Prep School: Hot Brown Honey

Get ready to #DecolonizeAndMoisturize — Hot Brown Honey make their hotly-anticipated US debut at NYU Skirball following award-winning performances around the globe, from the Sydney Opera House to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival.

Six powerful and talented First Nations women — from Aboriginal Australian, Samoan, Tongan, Indonesian and South African backgrounds — perform their sensational blend of cabaret featuring hip-hop, dance, poetry, comedy, circus, striptease, and song. Set in a dazzling beehive with lighting, music and costumes to rival Beyoncé at Madison Square Garden, Hot Brown Honey pushes boundaries and defies labels. It is equal parts theatrical spectacular and social activism, presented by Australia’s infamous Briefs Factory.

Read more in Gayatri Gopinath’s Indefinite Article.

How many times do they have to say it? – let us count the ways! Hot Brown Honey has a “Don’t Touch My Hair” number. It’s also the basis of a song from Solange (see below), another song from Fuck U Pay Us, a kids’ book, an adults’ book, a video game, a meme, an award-winning spoken word piece, and several performance art works that reiterate this often-violated boundary. Hear Busty Beatz and Lisa Fa’alafi talk more about this in their Office Hours video!

Readings to accompany Gayatri Gopinath’s Indefinite Article:

Roxane Gay, Bad Feminist: Essays. Harper Perennial, 2014.

Cherríe Moraga and Gloria Anzaldúa, editors, This Bridge Called My Back, Fourth Edition: Writings by Radical Women of Color. SUNY Press, 2015.

Samhita Mukhopadhyay and Kate Harding, Nasty Women: Feminism, Resistance, and Revolution in Trump’s America. Picador, 2017.

Imani Perry, Vexy Thing: On Gender and Liberation. Duke University Press, 2018.

Kim Solga, Theatre and Feminism. Palgrave Macmillan, 2013.

Decolonize This Place is an action-oriented movement centering around Indigenous struggle, Black liberation, free Palestine, global wage workers and de-gentrification. Facilitated by MTL+ Collective. #decolonizethisplace