‘I don’t want to die with my / hands up / or / legs open’ are the only words under the title Memoirs of a Slave & Queer Person in the anthology of poems Collective Amnesia. The author of those words, the South African poet and playwright Koleka Putuma, was born in 1993, the year before the ‘rainbow nation’ held its first democratic elections. And while she has no personal memories of the apartheid era, she strongly senses and observes the collective wounds and uses her words to fight against the continuing social evils of gender-based violence, the patriarchy, homophobia, and racism. In her performative reading in English and isiXhosa created especially for the Wiener Festwochen, she focuses on the ways in which she addresses her audience. Within an intimate setting she questions the roles of narrator and listener against the backdrop of a complex colonialist legacy. And while Putuma’s exploration of personal, collective and political reminiscence is touching in its ruthlessness, it does offer a glimpse of tremendous hopes for South Africa’s young generation.