Stories, Healing, Transformation: A Conversation with Amoke Kubat

In October 2023, Amoke Kubat—artist, storyteller, activist, and performer—visited Approaches to Knowledge and Truth: Ways of Knowing in Development Studies and Social Change, a graduate seminar organized and facilitated by Richa Nagar through the Interdisciplinary Center for the Study of Global Change at the University of Minnesota. The participants—Lindsey Willow Smith, Kaeda Sabrewing, Somayeh Nikoonazari, Panchen Lo, Malay Kotal, Miao He, Marika Belusa, and Varun Anisetty—read Kubat’s memoir, Missing Mama: My Story of Loss, Sorrow and Healing, and delved into such themes as claiming dignity through the power of orality and mother tongues, individual and collective loss and grieving, and writing and storytelling as modes of healing, against a backdrop of war, enslavement, colonization, displacement, and genocide. We share parts of this conversation here with the AGITATE! community.

AGITATE! Journal would like to thank all the participants of the Approaches to Knowledge and Truth: Ways of Knowing in Development Studies and Social Change graduate seminar (Fall 2023) for their thoughtful participation in this conversation and the Interdisciplinary Center for the Study of Global Change (ICGC) at the University of Minnesota for supporting this event.