Listen to “My Body was not Built for this Cold,” a poem by Shanice Nicole. Shanice Nicole is a Black feminist writer, artist, and educator who is living, loving, and learning in Montreal. She discovered poetry in the summer of 2015 and uses it to heal and dream of social justice. You can follow her on instagram here: https://www.instagram.com/thatswhatshasaid/
This poem was recorded as part of the Cinema Politica’s Nations & Migrations, a media project looking at stories of borders, bodies and resistance. Within Nations & Migrations is a campaign called Comfortable Truths*, for which this audio was produced, recorded by Stefan Christoff @spirodon.
#ComfortableTruths are mainstream attitudes and ideas about nationhood, belonging and identity that, despite not being true (such as "immigrants have it easy in Canada"), have become so engrained in the Canadian imaginary and mainstream culture that they become orthodoxy. As part of the Nations & Migrations project, we reached out to activists and artists across the country and asked them to share their thoughts and reactions to these so-called truths.
To learn more about Cinema Politica and the Nations & Migrations project, check out their website here: https://www.cinemapolitica.org/special-events/nations-and-migrations
