In their book, None of the Above, Travis Alabanza writes: “When you are someone that falls outside of categories in so many ways, a lot of things are said to you. You often become a place to hold other people’s confusion. You become a site for their internal process to become external. Your lack of ability to fit into the boxes they are trying to place you in provokes an almost word-vomit response.” As a writer, a performer and theatre maker, Alabanza took on these phrases, seven of them, and turned them into a book. This process is one journalist and author Naeeda Aurangzeb has also been doing by publishing two books, 365 dagen Nederlander (365 days as a Dutch) and Hé, Lekker Ding! 365 dagen vrouw (Hey Sweet Thing! 365 Days as a Woman) taking the things people have said to her because of how she looks, who she is or may represent in people’s imaginations, to reclaim her own voice in the face of the racism and sexism all these phrases and comments hold.

Sorab Roustayar, profound moderator and mediator, founder of FiteQlub, a community for queer people living in the Netherlands, will bring Alabanza and Aurangzeb’s voices and experiences together, and in-between readings by the authors from their books, will enter in a conversation where gender, race, sexuality and so much more intersect. The audience will be invited to participate and share their own experiences of all the things people say to us in the attempt to fit us in boxes.