Who gets to choose?

She spoke about being a Black woman in academia, about raising her children and having to leave them behind on the continent, and about seeing Clarissa as a mother.

Her three children were in the cinema that evening.

And sometimes, we become the people who enforce them on each other…

At our AfroSwissters conversation following CLARISSA at the Zurich Film Festival, Dr. Emma Mavodza spoke about expectations. Her reflection stayed with us and opened a wider question about how we judge one another across the different worlds we inhabit.

We may know how painful it is to have our belonging questioned, yet question another woman’s belonging because of whom she loves, the language she speaks, whether she has children or how she raises them.

Sometimes these judgements carry a fear of losing something precious: language, memory, connection. But that fear can become a demand that another person preserve an entire culture through her individual choices.

Knowing our histories matters. So does asking what made that knowledge available, or kept it out of reach. What was passed down? What was silenced? What did a family feel it had to leave behind to give its children a chance?

We cannot assume every gap in someone’s knowledge is indifference. Or that every adaptation is rejection.

There must be room to learn without humiliation, to reconnect without proving our authenticity, and to question an expectation without being accused of abandoning our roots.

Thank you, Dr. Emma, for sharing so generously. These are conversations we need, including about the expectations we place on each other.

“Every single person was performing, from being happy, to having made good choices, to actors reliving a story originated a hundred years ago.”

Interpellation is a useful term from social and political theory describing how we come to recognise ourselves through the identities and expectations society places upon us.

Certain we have made the right choices, even when we are struggling, questioning or grieving the lives we might have lived.

Having Serafina Andrew in our AfroSwissters conversation following CLARISSA at the Zurich Film Festival was precious. Reflecting on the characters, she drew attention to how everyone was performing: happiness, composure, reassurance, satisfaction with their choices.

Her reading invited us to ask where those performances appear in our own lives.

1. When does “I’m fine” become something we say before we have even considered how we feel?
2. How much room do we give ourselves to admit uncertainty after committing to a particular path?
3. And how often do we reward someone’s polished appearance while overlooking what it takes to maintain it?

Thank you, Serafina Andrew, for helping us look more closely and to everyone who joined us in Zürich for making space to reflect together.

“So essentially when you’re in corporate environments or in spaces where, as a Black person or a Black woman, you’re not received well, you become a chameleon essentially, right? So you shift who you are, how you present yourself. And I think it’s interesting, because of my upbringing, I always brought forth some authentic piece of myself, even in corporate spaces, even if it wasn’t received well.”

“And I think, as you watch the film, you see the discomfort, right, with Clarissa and the other characters when they don’t show up as their authentic selves, and the longing that you see in their eyes of really the decisions that—or the path, should I say, that they chose—they chose not to take.”