigues and Jhey Rodrigues

| Brazil |

The reality of the prison system is well known to be less a failure in management than constitutive of its character. The realities and character of the movements that confront it, not so much. Layra Rodrigues and Jhey Rodrigues, both students participating in the Direito à Poesia ("Right to Poetry") project by the Federal University […]

Interview with Mujeres de Frente collective

by Mario René Rodríguez Torres and Anderson Alves dos Santos

| Ecuador |

Between 2003-2004 there was a cycle of prison riots in Ecuador. These disturbances coincided, beyond the cages, with a series of protests and strikes carried out by social movements, workers' organizations, students, women's groups, indigenous people, etc. The state responded to all this with violence. That was the context in which Mujeres de Frente emerged, […]

Rememory

story by Walidah Imarisha

| USA |

Ayo stood on the edge of the community garden and scanned the gathering in Cityheart. Nearby joyous shrieks poured forth from the park as the young ones played under the loving watchful gaze of today’s caregivers. The wind teased the festively colored tents where elders and others who need it sat for the day’s circle. […]

The Dictionary of Life

Carlos Ríos

| Argentina |

Istart this intervention in the middle of the story, with a thought that is shared across the practice of the literary workshop in contexts of incarceration. Specifically, when I mention the workshop space in front of other teachers, including the students, I do it in a reversible way: "literary workshop" on the one hand and […]

Who is afraid of a black boy who is free, educated and alive?

Osmar Paulino

| Brazil |

The demographic profile of adolescents assisted by the units of the General Department of Socio-Educational Actions (DEGASE) between January 2018 and September 2020 is as follows: 94% are black boys, on average aged 16, as shown by data from the Public Ministry of Rio de Janeiro. These boys are also part of the 71.7% of […]

Motherhood in prison

Vania Gallardo López | Eva Lineros Vega

| Chile |

This article emerges from community action performed by the collective Pájarx entre Púas, which is made up of women and people of dissident genders who are currently incarcerated, were previously incarcerated, activists and artists. Inspired by feminist art-ivism and action based investigations, we united to question the structures of (in)justice and punishment in this society, […]

Writing for constructing freedom

Marcia Trejo and Lucia Espinoza

| Mexico |

Prison lockdowns triggered by the Covid-19 pandemic were widespread and affected families of inmates and aid groups across Mexico. As many workshops were suspended, people deprived of liberty were forced to live in double confinement, further isolated from their families. Our goal as a collective is to use feminist identity writing and art as a […]

Experiences in Identitary Writing with Women Living Through Violence

| México |

Prison lockdowns triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic were widespread and affected families of inmates and aid groups across Mexico. As many workshops were suspended, people deprived of liberty were forced to live in double confinement, further isolated from their families. Our goal as a collective is to use feminist identity writing and art as a […]

Racism and Prison

Amabilio Gomes Filho

| Brazil |

My name is Amabilio Gomes Filho. Born in 1978, I turned 44 years old in 2022. I am the son of a black father and a white mother, both northeastern migrants, who came to Rio in the 1960s. Despite his lack of formal education, my father managed to get a driver's license and work as […]

Can’t you see the street from the cabinet’s window?

Victor Siqueira Serra

| Brazil |

Four years ago, I wrote the essay “People addicted to crime”: criminalization of travestis and the discourses of the Justice Tribunal in São Paulo. In this essay, I analysed 100 criminal files involving travestis, describing how each stage of the system of criminal justice (police, public hearings, the judiciary) reiforces stereotypes and stigmas, and how, […]

The trans anti-carceral experience of the Cuerpos en Prisión, Mentes en Acción collective

Laura Katalina Zamora | Abay Alejandro Hérnández | Jennifer Suárez | Katalina Ángel | Estefanía Méndez

| Colombia |

There is always a story behind every criminal conduct by someone from the LGBTQ community. Women and trans men, lesbians, gay men, bisexuals, genderfluid people, impoverished and racialized people—we have populated the prisons of Colombia and across the world. When we declare that we were incarcerated for questioning the norms of the regime of compulsory […]

Photography workshops in a Degase Socio-Educational Unit

Bira Carvalho e Davi Marcos

| Brazil |

The “Right to Health in the Socio-Educational System” research project, a partnership between the Maria and João Aleixo Institute and the British universities of Stirling, Strathclyde and Dundee, included a series of photography workshops conducted by photographers Bira Carvalho (in memoriam) and Davi Marcos, from agency Imagens do Povo, which took place in a unit […]

Ghassan Kanafani: The Palestinian author whose words cannot be assassinated

Hagai El-Ad

| Israel | Palestine |

Introduction by Danny Rubinstein, author of the recently published "Why didn’t you bang on the sides of the tank?" (Yedioth Books — Books in the Attic, 2022) It has been more than 50 years since Palestinian author Ghassan Kanafani was assassinated in Beirut — an assassination that was a link in the chain of Israel’s […]

Oubliette

Howard Meh-Buh Maximus

| Cameroon |

Linonge was your best friend. It was he who taught you how to smuggle garri and other contraband necessities into school. “Tear a side of your pillow,” he said, “take out some of the foam cushion and then refill it with wrappings of Golden Dust.” It was how you called garri at Saint Joseph, your […]

Going Incognito

story by Winifred Òdúnóku

| Nigeria |

"Be prepared to wear a thick skin before leaving Nigeria. This place doesn't smile at non-oyinbos,", the text that Richard sent me on the previous night to my departure had read. I kept ruminating on the text and chewing each word to make absolute sense of it: be prepared to wear a thick skin before […]

