An Anthology of Non-Conformism

Through a multiplicity of voices and journeys, this anthology highlights the everyday lives, experiences, energies and spirits of non-conformist wom!n (i.e., women, womyn, womxn—however, self-identified) from around the globe. While recentering stories of transformation through non-conformism, these narratives explore what is so hard, but also so good, about being a wom!n—especially in a century mired by deep contradiction, yet rife with unparalleled hope. Using diverse mediums from poetry, essays and interviews to artwork, photography and illustration, the collection presents stories from perceived ‘margins’—what we like to describe as, the sharp edge of going against the grain.

The stories also metaphorically represent the mobility, multiplicity, intersectionality and dynamism of female identity. In all cases, identity-making and/or -breaking is viewed as the result of each wom!n’s agentic determination, no matter how seemingly small her act of resistance might be. At the same time, each wom!n, may also well defy conventional categories of what being a ‘rebel’ would entail, or even reject the term outright.

Taken together, these collective voices relay visions, strategies, and hopes about what it means to take on, discard, or subvert gendered categorizations simultaneously inflected by ‘race’, ethnicity, class, language, sexuality, religious affiliation, generation, and other forms of intersectional identity markers. They do so across diverse contexts, from agricultural fields and marketplaces to medical spaces, exhibition galleries, the halls of academia, and more.

This is an accomplished book. Insightfully, the authors expose the fact that our conformity and complicity are the edifice upon which we reproduce the inequity and inequality of the world in which we live. As women/ wom!n, An Anthology of Non-conformism: Rebel Wom!n Words, Ways & Wonders invites us to take seriously our role in furthering ideas, values, and practices in everyday life that constitute oppression. In spotlighting a multilayered multiplicity of stories on rebels, resistance, and restoration, this becomes a handbook of “how to” transform instead of conforming to subjugation. The anthology introduces us to the ways and wonders of non-conformism and its liberatory uses, especially for women. Non-conformism is the watchword here: it is a lifesaver, a blueprint for new visions, and a gateway to much-needed restorative justice.

Oyèrónkẹ́ Oyěwùmí

Professor of Sociology, Gender and Africana Studies at Stony Brook University, New York. She is the author of the award winning, The Invention of Women: Making an African Sense of Western Gender Discourses and What Gender is Motherhood: Changing Yoruba Ideals of Power, Procreation and Identity in the Age of Modernity.

This powerful compilation of stories, created from the margins in inter-media formats by a powerful group of rebel women is a vital contribution to the politics of liberation. The authors are intent upon subverting colonial typecasting and hierarchically mandated personhood, and redefining prescribed identity categories through a catalytic engagement that involves the conversion of toxic identity relations to those that bind power, creativity and justice to female agency. Moving beyond cosmopolitan imaginaries, these narratives of overcoming and transcendence directly challenge the necropolitics of the times and stress the urgency of building communities of womanist wayfarers, firmly rooted in dismantling hierarchies of pain and oppression and in transforming hearts into fists. These courageous warriors reveal how the radicalization of feminist thought can create new social universes of repair and resistance while at the same time forging an enduring compassion for others.

Peter McLaren

Distinguished Professor in Critical Studies, Attallah College of Educational Studies, Chapman University and International Ambassador for Global Ethics and Social Justice, The Paulo Freire Democratic Project. Author of This Fist Called My Heart, Che Guevara, Paulo Freire and the Pedagogy of Revolution and Schooling as a Ritual Performance.

Epifania Akosua Amoo-Adare is an independent scholar and development professional, with post-disciplinary interests in diverse topics such as creative writing, critical pedagogy, decolonial thinking, epistemology, feminism(s), spirituality, spatial theories, and urbanization. She has a Ph.D. in Education from UCLA and is also a RIBA part II qualified architect, with work experience in international development.

Rapti Siriwardane-de Zoysa is an environmental anthropologist and visual ethnographer, with a background in Anglophone literature and theatre studies. Her multimodal work combines posthumanist, decolonial, and feminist currents in exploring contemporary oceanic imaginaries, futuristic utopian thinking, urban experimentation, justice and placemaking. She holds an MSc. in Geography (Oxford), and a DPhil in Development Anthropology (Bonn).

With contributions from, in order of appearance in the book:

Veronica Cordova de la Rosa

Akudo McGee

Lorena Rodriguez Lezica

Bashiratu Kamal

Wendy Chávez & Natali Zavala

Nabanipa Majumder

Jeremy Jacob Peretz & Joan Cambridge

Atsango Chesoni

Ann-Marie Ellmann

Reva Santo

Alisha Roff