On living as Zoe: The story of being foreign in so many ways

abstract

In this short interview Jesse McGleughlin interviews activist Zoe Black. They explore notions of belonging, home and ‘foreignness’ in relation to nationality, sexual orientation and occupation. Black's experiences as “a black, migrant, woman sex worker who loves women” are explored through nuanced references to US slavery abolitionist Sojourner Truth.

keywords:

• belonging
• home
• foreign
• migrant
• woman who loves women
• sex work

Acknowledgement

Zoe Black would like to send a special thanks to Jesse McGleughlin, Marlise Richter, Robin Nakintu, Kholi Buthelezi and Lesego Tlhwale for their encouraging words.

Notes

1. People Against Suffering Oppression and Poverty (PASSOP) is a not-for-profit human rights organisation devoted to fighting for the rights of asylum seekers, refugees and immigrants in South Africa.

2. Sex Workers Education & Advocacy Taskforce (SWEAT) is South Africa’s leading sex worker human rights organisation.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Zoe Black

Photo credit: Grobbelaar-Lenoble I and Stofberg T

ZOE BLACK is an activist born in Zimbabwe. She is a former Western Cape Media Liaison and a member of Sisonke, an organisation birthed by Sex Workers Education and Advocacy Taskforce (SWEAT). Her current work centres on advocating for the decriminalisation of sex work in South Africa. As a member of the steering committee of the Asijiki Coalition for the Decriminalisation of Sex Work in South Africa, she has presented and spoken widely on different platforms about sex work. She has worked closely with organisations such as Women's Law Centre, Sonke Gender Justice, Triangle Project and PASSOP and consults for different organisations focusing on sex work, LGBTI issues, migration, and feminism. Currently based in Cape Town, she also works as an artist and designs jewellery using recycled materials.

Jesse McGleughlin

JESSE MCGLEUGHLIN is a youth organiser with a background in social movement history. She recently moved to New York City where she advocates for community-based alternatives to youth incarceration. Before that she coordinated education programmes for recently resettled refugee youth and their families. In 2015, while living in South Africa, Jesse advocated for the decriminalisation of sex work at Sonke Gender Justice in Cape Town. She also facilitated literacy interventions and an oral history project on legacies of apartheid with high school students in Kayamandi Township on a Fulbright Scholarship. She graduated from Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island, United States of America in 2014 with a degree in Africana Studies, where her senior honours thesis focused on Civil Rights leader Fannie Lou Hamer’s activism in the early 1960s’ US South. Jesse is interested in histories of race and racialisation, migration, youth power, and modes of performance and protest.