Go home

Itumeleng Molefi

| South Africa |

FROM: keabetswekb62@gmail.com TO: ookeditse.dabula@students.ui.edu.ng DATE: Tuesday, 12 July, 17:54 SUBJECT: Personal essay for scholarship application Hi Ookeditse I hope Ibadan is treating you well. Thank you again for agreeing to help me with this. And an even bigger THANK YOU for not telling Ofentse about this. I know that he loves me and that he […]

1342 Belvedere

R. Kihara Odanga

| Kenya | USA |

I want to say three things quickly then I shut up; because the people who live across the street have a gun, because God has nothing to say to me, because this place is trying to flay me. And so, I am tired; tired of the tiredness that I have taken up for myself because […]

German Shepherd

Utanaan Reis

| Brazil |

“What’s bothering you, my child? What’s got you so afraid of the world?” “I’m not sure; I’d also like to know,” the young Nélio responded, holding back his tears. “Come here, son. Let’s talk,” Angela Maria, the spiritual healer, midwife, and guide known throughout Seropédica and its surroundings called over to him. With her hands […]

Foundation

Mari Vieira

| Brazil |

...remaining perfect and pure in his memory like a castle ready made and furnished. João Guimarães Rosa Today’s winds announced yesterday’s arrival. The leaves of the mango tree intensely glistened under the morning light. The chickens’ bustling in the aviary announced the adventures to come. We woke and looked out the window, opened the door, […]

poetry anthology I

Achieng Duro | Ayoola Goodness | Ndaba Sibanda | Gordon B. Anjili

| Kenya | Nigeria |

Achieng Duro a Folk Song  Tar little baby don’t you cry, or the popos gonna put you to sleep tonight, and if you cry or try to fight, then their grips gonna get a bit more tight, and just as you sip into the light, Its gonna dawn on them that you had rights,  So […]

The Memory of Brumadinho

Wagner Maia da Costa

| Brasil |

  The photographic essay The Memory of Brumadinho was undertaken by independent photographers in Brumadinho and Rio Paraopeba, Minas Gerais, in January 2019, three days after the bursting of the dam in Córrego do Feijão, a water and iron ore reserve owned by the Vale do Rio Doce company — a socio-environmental crime, as the area’s residents […]

The Living Memory of Vila Autódromo

Luiza Freire Nasciutti

| Brazil |

  The Rio de Janeiro city government has, since the 1990s, developed a series of urban projects that seek to promote the city to investors, tourists, and otherwise solvent users. This process, however, has accentuated dynamics of segregation in the city, with particular intensification taking place from 2009 onward, when the city of Rio was […]

If I Manage to Die of Old Age, That’s Fine

Luis Felipe Gómez Lomelí

| Mexico | Angola |

Dying of old age, dying after the average human life expectancy, is the privilege of a small group. Dying after the average life expectancy of people in the most privileged neighborhoods of the richest countries is an illusion. According to the WHO, in 2016 the world’s average life expectancy was 72 years, and, for Africa, […]

Thiago Firmino: From makeshift entrepreneurship in the periphery to social redefinition

by Mariane Del Rei

| Brazil |

Something Raull Santiago, a community activist from the favelas of Complexo do Alemão, likes to say has always made a lot of sense to me: “Get to know the whole world, but never forget your own backyard.” In writing about someone who is Born of the Periphery, who could represent through their plurality what the […]

Drive away fear! 

Merdi Mukore

| DR Congo | France |

A man pummeled by police for about twenty minutes. The image is brutal and some would be able to rapidly deduce that the scene unfolded in one of those countries designated as poor students in the School of Human Rights. The video, captured by a surveillance camera, shows a music producer beaten by law enforcement […]

Bla(c)k and Indigenous Solidarity

Michelle Mashuro

| Zimbabwe | Australia |

Colonisation is an ongoing process. It did not end when Bla(c)k and Indigenous people had the right to vote, nor did it end with the immigration of non-indigenous peoples into Australia. When talking about race, racism, territory and institutions in Australia, it is impossible to do so without centring First Nations people on this stolen […]

A People’s Existence by Resistance: The Kurds

 Zozan Sima | Jineolojî Academy

| Rojava | Kurdistan |

Our direct and participatory democracy is the fruit of a wide organisational network that allows for regional specificities and a diversity of languages and cultures, as well as autonomous women’s and young people's structures. These structures have managed to flourish despite the racist attacks on the Kurdish people that we have endured for millenia. Indeed, […]

Racialized hierarchies and blurred boundaries

Mariam Barghouti

| Palestine |

Often, the issue of Palestine comes mired with everything Israeli. Even in the academy, Palestine and Israel are examined in their relationship to each other. Yet, when we truly want to look within structural racism and oppression, we must admit that it goes deeper than Palestine and beyond Palestinians. "Exile is so strong within me, […]

Art from the Peripheries Depicts the African Diaspora in a Digital Environment

Mariane Del Rei

| Brazil |

Ayear since the pandemic’s onset, society has had to adjust to a new lifestyle. This is just as true of art and culture. According to a study by the Brazil chapter of the International Council of Museums (ICOM-BR), while museums’ increasing digital presence is nothing new, the trend took off during the pandemic, with online […]

Hey Progressives and Anti-racists, For Real: How About Broadening the Debate?

