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Necessary Truths: Fatima Bhutto and Mona Eltahawy

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Event Status

There’s a million reasons why we’re told to keep quiet on difficult subjects: propriety and decorum, convention and status, fear of retribution. When women try to introduce nuance into certain public debates, it doesn’t usually go well for them. Western media conglomerates are often more interested in protecting power than interrogating it. If a woman offers an unvarnished analysis of power structures, or a contrary view, it’s often framed as ugly, inappropriate or ungrateful.

Two of the world’s most fearless, most honest, most forthright voices unpick the challenges and pitfalls of a life of truth.

In conversation with Sisonke Msimang.

This event will be Auslan interpreted.

Featuring

Fatima Bhutto

Fatima Bhutto was born in Kabul, Afghanistan and grew up between Syria and Pakistan. She is the author of several books, both fiction and nonfiction. Her debut novel, The Shadow of the Crescent Moon, was long listed for the Bailey’s Women’s Prize for Fiction and the memoir about her father’s... Read more

Mona Eltahawy

‘The most subversive thing a woman can do is talk about her life as if it really matters.’ No voice coming out of the Arab Spring was as urgent and essential as Mona Eltahawy’s. Her new book, The Seven Necessary Sins for Women and Girls, is an incendiary call to arms from a journalist define... Read more

Sisonke Msimang

Sisonke Msimang is the author of Always Another Country: A memoir of exile and home and The Resurrection of Winnie Mandela: A biography of survival. She is a South African writer whose work is focussed on race, gender and democracy. She has written for a range of international publications including... Read more

Location

Melbourne Town Hall

90-120 Swanston Street Melbourne Victoria 3000

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The Wheeler Centre acknowledges the Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung people of the Kulin Nation as the Traditional Owners of the land on which the Centre stands. We acknowledge and pay our respects to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and their Elders, past and present, as the custodians of the world’s oldest continuous living culture.