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The Harriet Tubman Institute

Writing Workshop: In Search of our Mothers’ Archives

We are extending an invitation to the complimentary closing program for the exhibition — a writing workshop with Toronto-based Zimbabwean writer Chido Muchemwa — March 4th, 2026 from 2:30-4:30pm. This is a hybrid event, with limited spots for virtual and in-person participation.

Please read on for more details, and reply to this email to mnmendez@my.yorku.ca to register or if you have any questions.

Please join us in-person or on Zoom for this two-hour writing workshop, designed as the complimentary closing program to the exhibition Mukadzi, Musha, Rugare: Woman, Home, Freedom, currently on view at The Harriet Tubman Institute.

This workshop is led by Toronto-based writer and scholar, Chido Muchemwa, and places participants’ personal histories in active conversation with the exhibition, asking how meaning is made, who gets to make it, and why Black women, particularly African women and mothers, so often fall out of archives and historical narratives.

Date: March 4th, 2:30-4:30pm (Lunch will be provided and served at 2pm)

Location: Suite 321, 80 York Blvd, York University (The Harriet Tubman Institute Resource Centre), and on Zoom

What to bring: Participants are asked to bring a childhood photograph that defines womanhood or motherhood for them as core of the workshop is a guided writing activity in which participants work with their photographs to develop mini narratives as they become the makers of what musha mukadzi means.

To register for in-person or virtual participation, please email Mila Mendez, mnmendez@my.yorku.ca. 

Chido Muchemwa is a writer and academic from Harare. Her short stories have previously appeared in Augur, Baltimore Review, Catapult, FIYAH, Lolwe, and Prism International amongst others. Muchemwa is the author of Who Will Bury You And Other Stories listed by the Boston Globe, Open Country Mag and Brittle Paper as one of the best books of 2024. Muchemwa is a University of Toronto Scarborough postdoctoral fellow (2025-27) in the Department of English. She holds a PhD in Information from the University of Toronto.