Bob Controversista

| Brazil |

Bancada Preta (the Black Caucus) has sought, since its foundation, to combat social inequalities and structural racism in Brazil, as well as to support the emancipation of social groups in situations of inequality through the social technology of transformative communication. Through the use of social media, Bancada Preta brings light to the debate on the […]

race, racism, territory and institutions

by Zukiswa Wanner

Today is January 19, 2021, when I start writing this text and in most of the United States of America, it is still Martin Luther King Day. Today is also the day that six years ago in Kenya, where I am writing this from, children at a primary school were teargassed by the police. Reason? […]

Sur 28: The human rights’ movement’s debt in the fight against racism

Maryuri Mora Grisales

| Brazil |

I remember well the first conversation we had about Issue #28 of Revista Sur and the challenge of launching an issue on race and human rights at Conectas. The responsibility of addressing the theme, at that point unexplored by the organization, was both enormous and daunting. The title for this issue, Race and human rights: […]

UNIperiferias has a new look!

| Brazil |

Welcome to UNIperiferias’ new cycle! UNIperiferias has renewed and resignified its visual identity, taking on a symbol of protection inspired by the warrior spirit of the reisado festival. We continue in the blessed enchantment of those who honor their past and value their future. Our knowledge is diverse. We are of the collective and of […]

public, environmental, and democratic health

Edition 5 of Peripheries Magazine, Public, Environmental, and Democratic health, launches amid a global pandemic crisis. This moment of historic challenge comes at a time of deep transformations in the dissemination of a regressive environmental agenda and an expressive growth in global ultraconservative socio-political forces, casting a light on the limits of society’s hegemonic model. […]

Black Self-determination Drawn From Our Roots

by Edmund Ruge

| USA |

It may surprise some of our readers to learn that issues of urban food access in the United States long predate the onset of Covid-19. Entire neighborhoods, often termed “food deserts,” stand bereft of grocery stores and markets, featuring only fast food options for kilometers on end. In such areas, the lack of access to […]

A Food System Transformation from the Favelas

The Sustainable Favela Network (SFN)
by Sophie-Anne Monplaisir

| Brazil |

As the new coronavirus swept across the globe, photos of empty grocery store shelves followed in its wake. Shots of depleted stocks and crowded supermarkets went viral on social media, raising concerns over the potential of broader food shortages around the world. Indeed, the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) has predicted the outbreak could […]

The Favela Wants to Live

by Gabrielle Araujo and Priscila Rodrigues | The Favelas Observatory

| Brazil |

“The sun rises on another day and everything is exactly the same.” Mano Brown coined this verse in O Homem na Estrada (The Man in the Street) in the 1990s. In an analogy, the song reflects, lucidly, on the mishaps residents of the favelas and peripheries experience daily. Since the beginning of March, the Brazilian […]

The Ecology of War

Frank Mei

| Syria |

The ecological model of North and East Syria, a territory also known as Rojava, is based in the thesis of Murray Bookchin and his concept of social ecology. This model understands human beings as part of nature and promotes principles of egalitarianism, invoking the functioning of ecosystems, assuming that in nature, it is cooperation, symbiosis, […]

Paths of Resistance and Intelligence in Periphery Networks 

by Wagner Silva

| Brazil |

For more than 150 days, we have endured social isolation due to the novel coronavirus. And in this devastating scenario, fear and uncertainty plague us in relation to what to do in the present and, subsequently, in the future. During this period, the inconsistent decisionmaking and the lack of importance given by, mainly, the federal […]

Afrolit Sans Frontieres: Behind the Scenes, In Front of the Camera

by Zukiswa Wanner

| Angola | Brazil | Cameroon | Cote d'Ivoire | DR Congo |
 Egypt | Ethiopia | Eritrea | Ghana | Jamaica | Kenya | Liberia | Malawi | Martinique | Mozambique | Namibia | Nigeria | Sierra Leone | South Africa | Sudan | Uganda | US | UK | Zambia | Zimbabwe |

The Birth It’s the early days of coronavirus on the continent. In South Africa, the first known covid case is announced on March 5. Patient zero is a South African who had just returned from a vacation in Italy. A day later, I leave Johannesburg, where I had gone to attend an arts event, to […]

Door of No Return

Natasha Omokhodion-Banda

| Zambia |

She hums. The vibrations of her voice reverberate against the walls of the room, giving way to a new sun. The penumbra on the wall reveals familiar furniture pieces as blue light slowly fills the room. Her spirit joins the soul of that in the deep of her being – causing them to float as […]

From the Lost City of Hurtlantis to the Streets of Helldorado (Or, Franco)

Rémy Ngamije

| Namibia |

I know Franco is in a fucked up place because he still refers to his ex as his girlfriend by accident when his mood is chipper. It just slips out, like a squeaky fart, and no matter how much he clenches up after that it’s already too late. Things are never the same after someone […]

Of the Poet and the Café

Girma Fantaye

| Ethiopia |

“የንጋት ወፍ ጥሪ” There wasn’t a single day Woubshet didn’t wake up at dawn grumpy. His neighbors to the left and right of his rented room were like law-appointed alarm clocks for him. The loud prayers of the woman who just recently converted from Orthodox Christianity to ‘Pente’ to the left, and the roof-piercing music […]

