Genna Gardini is a writer and educator based in Cape Town. Her collection Matric Rage was published by uHlanga and received a Commendation for the Ingrid Jonker Prize. Gardini works as a Drama lecturer at CityVarsity. She is currently an ICA Fellow, developing a project about experiences of other womxn and queer South Africans with Multiple Sclerosis.
Gardini: This is a really huge question. Since becoming a recent wheelchair user (I have Multiple Sclerosis), I have found myself measuring my experiences now against what I was doing and able to do “this time last year”. This, at first, was a way of gaging recovery, but I’ve also found that it tracks emotional growth: the concept of time progressing when I am often literally still means I can see how my thinking and perceptions have changed and moved as well.
2. What is the greatest thing you have learnt from a younger or older generation than yourself?
Gardini: My MA supervisor Sara Matchett taught me the value of trying to really listen to other people and establish safe spaces as a facilitator.
I work as a teacher and the cliché of “my students actually teach me” is true. There’s something so important about seeing young people insisting on being in an educational space, grappling with concepts, and knowing that they have every right to question systems.
3. Tell us about something in your area of expertise that took you years to learn.
Gardini: It took me a long time to learn that trying to make yourself invisible in order to quietly produce interesting work that surprises people, sometimes only works to make you invisible to yourself. If you need to speak, speak.
4. Our TEDxCapeTownWomen theme this year is "Lixesha | It is time". what do you believe is the most pressing issue we as a community/city/country/world need to address at this moment in time?
Gardini: I don’t believe that I am the right person to answer this question, but I know that we need to be figuring out how to dismantle whiteness and patriarchy from power. We should be listening to people in the various movements of protest happening in SA right now, like the Remember Khwezi protesters.
Twitter: @GennaGardini; Facebook: www.facebook.com/kgomotso.mokoena.
