In today's episode, Tolu Agbelusi speaks with Dr Jumoke Verissimo — poet, novelist and lecturer at the Toronto Metropolitan University. Her first novel was nominated for international awards, including the RSL Ondaatje Prize and the Edinburgh Festival First Book Award. It won the Aidoo-Snyder Book Prize.Jumoke is also the author of three poetry collections, a children’s book and she has co-authored a poetry anthology.

In this conversation we talk strength, expectations, marriage, divorce, the untraditional path and its consequences, and we explore questions about what it really means to choose yourself when everyone around you has already written your story? From the first question, Jumoke redefines a strong woman as someone who knows her own name - not just the one she was given, but the one she calls herself back to when the world tries to shrink her. She traces that idea through the women who shaped her, especially her grandmother and mother, whose agency, boldness, and refusal to disappear left lasting marks on how she moves through the world and the learnings and unlearnings that have shaped her becoming.

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The music for Unlearning Strongwoman is created by Shade Joseph
Locating Strongwoman, a poetry collection by Tolu Agbelusi can be purchased here.

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