A Certain 36th of November

Merdi Mukore

| Congo |

Once upon a time, according to my father, there was a land where an assortment of people lived in a building without a ground floor, comparable to our plot. This assortment of people constituted a Nation-House in the same manner that the occupants of our plot make up a family. The head of our family […]

These Things that Our Mothers Don’t Dare Talk About

Laurence Gnaro

| Togo |

My mother had taught me how to clean that part of me whose name I didn’t have the right to pronounce without taking care to explain the job to me. I am thus engaged in a quest for answers to the numerous questions that assailed my spirit concerning the nightingale as a young girl. No […]

"Once" and "Plot"

Yara Monteiro

| Angola |

Once Remember? When you were a beast of the sky, a beast of the water, a beast of the bush, a beast of the core?  Remember the entirety of our home, ancient time where life blossomed?  Our bodies made of earth,  Our gestures free, colorful, irrigated with the saliva of turf.  Gestures still to analyze, […]

Sensitive Approaches for Social Distancing in the Favelas

Bira Carvalho | Brenda Maria | Natalia Perdomo | Igor Freitas | Renato Errejota

| Brazil |

The situation we are experiencing, here and around the world, is tragic, the result of the pandemic and the unscrupulousness and perversity of our supposed authorities. In Brazil, as in other countries, coronavirus continues to scrape away lives in its accelerated infectious progression, favored by the genocidal policies exercised by the federal government, constantly indifferent, […]

"The path is short, the trajectory is long and the road is erudite" — Hédio Silva Júnior

Silvia Souza

| Brazil |

Hédio Silva Junir is a historic defender of African-matrix religions in Brazil. Silva is a renowned jurist and holds a doctorate in law, with an outsized trajectory in the practice of law in the defense of the rights of Black people and in combating racism. He is also a native of Minas Gerais, and comes […]

Vanishing islands

Text by Joyona Medhi | Photography by Abhishek Basu

| India |

Sea levels are on the rise at a rate of 4mm a year. Global climate reports state that we are on course for the second or third warmest year on record, with the global average temperature from January to October about 1.1°C above the pre-industrial-era average. Come to think of it, trends have actually worsened […]

Water! Our Right to a Common Good

Bira Carvalho | Bárbara Dias | Natália Perdomo | Fernando Jesus | Renato Errejota

| Brazil |

Opening the faucet and providing yourself with clean and safe water, a seemingly banal and simple act, is something unavailable to billions of people around the world.  At least 40 million city and metropolis residents do not have access to basic sanitation services. Although the United Nations has recognized, since 2010, the right to water […]

CIMI, The Missionary Council for Indigenous Peoples

by Roberto Antonio Liebgott

| Brazil |

In Brazil, since the onset of the government of Jair Bolsonaro, societal debates have proven intense, centered in an extremist vision established in the area of public administration, one based in the perspective of disqualifying politicians, decrying them as corrupt, leftists, reds, and communists. This poor and circular rhetoric — one that repeats the same […]

Heinrich Böll Foundation

by Marilene de Paula

| brazil | Germany |

In the 1980s, when I was an adolescent, movies often depicted the end of the world. Nuclear apocalypse was a reality, something that could take place in a matter of days. One of the movies that struck me the most was 1983’s “The Day After,” which told the story of a group of characters that […]

Tiniguena — “This Land is Ours”

| Guinea Bissau |

Community participation, conservation, and transformation The name “Tiniguena” originates from the language of the Cassanga ethnicity and means “this land is ours.” Tiniguena is a Guinea-Bissauan nongovernmental organization founded in 1999 that is part of an emergent movement of civil organizations that aim to foster a new dynamic of effective popular participation in the construction […]

IPAD Institute for Thought and Action in Defense of Democracy

| Brasil |

The Institute for Thought and Action in Defense of Democracy (IPAD) is a program that arose within the Instituto Maria e João Aleixo, a think tank dedicated to training periphery specialists in order to spread the paradigm of peripheries’ potential.  Formed by activists with a long history of work in Brazilian civil society, IPAD is […]

Anticolonial Narratives from the Africas

| Brazil | Guinea-Bissau |

Cleber Ribeiro: What is Visto África? How did it come about and what is its goal? Vensam Iala: Visto África is a project that began in 2012, following my arrival in Brazil. I arrived in Brazil in 2010 and went straight into my studies at São Paulo State University (UNESP), in Assis, where I got […]

Traveling through diverse and creative peripheries in lisbon

Katielle Silva
Marcos Correia
Jorge Malheiro

| Portugal |

The neighborhoods of Cova da Moura and Talude Clandestine or precarious construction, occupation of private lands, and rehousing in public social housing are common themes used when discussing the neighborhoods of Cova da Moura (Amadora county) and the Military Talude neighborhood (Loures county), in the Lisbon Metropolitan Area (Área Metropolitana de Lisboa - AML). Such […]

Public schools: potencies and challenges

editorial PERIPHERIES 4, dedicated to the topic of public schools, features 20 contributions from Angola, Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Guinea-Bissau, India, Palestine, Paraguay and Syria , highlighting challenges and potencies in each unique context. Published in four languages (Portuguese, English, Spanish, and French) with ten different content types — Interviews, Articles, Photo Essays, Narratives, Special Contributions, […]

Alternative experiences

EDITORIAL

Peripheries No. 3, our latest issue, is dedicated to the alternative experiences of the global peripheries, and gathers 21 contributions from 15 countries around the world. Published in four languages (Portuguese, English, Spanish, French) and divided into six editorial categories—interviews, articles, narratives, “born of the periphery,” book reviews, and features—Peripheries gives space to the differentiated […]

