Cross The Pacific In A Power Boat

Dovremmo lavorare sulle cose che ci accomunano e consentire alle differenze di esistere.

Sono cresciuta in una famiglia adottiva interrazziale durante l'apartheid. Sogni e fantasie erano il mio rifugio dalla crudeltà psicologica del sistema. L'arte era il mio rifugio, un'instancabile varietà di natura era il mio riparo, la poesia diventò la casa dove potevo veramente esprimere me stessa e riflettere il mondo che vedevo. Questa per me è la libertà.
Sceneggiatrice, attrice, poetessa, Philippa Yaa de Villiers è una di quelle persone carismatiche con cui non è difficile provare una certa empatia, è quel che è accaduto "incontrandola", leggendola, ascoltandola, osservando la fisionomia del suo volto and listening to the softness of his voice that caresses with irony any topic. An eclectic woman who recognizes the success of an artist not so much in praise and tribute to the public as to the need of the artist to do what they feel the need without expecting anything in return.

VALENTINA - Philippa Ghanaian your father and your mother was Australian and did you grow up in a homestay adoptive Afrikaner origins. What did it mean for you and the environment in which you were living, growing up in a white family during the apartheid regime? As you grow up?

PHILIPPE - My adoptive mother was an academy married to a German craftsman anglicised Afrikaner. I think the biggest challenge of how we see the identity through the apartheid and racism, is that we divide the company into labels based on color and whether or not people who fit those labels. This was a huge problem for me. I was too black to be white and too white to be black. I was completely unacceptable to certain people (those people who like to define the other according to some labels). Under apartheid and in a much more racist, the reference points, cultural habits and assumptions were the prerogative of certain population groups. For example, whites loved classical music and were the best classical musicians. What I found growing up, it's cultural references that I share with people of every color and color refer to specifically exclude a strictly political history, is vile and offensive, denying people their humanity and undermines their dreams.


VALENTINA - What was your relationship with other children with blacks and whites?
PHILIPPE My best friends were the children of my African nanny. I also had white friends, but not many, although I have met some who insisted on facebook to say that I was very popular. Many times I felt a sense of disorientation and alienation. I used to shield becoming the buffoon class.


VALENTINA - How to grow between different cultures has influenced your writing?
PHILIPPE I think being an outsider has helped to give a lot of energy to my writing: the power to relate to others. Writing has to do with reading as well as the writing itself. I think my concern and my deep desire to see myself reflected, my spiritual thirst to see the full complexity of my human condition told, lies in the words of others, has brought me to read authors from South America, Asia, Caribbean, Americans, Africans, Australians and Europeans. I am grateful for this sense of appartenenza a un unico mondo attraverso la letteratura.

VALENTINA - Se dovessi usare una metafora come descriveresti il senso di "appartenenza"?
PHILIPPA - L'appartenenza  è come un bell'abito che hai acquistato in una bancarella per la strada senza averlo provato. Quando poi vai a casa e lo indossi, scopri che ti fa sembrare cosi grande e non ti dona affatto.


VALENTINA - Quali sono stati gli autori che hanno modellato la tua vita di lettrice?
PHILIPPA - James Baldwin, Tsitsi Dangbarengba, Heinrich Boll, Martin Carter, Keorapetse Kgositsile, Stacyann Chin, Arundhati Roy, Riaan Malan,  e certamente my fellow poets: Makhosazana Xaba, Myesha Jenkins, Napo Masheane, Lebo Mashile, Natalia Molebatsi, Khanya Magubane, Malika Ndlovu.

VALENTINA-You wrote a beautiful monologue that you've also played on "Original Skin" is a wonderful work imbued with irony in which you explore your ratio with'identità. How hard was it for you to write? Through such suffering and inner conflicts did you have to go?
PHILIPPE - If you have a year's time I'll explain .... E 'was difficult, I had to overcome all the taboos that usually adopted children live. You were adopted and for this you have to be loyal and infinitely grateful to coloro che ti hanno adottata anche se hanno commesso dei gravi errori. Poi c' è stato il fatto di non avere intrapreso questo viaggio identitario prima, di solito le persone lo intraprendono nell'età adolescenziale, io invece ho dovuto aspettare i miei trentanni e infine c' stata la paura degli scrittori, cosa avrebbero pensato di me, mi avrebbero presa in considerazione?






VALENTINA - Philippa che cos'è l'identità per te? Se dovessimo definire una identità sudafricana in un paese cosi palesemente multietnico come lo definiresti?
PHILIPPA - Vedo l'identità come una serie di attributi che scegliamo per sottolineare la nostra relazione with the world. If you are gay may be more important for you to emphasize your sexuality. I think that identities are continually divided and correct according to your intentions, you might want to emphasize the fact of being black because maybe you'll be guaranteed more feedback. You could emphasize the fact of being a single mother because the power company to speed up the practices of connection to the service. We have fallen from heaven, identities are created and destroyed, we are no longer innocent. We use identity to get what we want. The technology helps us to achieve these aims very quickly, people continually create identity using Social Network as facebook or twitter . But we must still act, and this is much more important than anything else.

