Litanies is a ritual reading performance for Audre Lorde, commemorating the 50th anniversary of Lorde delivering her first poetry reading at the Women’s Building in the fall of 1974. A collaboration between Courtney Desiree Morris and Alexis Pauline Gumbs, it is the third installation in the Readings, a series of live ritual performance readings of the work of black literary ancestors of the African Diaspora. Acting as a choir director, Morris invites the readers to perform as a polyphonic choir to create sound, music, and movement through an embodied engagement with the text. The public is invited to bear witness through listening, stillness, and call-and-response.

Litanies will feature readings by M. Jacqui Alexander, Kiara Brown, Andrea Caanan, micha cárdenas, champoy, Malkia Cyril-Devich, Ashara Ekundayo, Alexis Pauline Gumbs, Ericka Huggins, Alie Jones, Cherríe Moraga, Pratibha Parmar, Kiara Sample, Dora Silva Santana, Dagmar Schultz, Eric Stanley, Amara Tabor-Smith, Lisbet Tellefsen, Leila Weefur, and Angela Wellman.

This event is sponsored by the African American Art & Culture Complex, Artist as First Responder, the Zellerbach Family Foundation, the San Francisco Public Library, Eastside Arts Alliance, the Bay Area Lesbian Archives, the UC Berkeley Department of Gender and Women’s Studies, the UC Berkeley Department of Ethnic Studies, the UC Berkeley Department of African American Studies & African Diaspora Studies, the Center for the Study of Sexual Culture, and the Center for Race & Gender.

Masking is strongly encouraged for the health and safety of all involved.

All ticket sales will directly support the artists. NOTAFLOF: No one turned away for lack of funds.