Images of the People Project

Bira Carvalho
Aruan Braga
Imagens do Povo
Observatório de Favelas

| Brazil |

The Imagens do Povo (Images of the People) Project and Peripheries Journal are proud to present “Student Protagonism,” a photo essay that places the work of photographers Bárbara Dias and Antônio Dourado, invited contributors to this edition, in dialogue. In the current Brazilian scenario, the dispute for a public education capable of overcoming social inequalities […]

Miguel de Barros

Raquel Paris

| Guinea Bissau |

Miguel, I would like to hear where you come from, and I thought we could begin with you speaking a bit about your childhood and about your youth, because we know that it's in these moments that there's usually a schism or some major event. Miguel de Barros: I will not speak about myself, I’ll […]

Is it possible to build another intellectual paradigm for entrance and graduation from university?

Filomeno Lopes

| Guinea Bissau |

“Education,” says Paulo Freire, “is an act of love, and therefore an act of courage. We can’t be afraid to debate. To analyze reality. We can’t run from creative discussion without running the risk of it being a farce.” For Freire, this is because “existing is a dynamic concept. It requires an eternal dialogue between […]

Sofia Djama and the movement to retake algerian cinema

Daniel Stefani
Gabrielly Pereira

| Algeria |

Sofia, thank you for being here at the International University of the Peripheries in Maré, Rio de Janeiro. Could you introduce yourself? However you like.   Sofia Djama: I’m Algerian, my name is Sofia Djama and I was born in Oran, which is a large city in western Algeria by the sea. I grew up […]

Housework without houses: women in nonconventional housing

Luna Lyra
Silke Kapp
Grupo MOM

| Brazil |

A question and a way forward How do women deal with the work of reproduction in temporary, interim, and unstable living situations? This was the question collectively defined by the authors of this text, within a study that seeks to broaden knowledge on the socio-spatial struggles in a feminist perspective and, at the same time, […]

Literary conversations in Paraguay: designing paths for re-existence

Mariana Cortez

| Paraguay |

The original presence of the Guarani communities, sometimes noticeable in the habitants’ [physical] features as traits or predominant markings and, also in the language, comes together in the context of the Living Latin American Books on the Triple Border project. However, due to innumerable historical, social, and linguistic factors, Guarani communities are invisibilized and devalued. […]

Kurdish struggle for democracy and gender equality in Syria

Ruken Isik

| Rojava | Kurdistan |

The struggles of Kurdish women in Rojava Kurdistan (Northern Syria) became known to many during the brutal attacks of ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and Syria) against the city of Kobane in northern Syria on September 15th, 2014. While Kurdish men and women were trying to defend the city from ISIS militiamen with limited ammunition […]

Rethinking education

Rasha Alshakhshir

| Palestine |

Education under occupation Since 1984, Palestinian teachers and students have faced various challenges owing to Israeli occupation, whether they be political, economic or cultural. Human rights violations have continued in parallel, creating a reality in which Palestinians face a fragmentation of their land, and a problematic economic and political status keeps many Palestinians beneath the […]

“In spite of you, tomorrow will be another day“

Arthur Viana
Maycon Sardinha
Shyrlei Rosendo

| Brazil |

“Apesar de você, Amanhã há de ser outro dia”: The original title of the article in Portuguese is anything but casual: it speaks volumes on the dreams and potencies of those that live in the peripheries. It also alludes to how the subjects of these territories reinvent and build their daily lives to guarantee their […]

“The science of nurturing” and school climates

William Corrêa de Melo

| Brazil |

The Potency of Nurturing Relationships in the Classroom The central argument is that students feel embraced by nurturing strategies, especially when there exist high educational expectations and positive stimuli (compliments, etc) and efforts toward approximation and student engagement in school processes. These positive perceptions create possibilities for relationships that favor the teaching and learning process […]

Subversive mobility in a context of trust

Aruan Braga
João Felipe Brito

| Brazil |

Ever since the industrial revolution brought about the paradigm of daily travel from home to work and from work to home, the cities of industrialized societies have come to experience this periodic, massified dance of moving bodies. During at least two grand moments every day, at dawn and dusk, the city shifts from fixed to flowing.  The […]

The public school education system and subalternality in India

Shruti Ambast

| India |

Background Among institutional spaces where peripheral or subalternate communities represent a majority in India, public schools are significant. However, this was not always the case. Public schools have undergone a considerable change in character over the last three decades. Until the 1980s, public schools were the preserve of the middle and upper classes, catering to […]

The bakla, the agi: our genders which are not one

Jaya Jacobo
Vincent Empimano
Macky Torrechilla
Christian Tablazon

| Philippines |

I. The ethnolinguistic premise of Philippine genders Jaya Jacobo While the discourses of solidarity which promise the formation of community may require us to speak in a language that renders "gender" to be intelligible -- received within a universe that thrives in sensus communis, so to speak -- the question of difference must put pressure […]

Why read female philosophers?

