Letters from the dead = Cartas de los muertos
Honor Ford-Smith's Letters from the Dead was presented as a part of the 7th Encuentro of the Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics, held in August of 2009 in Bogotá, Colombia, under the title 'Staging Citizenship: Cultural Rights in the Americas.' This 10-day event brought together activism, scholarship, and art around the themes of legacies, memories, struggles, and frontiers of citizenship. 'Letters from the Dead' began as a collectively-created image event commemorating the murder of thousands of youth killed in inner city violence in Toronto's Caribbean diaspora. The event comprised a silent funeral procession in the street. Bringing together the messages from the dead and media reports on violence, and the losses of living, the performance traced one woman's attempt to bury her grandson and convey his demands for justice in the present. Ford-Smith is Assistant Professor in Community and Environmental Arts, at the Faculty of Environmental Studies, York University. She is best known for her work as the founding Artistic Director of the Sistren Theatre Collective in Jamaica. Her publications include 3 Jamaican Plays 1976-1986; Lionheart Gal: Life stories of Jamaican Women (with the Sistren collective); and My Mother's Last Dance: An anthology of poems. Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics