The Power of Storytelling, Intersex Visibility, and the Black Lives Matter Movement

Posted by The Pulitzer Center on June 16, 2020

How do you define your identity, and how does it define the way in which you move through the world? Tatenda Ngwaru, an advocate for intersex rights at the center of the documentary “She’s Not a Boy,” spoke to this question in conversation with Robert Tokanel, the film’s co-director.

You can watch their full conversation here: https://pulitzercenter.org/blog/demand-webinar-finding-home-intersex-asylum-seeker?utm_source=email&utm_medium=educationnewsletter&utm_campaign=6102020

Find a lesson plan analyzing the film here: https://pulitzercenter.org/builder/lesson/nobodys-gonna-silence-me-exploring-identity-and-resilience-27992?utm_source=email&utm_medium=educationnewsletter&utm_campaign=6102020

Here are some of Ngwaru’s reflections on how her personal story connects with the current movement for racial justice and ending police violence, and how she finds hope through storytelling:

Tatenda Ngwaru: “Just yesterday, I was at a protest for Black Lives Matter. I left my country because I have suffered enough…I thought America has to be the country to go to…I thought, ‘This is a country that is going in the right direction, that considers each and every person’s human rights.’ So today is very hard, because when I heard George Floyd screaming and shouting saying ‘I can’t breathe,’ those were words that I have said before…I know exactly what it means to have a hateful man’s knee on your neck because they cannot stand who you were born to be.

“Hope and wanting change is what made me leave [Zimbabwe], and it is what you see in today’s protests in America—people who have hope and who know they need change…Change comes to those who are resilient, those who are willing to fight the fight. Change comes to those who are willing to tell under-reported stories.”