Fábio Borges do Rosário
Marcelo José Derzi Moraes
Rafael Haddock-Lobo

| Brazil |

Why read female philosophers? Behind the initial question that the title of this text raises are a few other questions and exclamations that seem to require further thought before we enter into our speculations. First, we need to remember this as a matter of fact: there are female philosophers, and there always have been. As […]

To teach the joy of learning

Ondjaki

| Angola |

Time goes on and it has become necessary to take on—as adults, parents, professors, directors and educators—the difficult challenge of reviewing both our own knowledge and the way in which we pass on this knowledge. Moreover, it has come time to revisit the place and function of the school, not only as a place of […]

Daniel de Souza: Between Loves and Quilombos in the Black Amazon

Raquel Paris

| Brazil |

To tell this story, we need to go back 200 years. More precisely, we need to go back to the second half of the 18th century, when the first men, women, and children of bantu origin, coming primarily from Angola and the current Democratic Republic of the Congo, were brought to the livestock and cacao […]

The Linguistic Pedagogy of Co-existence at Kurdish Schools in Rojava

Daniel Stefani
Edmund Ruge

| Syria |

Following the publication of “Kurdish Struggle for Democracy and Gender Equality in Syria,” in the third edition of Peripheries Journal, our team maintained contact with the Rojava Information Center (RIC), an independent organization dedicated to supporting the work of international journalists in Rojava, in Northeast Syria. The RIC placed us in contact with Becet Hussein, […]

The pedagogy of peace

Mariana Costa

| Colombia |

Open Paths of Nurturing in Latin American Public Education Education is especially valuable in the precarious political contexts of Latin America; it serves as a means of resistance and a common good. Above all, public schools resist via pedagogical reinvention, especially when they are adapted to each school community on a daily basis. In Colombia, […]

Challenging 'buen vivir'

Vilma Almendra
Emmanuel Rozental
Edwin Pipicano
Ángela Gutiérrez
Jorge Sarria

| Colombia |

The Indigenous movement of Cauca, Colombia has historically been characterized by the many resistance movements that have emerged from Colombia’s armed and negotiated struggles. Its wider recognition, both nationally and internationally, has come as a result of land recoveries carried out between the 1970s and 1990s and the creation of the Consejo Regional Indígena del […]

The interscholastic Akewí poetry slam

Clara Carolina de Oliveira Costa
Geovanna Laura Santos Januario
Isabela Kaila da Silva Cunha

Translation
Edmund Ruge

| Brazil |

Poetry in school, ideas in poetry The Akewí Poetry Slam of Viçosa, Minas Gerais, works to recognize and value peripheral and black cultural and artistic manifestations. Through poetry sustained in the civilizing values of ancestral black African societies, in orality and corporeality — reconstructed from African cultures brought by the diaspora of black slavery — […]

Buen vivir and autonomy in latin american indigenous territories

Salvador Schavelzon
Thea Pitman

| Brazil | UK |

During 2018, a heterogeneous group of people – hailing from indigenous communities located in the present-day Northeast Brazil and Southwest Colombia, more or less formal third sector groups with a primary focus on indigenous empowerment, and from universities in the UK, Brazil and Colombia – came together to work on a research network project exploring […]

IDeA: the inequality and learning indicator

Mauricio Ernica
Maria Alice Setubal

| Brazil |

> > >  IDeA - Indicador de Desigualdades e Aprendizagens The defense of the right to education requires educational indicators to ensure its realization. With such indicators, it is possible to both produce precise descriptions and explanations of our educational reality, identifying advancements and challenges, as well as formulate appropriate public policies. The construction of […]

Prison reforms & democracy

Raja Bagga
Madhurima Dhanuka

| India |

Democracy presupposes equality of individuals. Every individual has their say in how they are governed. They can exercise their freedom in their everyday lives, in where they live, who they want to live with, what they eat, who they desire and the list goes on. And yet, freedom of expression is not absolute. There are […]

Neoliberalism and the critical voice for community practice

Paula Flanagan

| Ireland |

As someone who grew up in Northern Ireland in the late 1960s and 1970s, with the looming and ever present spectre of Margaret Thatcher, I have been intrigued to investigate what form neoliberalism may have taken just south of the border on the island of Ireland (as opposed to Thatcherism in the UK and NI). […]

Teaching to transgress

Vinebaldo Aleixo de Souza Filho

| Brazil |

An Engaged Pedagogy, Hand-in-Hand with the Practice of Freedom I magine that a black female thinker, an intellectual and activist from the US with decades of experience in teaching at different institutions, rang your doorbell or paid a visit to your school, university, collective, restaurant… and began talking to you about the challenges and potencies […]

Macaé Evaristo

Patrícia Santos

| Brazil |

Patrícia Santos: We’re aware of your trajectory as an educator, Secretary of Education for the Municipality of Belo Horizonte in the state of Minas Gerais, in the Secadi — the Secretariat of Continued Education, Literacy, Diversity, and Inclusion — and also in the Ministry of Education at the Federal level. You also taught at the […]

The Alberto Chejolán popular Baccalaureate

| Argentina |

We are members of the Bachillerato Popular Alberto Chejolán, a school of young people and adults that has been in operation since 2012 in Villa 31, a popular neighborhood in Buenos Aires that has been fighting for its place within the city for more than 80 years. Our school forms part of the local organization […]

Andrio Candido

Amauri Eugênio Jr.

| Brazil |

Defining the artist and man Andrio Candido is an arduous task, seemingly impossible when viewed with inattentive eyes. A fundamental part of this is the consequence of his jack-of-all-trades profile, given that he is an activist in several different areas. But an important part of the equation for understanding Candido lies in the way in […]

