Resilience

Publication Instance Details #2849

Publication Overview

Translation	Is Multilingual	Explicit Irish Context?	Ekphrasis	Has Paratext?	Reference to News, Media or Technology
No	No	No	No	No	No

Details

Human Rights Issues	HR & Colonisation/Colonial Legacies Displacement/Forced Migration Racism/anti-Semitism/Sectarianism Forced Labour (incl. slavery & child labour)
Languages	English
Genre	Spoken word
Medium	Print Anthology
Notes	This is a spoken word poem that deals with various aspects of the legacy of colonization, slavery, trafficking, and racism. The speaker of the poem argues that the contributions of people of colour to history have been largely ignored, including their contribution to the Industrial Revolution, their endurance, and resilience despite their subjugation. There is a notable mention of Bartolomé de Las Casas, an early Spanish historian and Dominican missionary who was the first to expose the oppression of indigenous peoples by Europeans in the Americas and to call for the abolition of slavery there. The speaker here mentions that his attempts to save one people - the indigenous peoples - would lead to an increase in chattel slavery of people of colour stolen from the African continent. The poem is rich in Jamaican patois lyricism and words.