Tinashe Tafirenyika is a multi-award-winning writer and poet from Zimbabwe. In 2017 she became the first woman and youngest person to receive a National Arts Merit Award (NAMA) in Spoken Word Poetry in Zimbabwe. The same year she also received a Bulawayo Arts Award (BAA) for her poetry.
In conversation with Inua, Tinashe speaks on the inspiration behind the poem ‘Sarah Baartman’:
“Many, many things, chief among them the real-life story Sarah. Black women have been going through the most for centuries and a lot of times we have problems processing things and navigating through a hostile world because we don’t understand how and why things happen the way they do. Sarah Baartman was me putting into words my epiphany that by the world’s standards black women are ugly and freakish hence we will never measure up unless we change the units of measurement. “
WATCH THE VIDEO FOR Sarah Bartmaan Below.