PHANZA member Karin Speedy has a new book out this week.
In Foundations, Karin Speedy takes us on a whirlwind journey through time and space as she navigates
intersecting personal, local, family and global histories, stories that help her reckon with who she is and
where she stands in this complicated (post)colonial world. If colonialism, slavery, violence and heartbreak
feature heavily in her memoir so too do friendship, love, poetry, books, music, laughter and resistance.
Warm, funny, quirky yet also confronting and, at times, shockingly brutal, her childhood and young adult
memories bring to life the scenes and sounds of 70s, 80s and 90s New Zealand. At university, Karin’s
unquenchable thirst for knowledge and social justice see her embark on her first research project, a
decolonial study of Louisiana Creole, research that cements her future as an anti-racist, activist scholar.
Forever questioning the master narratives, digging deeper and peeling back layers to expose what lies hidden beneath and behind, Karin reminds us that history and trauma are all around us, ingrained in our lives, etched into our landscapes and at the very foundations of our cities and infrastructure. When she begins to examine her own family stories, rooted in colonisation and working-class struggle and embedded in the national histories of Aotearoa and Australia, she uncovers astonishing inter-generational palimpsests and starts to grasp the importance of listening to her ghosts.
More details can be found here.
Congratulations Karin!