In February 1982, the black American feminist, poet and civil rights activist Audre Lorde said: “If I didn’t define myself for myself, I would be crunched into other people’s fantasies for me and eaten alive.” She was ruminating on liberation, oppression and life in the 1960s, but her journey of self-definition and discovery is one many black women in the west find themselves on.
Afua Hirsch is one of them. After her 40th birthday, the journalist and former barrister embarked on “a year of adornment” – a new phase in her life, an attempt to unlock something deeper, something spiritual, to combat the years of debating for her own humanity as a black woman in the public eye. To truly find rest.
