Posts Tagged ‘womanhood’
Strength, Courage and Wisdom: The Makings of an Urban Teacher
In this article, Carla Cherry shares her personal and professional evolution, divulging how she helps students actualize their humanity and academic success. It’s an intimate look into the makings of an English/Language Arts teacher, and the difference she is trying to make in students’ lives within the NYC educational system.
Fundamental to her familial fabric was first acquiring knowledge of self. Her mother taught her to read at age 2 ½. Later obtaining his Bachelor’s degree in Black Studies, Carla’s father surrounded the family with resources centering on African and African American culture and history. For Carla, school “didn’t really emphasize African American heritage,” becoming an impetus to read widely, serving as “a catalyst for me to get into education, to share what I learned.”
Carla as an infant.
Several experiences ministered to Carla choosing teaching as a profession. Attending a lecture with her father, Carla met Dr. Adelaide Sanford, Vice Chancellor Emeritus of the New York State Board of Regents. A phone conversation with Dr. Sanford informed Carla’s ethos of giving back to the community. “I always admired her activism in the field of education.” “If she could give the best of herself to our youth, why couldn’t I do the same?” She tutored while a teenage member of Co-op City chapter’s of the National Council of Negro Women. She attended the prestigious and selective Bronx High School of Science, but recalls constantly defending people of color in class discussions; such insularity she did not want her future students enduring. Attending Spelman College further inspired her career choice. She credits two professors, Dr. Donna Akiba Harper and Dr. Judy Gebre-Hiwet, with her literary acculturation and instigating within her the passion to hone her writing, namely to be exact with her words and employ the formal writing process in designing well supported effective arguments.
Carla in high school.
In 1993, Carla graduated Spelman College, returning to NYC as a single mom working part time. Enrolling at New York University in 1995, she completed her Masters of Arts in Public Education, and began teaching in 1996. Serving 17 years within the NYC Department of Education, she taught in middle and high schools, currently teaching at Innovations Diploma Plus High School, a transfer high school model targeting over-aged and under-credited students with educational opportunities and social support.
Carla’s graduation picture from Spelman College.
Pedagogically, Carla fosters and facilitates students in (1) interpreting texts, (2) using writing as a tool, and (3) participating within various audiences and media. Students are (1) generating group reactions to quotes excerpted from a text, (2) selecting quotes and interpreting them individually in double entry journals, (3) responding on a discussion blog about themes within a class text, (4) creating monologues in the persona of a character, (5) crafting a poetic character sketch modeled on William Carlos William’s “This is Just to Say,” (6) arranging in small groups fragmented excerpts from a novel into dada poems, (7) discussing characters’ actions from different perspectives and (8) constructing and writing formal literary arguments. Her methods prove successful; annually the majority of her students pass the NYS ELA Regents exam. It’s important to note the particular population with whom Carla is experiencing success; the majority of her students have previously dropped out of other high schools, range in age from their late teens to early twenties, and have struggled with reading and writing.
Students read books “they would not otherwise be exposed to.” Included are African American titles A Piece of Cake, Sula, and My Daddy was a Numbers Runner, international works The Kite Runner and Persepolis, and books about tense family dynamics including When I Was Puerto Rican and Bastard out of Carolina. Her classroom is a place to explore and contemplate the world from divergent points of view, some not always palatable or comfortable, sometimes winning students over, sometimes experiencing their opposition. “If I am preparing them for the real world, you can’t always run away from something you might think is boring or uncomfortable. Sometimes you have to face it and open yourself up to other ideas and other people.”
Carla’s classroom brokers connections across social and technological contexts. Recently she participated in a study group offered by the New York City Writing Project using the online forum “Youth Voices.” Her students discussed class texts, recorded their writing processes and progress, and shared obstacles encountered in their research, culminating in posting their essays online “so that they can see the evidence of the work they have done in a public space.”
Also a poet, writing poetry is “a way for me to understand my life, the world and my place in it.” Inspired by her cousin giving her a book of self-published poetry after her father’s death, Carla self-published her first book, Gnat Feathers and Butterfly Wings, and a compilation CD with her cousin, jazz musician Eric McPherson. Proceeds from her book and promotional goods were donated to charity.
As a single mom Carla balanced work with remaining active in her son’s school activities while cultivating his evolving writing interests. He was a semi-finalist in the Knicks annual poetry slam, a student in a black male initiative supporting young men writing poetry resulting in a performance at the Nuyorican Café, and a participant in the Urban Word Summer Institute. He is currently a sophomore at SUNY Purchase.
Carla learned from her family to use knowledge to emancipate self and others, which she is passing on onto her son and generations of students. Hers is an unsung narrative.
Below are two poems from Carla’s publication Gnat Feathers & Butterfly Wings (© 2008, Wasteland Press).
To order Carla’s book and audio CD, please go to Amazon.com or BN.com.