Mapuche Intervention - Work 18.314: Mari pura warangka küla pataka mari meli

Visual Poetry: Daniela Catrileo
Photography: Rocío García
Editing and Introduction: Carolina Herrera 

| Chile |

The Mapuche people is the most represented original peoples living in what is today Chile. In colonial times they worked for the conquistadors, oligarchs, and landowners; later some began emigrating in search of opportunities to escape poverty just as the majority of people cut off from the metropolitan areas did. They have resisted since the […]

The COMMON in movement

Bira Carvalho

| Brazil |

Images of popular spaces, such as the favelas and urban peripheries, which are usually marked by stereotypes of poverty and stigmas of violence, overcome such restraints in the images of Bira Carvalho. With sensitivity and audacity, the author challenges light, color and angle to bring forward the COMMON as an inherent part of everyday life […]

Interview with Roberta Estrela D'Alva + "Resist - Afoxé do Mangue"

by Ecio Salles

| Brazil |

In the early 1990s, Heloísa Buarque de Hollanda organized an event called Sinais de Turbulência (Signs of Turbulence). There, intellectuals, artists and activists began to ponder the question of when social and cultural actions in and of the favelas, in response to growing violence, placed the peripheries at the center of the map. The FLUP […]

Democratizing the body and politics - transexual and peripheral perspectives on democracy and dictatorships

Gilmara Cunha
Graham McGeoch

| Brazil |

A conversation between a theologian and a transgender woman who met each other in Maré. Graham - Democracy is fragile and it must be constructed daily. This is not to speak of representative democracy, which frequently represents the financial elite, centers of power and heterosexual bodies. This is about participatory democracy, or “insurgent democracy,” to […]

Democracy and cabanagem

Aiala Colares
Wellington Frazão

| Brazil |

Belém’s peripheral neighborhoods function as urban spacialities, dynamic in their construction of territorial identities, and closely intertwined with the diverse forms of social and cultural reproduction that emerge as logics for the day-to-day lives and survival strategies of their populations. Belém’s peripheral expansion came about through a deterritorializing process, in which part of the population […]

Ricardo Henriques

Patrícia Santos

| Brazil |

Patrícia Santos: What elements in the construction of the myth of failed public schools and private school superiority do you think are worth highlighting? Ricardo Henriques: There exists a breadth of literature that creates an enormous difficulty for advancements in the agenda of republican, lay, public schools, based in the argument that public schools are […]

A shout-out to the peripheries

Curatorship: Bira Carvalho | Imagens do Povo

| Brazil |

In the reigning narrative present in a large part of the media, the lack of understanding about peripheral territories produces and drives prejudice and stereotypes that directly affect the lives of periphery residents in their search for formal work, even legitimizing the violence committed against them. But we inherited from our ancestors other forms of […]

The Molenbeekois and their Going Beyond a Stigma

Johan Leman

| BELGIUM |

Can people who live in a stigmatized periphery, starting from their own current practice, find the force to realize their emancipation? Can they transform and transcend a negative brand that weighs on their environment and on themselves, to their own benefit and also to a better image in the outside world? Not all peripheries and […]

Transforming the Imaginary of Marginality: Some Experiences from Rio de Janeiro

Udi Mandel Butler

| BRASIL |

This article is based on action-research carried out in Rio de Janeiro between 2005 and 2009 that sought to understand how young people perceived and practiced what we termed public action in the context of a socially and economically divided city. In 2005, I worked with Marcelo Princeswal and a small team of researchers from a […]

Instituto Unibanco

| Brazil |

School management for equality: paths to an anti-racist education Following the ratification of the 1988 constitution, basic public education experienced a series of advances. While these may not have been as swift and intense enough to guarantee rights for all to this day, they were advances nonetheless. The example that best demonstrates this progress is […]

Ação educativa

| Brazil |

For the defense of educational and cultural rights, and for indicators of educational quality Ação Educativa, Educational Action, is a São Paulo-based NGO that has worked in the fields of education, culture, and youth, with a human rights perspective, since 1994.  We train and support groups of educators, youth, and cultural agents. We also develop […]

Humanizing the other

Anam Zakaria

| PAKISTAN | INDIA |

“Now I know that not all Pakistanis are murderers. They don’t want to kill me. I too can think of going to Pakistan.” This was what a 7th grader said after a Skype exchange between her school and me. The one-hour virtual dialogue we engaged in had changed her mind about my country. I wondered […]

Visual Writings from the Imagens do Povo Project

Bira Carvalho | Francisco Valdean | Marcia Farias | Rosilene Miliotti

| Brazil |

On Friday morning (July 1, 2004), Professors João Roberto Ripper and Ricardo Funari assembled students of the first ever Escola de Fotógrafos Populares (EFP - School of Popular Photographers) class in front of 26 Rua Guilherme Maxwell,[1] giving the final instructions for the group’s “Images of the People” project (Imagens do Povo). This type of activity […]

Trucked

by: Favita Dias

| India |

The Migrant Museum - MuMi

Deyanira Clériga Morales
Pável Valenzuela Arámburo
Aldo Jorge Ledón Pereyra

| Mexico |

In the fight is where we find one another. In Portuguese, "Na luta é que a gente se encontra," because despite our physical distances, [diverse] languages, and cultural differences, our historical roots are always there, letting us find ourselves among the people that work to build in the middle of a hostile world. This is […]

