Welcome to part one of BODY WORK - a series of conversations and workshops on the body - how we write it, listen to it, use it, create from it. To learn more about upcoming episodes and workshops, check out my post on my homepage.
‘Before others tried to change me, I tried to change myself. Instinctively, I developed a habit, perfecting the art of self-imposed conditioning, preparation for the more violent and pernicious forms of possession that were to come. And they were coming, thick and fast. All I had to do was wait.’
I recently had the pleasure of speaking with Davina Quinlivan about her new memoir Possessions: A Memoir of Transformation in an Era of Precarity. It is a wild, genre-bending narrative that charts Quinlivan’s ultimate rejection of ‘passing for something else’ as she reclaims her mind and body.
After two decades of academic research and undergraduate teaching, Davina and the world of university education, were approaching crisis; teaching online, ticking boxes for other people’s diversity criteria, stuck, like so many others, in a cycle of fixed term contracts. Yet as a child of Anglo-Burmese parents, growing up in West London, academia had promised a way out. Something better.
‘I was so thirsty for the prize of academia, so thrilled to defy the fates, that I suffocated my own history and culture, my Burmese heritage and my mother’s language. By doing this, I also possessed my ancestors and made them dance to the tune of Imperialism. How could I be so wrong?’
Possessions is her powerful, compelling story of fragmenting and rebuilding from the inside out, one that is filled with the voices of both Burma and Southall. Haunted by the ghosts of colonialism, Quinlivan beautifully lays bare our blind spots as we grapple with decolonisation and the hypocrisies within our institutions of education.
Which possessions came before me, drenching my bones? Which ones did I accept, and which ones did I resist?
In this conversation we explore:𓇸 Trying to make our bodies fit into pre-made, preconceived moulds𓇸 Imaginative memoir and how it was a necessary way of exploring on the page her intersecting identities and lived experience𓇸 Portals, thresholds, magical creatures, goblin ancestors and not having line breaks between the living and the dead, the ancient and the new, body and soul. 𓇸 The changing face of higher level education system in the UK𓇸 The disembodiment that so often takes place in an online working environment𓇸 Ideas around shape-shifting, labour, productivity and motherhood𓇸 Ideas around presence and the value of witnessing, deep listening and community and connection
I’d love to hear your thoughts on our conversation - What sparked for you? What did you want to know more about? What peaked your interest?
About DavinaDavina Quinlivan is a research fellow at the Department of English and Creative Writing at the University of Exeter. For several years she has run F: For Flanerie, a series of writing and film seminars at The Freud Museum. She is also Artistic Lead with Paper Nations, an award-winning creative writing incubator funded by Arts Council England. Her writing has appeared widely, and she is the author of Shalimar (Little Toller).
Possessions is out now.
If you’d like to follow along with this series of conversations and posts on writing the body, please do subscribe to my newsletter here:
le grá,
Layla xx