VALENTINA - The writer Amin Malouf said that we are not trees mean that our roots are not necessarily linked to a site geografico.Sei agree with this thought? Where are your roots?
PHIIPPA - I'm not sure since they are not yet at the end of my story. I've had good times in all places where I lived, where I felt at home, ready to grow in peace. I agree that my roots are not identifiable with a specific geographical place, I would say that my roots are my son eleven years, and wherever he is I will have to build him a house and provide for him. He shapes the tree where I'm growing.

VALENTINA - South Africa will soon be celebrating its sixteenth birthday free country, you can tell us how the South African company has grown in recent years and how it relates to the youth of South Africa's past?
PHILIPPE - South Africa is sitting on the sorrow and corruption of passato.Stiamo still struggling for social justice and now is even more difficult because there is no longer the apartheid regime. Youth is more forward looking and this is a good thing just to go forward and improve, to grow you need to know where we came from and that's why I brought Original Skin in schools, to stimulate debate on identity and to encourage people to look beyond the limitations that the old apartheid regime put in people. I do this especially for those who are still obsessed with racial identity. The main division of classes is still standing, even in some cases more so since Viviano in a neo-liberal financial system that led to the emergence of a small black middle class, the majority are still excluded even in access to ' education and adequate health care.

VALENTINA - What would the world companies need to break the wall of discrimination? And what, we as parents, children, educators, we should build on our agenda to do so is born an intercultural society where differences are seen as a value and not as a fear?
PHILIPPE - We should work on things that unite us and allow differences to exist. We need to identify racism and sexism and make it difficult for the people who are now priorities in access to resources. We should direct our attention to creating a social equality. Sounds easy but we must act, we need to cut the apathy that afflicts us.

VALENTINA - I you've been living a double identity crisis, adopted daughter and then the sense of alienation in a society that did not include blacks. You'd never have got the definition of your life without going through the writing?
PHILIPPE - Not really. Writing has always been the place where I wanted to be, as I also wanted to reveal myself to people close to me.


VALENTINA - Finish this sentence for us: "writing is ......"
PHILIPPE - It 's the hardest thing I ever did and the happier I was able to accomplish.

VALENTINA - I believe the country is better known by their authors. What authors and titles recommend to anyone wishing to learn more about the South Africa of yesterday and today?

PHILIPPE Zakes Mda (The Madonna of Exelsior, Ways of Dying), Njabulo Ndebele (The Cry of Winnie Mandela), Zukiswa Wanner (The Madams, Men of the South), Siphiwo Mahala (When a man cries), Thando Mgqolozana (When a man is not a man), Lebo Mashile (Ribbon of Rhythm, Flying Against the sky) Makhosazana Xaba (Tongues of Their Mothers), Riaan Malan (My Traitor's Heart).

VALENTINA - How would you describe the South African literary scene?

PHIIPPA - We have several important literary events, but in South Africa are good books out the reach of the majority of the population. The art scene is vibrant and exciting but it can really grow once overcome social inequalities.

VALENTINA - What do you expect for your country in the next ten years and how you would like to help you achieve your goals?
PHILIPPE - I would like to contribute by developing a culture of reading through public readings. Currently I coordinate a small reading group of libraries in the circuit where we discuss books and writing. I would write more for the theater, my first great passion, and develop and extend the language through contact with an increasingly again.
My challenge is to live consciously doing what I need in South Africa unfortunately we do not have a subsidy scheme for writers, so this is really to balance the social responsbailità with that individual.

Philippa is the author of two collections of poetry: TALLER THAN BUILDINGS published by the Centre for the Books, an NGO working through the National Library in order to promote reading in South Africa and published in 2010 WIFE THE EVERYDAY Books from Modjadji . The poetry collection was presented to Harare International Festival of the Arts last April.
Philippa won the award organized by National Arts Festival's Writing Beyond the Fringe for a literary work entitled "The Day That Jesus Dropped the Ball ... and other stories ."

Here is a poem from The everyday wife dedicated to Zimbabwean-born musician Chiwoniso Maraire exponent of mbira music .

 


for Chiwoniso Maraire

We Africans came to Berlin to sing
and recite poetry. We had an agenda:
remembering our anthems of loss,
galloping, consuming,
the pillage, the cries
like forest fires, like haunted children,
how can we, how can we even
begin to redress?
Enraged, we wanted revenge
and then, Chiwoniso, you stepped on the stage and
you opened your mouth and
every stolen river of platinum and gold
poured out of your mouth in song;
your voice etched us out of the night
and doubled the light in each of us.
You restored all the treasure-houses
from Benin to Zimbabwe, Mapungubwe to Cairo;
Africa moved its golden bones,
shook off its heavy chains
and danced again.
That night I thought
if only
love could purchase bread,
Africans would not be hungry.