Liminal States

Transitions can be powerful or they can be disconcerting, delirious or even dangerous. Whether they are across national borders, across cultures, or across sexual identities, reconciling the old and the new can be accompanied by pain or by joy, or lead to a new awareness and identity. In her debut novel Freshwater Akwaeke Emezi explores how the West and traditional Igbo culture can inform identity. Kanchana Ugbabe, an Indian author who has found refuge from the violence in her hometown in Nigeria, writes of the dual vision of the insider and outsider. And in Disoriental, filmmaker and author Négar Djavadi, who fled from Iran to France with her family at age 11, writes of the need to “disintegrate” before you can integrate into a new culture. Powerful fiction and memoir give us insights into the threshold spaces of culture and identity these women occupy.

Co-presented with Fordham University and the Artist at Risk Connection (ARC)