WàCOLETIVO

Cariri, Ceará

| Brazil |

The word “Wa” means “to walk” in the indigenous language of Kariri (the people that lived here and gave our region, Cariri, its name). This is the name we chose to represent ourselves. We are a collective of diverse women but we walk together. Together we create, together we express, together we redefine and bring […]

Gaza Surf Club

Ibrahim Arafat

| Palestine |

من أجل الحق الكامل في التزلج Palestinians face extremely harsh conditions in the Gaza Strip. There is not enough work, electricity, or even potable water in an area home to over two million inhabitants, featuring the highest demographic density on the planet. As if that were not enough, because of Israeli blockades and occupation, especially […]

Global Grace

Suzanne Clisby
Mark Johnson

| UK |

At the beginning of May, 2019 academics, activists, artists, and NGO professionals from territories across the world met together in Rio de Janeiro to share, discuss and debate the possibilities and challenges of creating pathways towards cultures of equality (Percursos Criativos para Culturas de Equidade, 7 – 9 May).  The event was co-organised by teams […]

La Garganta Poderosa

| Argentina |

We are a revolutionary Latin American movement that grew out of the heart of the villas[1]of Buenos Aires, Argentina. Founded more than 15 years ago, we have grown to include 120 territorial assemblies in 12 Latin American countries. Why La Poderosa? The word “power” carries immense importance for all members of the organization, and, while […]

Ailton Krenak — The Potency of the Collective Subject

by Jailson de Souza e Silva

| Brazil |

Ailton Krenak couldn’t have emerged with a more pertinent interview or at a more pertinent moment. Now is the time to hear a voice that inspires, one that shakes our perceptions, keeping our clarity and conscience from being swept away in the wind. Introducing a figure such as Ailton Krenak is not an easy task. […]

For an international network of the

peripheries 1

| Brasil |

The Instituto Maria e João Aleixo (IMJA) seeks to construct a movement to connect the world’s peripheries in a global network. We now present Peripheries Journal as a strategic tool in this construction. The conception and creation of this publication is a great challenge for the Instituto and editorial board. Grounding our thought and design […]

Decolonizing money in puerto rico

Frances Negrón-Muntane

| Puerto Rico |

Since 2006, Puerto Rico has been enduring a debt crisis that reached over 127 billion and resulted in increased poverty rates, mass migration, and cuts to essential public services. In response, the scholar and artist Frances Negrón-Muntaner collaborated with artist Sarabel Santos Negrón to launch the community currency project Valor y Cambio (Value and Change). The […]

Adriana Barbosa

Gabriele Roza

| Brazil |

"Entrepreneurship in Brazil is led by the black population. 131 years ago, Bahia’s tray vendor women bought their emancipation selling food. We have a very strong entrepreneurial vein; it is in our DNA," says Adriana Barbosa, director of the Black Fair Institute. The Business Owners in Brazil report, by Sebrae [Brazil’s support service for micro […]

Ecio Salles

| Brazil |

To our partner and friend, the masterful Ecio Salles The poet, cultural producer, and partner of ours in so many undertakings, has left us prematurely. Born in the Olaria neighborhood of Rio de Janeiro, Salles made the peripheries of this urban metropolis the territory for his poetic invention. As a creator and mobilizer of words […]

Carolina Maria de Jesus, an author for the present

Tom Farias

| Brazil |

Reflecting on the written memory of Minas de Gerais author Carolina Maria de Jesus (1914-1977) requires care and effort. For someone that barely knows or has never heard of the author of the book Quarto de despejo–diário de uma favelada, published in August of 1960, we must start at the beginning. Carolina Maria de Jesus […]

Conceição Evaristo

by Ivana Dorali

| Brazil |

State Geopolitics and Quilombo Territory in the 21st Century

by Jorge Barbosa

| Brazil |

by Diosmar M. Santana Filho Paco Editorial publishing, 2018. 260p A geopolítica do Estado e o território quilombola no século XXI (Paco Editorial, 2018) was born of the Masters research undertaken by the geographer Diosmar Santana Filho at the Federal University of Bahia (UFBA). The book in question is thus the fruit of a well-planted […]

Redes da Maré - WOW as a possibility for uniting female power in the contemporary world

Eliana Sousa Silva

| Brazil |

The WOW - Women of the World Festival is an initiative created by British Artistic Director Jude Kelly during her years as Creative Director at Southbank Centre (one of the largest cultural centers in the world, based in London), where she worked for over a decade. Since its launch in 2010, WOW has aimed to […]

Catalytic Communities: the role of the peripheries in democracy

Luisa Fenizola

| Brazil |

We tend to speak from a place of fear and disillusionment concerning Brazilian democracy. However, for a long time, we have been fighting to stop talking about favelas and peripheries from this place of fear and disillusionment. We at Catalytic Communities believe in the power, creativity, and solutions that stem from favelas and peripheries. We […]

Instituto Maria e João Aleixo | International University of the Peripheries

democracy and periphery

The contemporary world has witnessed the rise of a new wave of authoritarianism. The threat to democracy takes hold in the contours surrounding our democratic institutions and values, questioning them from a conservative and even regressive political lens. Progressive forces have proved themselves unable to organize a cohesive discourse and strategy to confront the erosion […]

Interview with Marisa Matias

by Tatiana Moura

| Portugal |

"I have been Marisa’s friend for a long time and I know well the conviction with which she personifies the maxim of “the personal is political.” If it weren’t so, I wouldn’t be the one here. And just as Marisa knows it, so too do the millions of Portuguese men and women that have felt […]