About the Book
A collection of essays inspired by EMMA Talks, a speakers’ series committed to amplifying the voices of thinkers, activists, scholars, artists, and community builders who are also women-identified, trans, and gender-nonconforming folks.
From Idle No More to Black Lives Matter to the Me Too movements and more, one thing is certain: There is a burgeoning collective desire to hear non-dominant voices in subtle, curious, generative ways.
The Vancouver-based EMMA Talks speakers’ series amplifies the voices of women-identified, trans, and gender-nonconforming folks. Curated by carla bergman, the series showcases a diversity of writers, thinkers, activists, scholars, artists, and community builders. Radiant Voices is the anthology inspired by EMMA Talks.
Through engaging essays by Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, Silvia Federici, Vivek Shraya, Chief Janice George, dr. amina wadud, Astra Taylor, and others, seasoned writers align with emerging writers who share from a worldview that promotes anti-racism, anti-sexism, anti-ageism, and anti-ableism, and much more. Themes of connection, rediscovery, creating, social justice, celebration, and matriarchy are revealed in these 21 essays.
This is an era in which the marginalized can publicly share their stories en masse. Now is the time to celebrate the eruption of all these radiant voices.
Reviews
“A powerhouse of shared humanity where readers, writers, and speakers can come together to form a powerful dialogue of shared understanding, historical context, shocking revelation, and the personal pursuit of telling stories and being heard. . . . They provide multiple understandings of a collective journey to an equitable world where every voice is heard to promote liberation through change, growth, and love. . . . a remarkable collection of essays.” —Ormsby Review
“This collection of work makes me grateful. Angry and grateful. Grieving and grateful. Reflective and inspired and grateful. The women, queer, trans, two-spirit, and non-binary folks who share story and image here beside poem and theory, they hold their own gazes, enacting individual and connected kindnesses, acts of digging their feet into the sand, acts of transformation, of spirit, magic, revolution. Each piece—and the carefully threaded emergent gathering—carries ancient ritual and makeshift reimagining of self and community. There is something in the voices here that is both uncapturable and undeniable, something carried through struggle and loss, something deeply, inherently crucial to witness and enact.” —Hari Alluri, author of The Flayed City
“The stories in Radiant Voices urge and coax us to soften ourselves to one another and the planet. carla bergman has seamlessly woven together a chorus of gorgeously diverse voices that share personal glimpses of their lives and remind us of what it’s like to be human. Both heart-opening and eye-opening, Radiant Voices is an important and necessary celebration of marginalized and triumphant voices.” —Dani Burlison, editor All of Me: Stories of Love, Anger and the Female Body