Tsitsi Dangarembga, Naghmeh Samini, María Galindo & Cristina Morales: WIDERSTAND SCHREIBEN

Wiener Festwochen

"Jin, Jîyan, Azadî" – Woman, Life, Freedom!

That was the slogan under which the protests against the patriarchal-repressive system began to form following the death in police custody of 22-year-old Kurdish Iranian woman Jina Mahsa Amini in September 2022. The resistance shown by women in Iran became a global beacon of hope that shone brightly for a different future. This year, on three separate evenings, the Wiener Festwochen have invited internationally renowned female authors whose writings explore possible paths towards that future. In her auto-fictional trilogy of novels "Nervous Conditions – The Book of Not – This Mournable Body", Tsitsi Dangarembga, who was awarded the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade in 2021, will talk about the struggles for self-determination and freedom of a Black woman growing up in Zimbabwe. Her volume of essays "Black and Female", which has just been published in German, examines the political situation, the position of women, and the conditions of her own writing in a postcolonial society. María Galindo, for her part, is one of the best-known feminists in Latin America. In her texts (among others "Bastard Feminism" and "You cannot decolonize without depatriarchalizing") the journalist, graffiti artist, film maker and poet posited the theory of "bastardismo". And in direct reference to its methodology, Spanish author and dancer Cristina Morales wrote her sensational novel "Easy Reading", which undermines all forms of paternalism towards people with disabilities. The novel itself was awarded the HKW International Literature Prize. Naghmeh Samini is the author of the play "The Child", which can also be seen at this year’s Wiener Festwochen. In her work as playwright, screenwriter and academic, she examines the history and conditions of female resistance in Iran.