Anike
As she models her
brand new brand name
dress
in the mirror,
I watch.
She gives her chocolate brown
kinky twists
a toss
so her hair can fly.
She spins
to feel the wisp of cool air
against her butterscotch skin.
She smiles
and calls herself
the cutest girl in the world.
Shielding my eyes
from her sparkling aura
I shake my head
and my index finger.
Stop that, I say
Thinking modesty is noble.
But then again,
As I look at my life
I am glad my niece believes.
Maybe she won’t end up
with her self-esteem all black and blue.
The Anteroom
Baby, I must tell you
I can’t be the type
to eat
a plum, or a
peach,
or an apple
before it’s ripe.
Though you desire my dainty meats,
a pure heart and motive is what I seek.
Love is more than honeyed lickings,
strawberry cream,
and appetent sighs.
I do want you,
but caress my thoughts before my thighs.
Fondle my aspirations,
my breasts won’t disappear.
The small of back can wait,
knead my doubts and fears.
Explore my world,
Then, take me to heaven.
This article is also featured in the recent online edition of Bronze Magazine (except photos and poetry). Please go to http://bronzemagonline.com/strength-courage-and-wisdom-the-makings-of-an-urban-teacher/
Fellowship at 2012 NYC Fashion Week: Sisters Celebrating Sisters
2012 NYC Fashion Week, Sarahi Showcase
Traditionally, NYC Fashion Week impressed me as an exclusive event. The crème de la crème reveal and show off their dernier cri and totemic textiles. A-listers are awash in worship from photographic flashes. The illuminati offer praises like flowers at feet of fellow elite. Those of us who have no anchor in the sea of high fashion will rely on the reports of the select few broadcasts allowed harbor and entrance. Somehow this particular Thursday night the stars aligned, because I was given access to such a coveted event. What I would encounter was far from the images and assumption I initially endorsed.
At first, I felt as though I was “crashing” a selective soiree. Working in education, and now a stay at home mother expecting my second child, such pathways rarely make for opportune interceptions with the chic. It seemed irregular, unlikely, to sit alongside “those” who regularly lined the esteemed runways. I wasn’t a blip on the elite radar of the houses of Monique Lhuillier, Michael Kors or Ralph Lauren, so being a guest would be out of the question, or even the assistant of esteemed stylists like Rachel Zoe. Benevolently, my ticket came from the heart of a sister editor-in-chief, Shawn Chavis, whose gratitude to her staff and writers at Bronze Magazine gave us entre into this grand world, landing us at the premiere Sarahi showcase at RSVP, which her magazine was sponsoring.
I didn’t go to be seen, temporarily immortalized in this week’s tabloids and newspapers. Attending for me was an honor, as I would meet fellow women writers, affix flesh and blood to online personality, whose fellowship was garnered mostly online due to our remote locations. Working as a contributing writing and copy editor, Shawn has given me unwonted space to transition from working as teacher, professor and consultant to fulfill my aspiration of freelance writing. Emelyn Stuart and I had been corresponding on Facebook in anticipation of our initial meeting; first reading about her in a previous issue of Bronze Magazine, her humor and receptive spirit made me excited to meet her. And others I would meet would become for me tour guides of dreams, unexpected touchstones of inner pain and the strength, courage, and wisdom that emanate from them.
I arrived early to RSVP, erring on the side of caution give my long commute by public transportation. I landed midst the hum of tuxedoed wait staff priming final touches and hoisting the poster of sponsors, greeters coordinating guest lists, and models practicing their many faces and stances. Photographers, writers, and support staff buzzed away in preparatory tasks. The hive was hopping. Yet in the mix I felt welcomed, as people scooting by me made time to pause, smile, and even say hello. They provided a welcoming atmosphere I was not expecting.
By chance one such smile came from VJ Ameliaismore, a local celebrity. Instantly we started talking. She became a guide for me that evening, not just for that event but as an example of someone diligently on a mission and living to fulfill a dream. Like a big sister to little sister, she shared her life history and work, funny stories about being the single mom of a son, and a short retrospective on her life as a teacher, model, and business woman. It was her intimate sharing against the backdrop of the busyness and buzz that powered the pondering of my own dreams, and hollowing a space to wish her dreams their deserved flight and height. Quickly disappearing backstage, she pointed me to where Shawn was. I embarked to meet my colleague and mentor.
I recognized Shawn as soon as I saw her. Her spirit casts an aura of welcome and receptivity, even while standing still in the chaos of patrons indulging the open bar and cocktail hour (alas, how I craved sampling the sushi and steak tartare). She shared her gratitude for the work I’ve done, particularly for last-minute copy editing. Here I was meeting the fountainhead of an inspirational magazine thanking ME. It was wondrous and wonderful to finally meet her, feeling far more like homecoming. Her grace and warmth were contagious, enveloping me, like dwelling in the company of a dear friend.
Me and Shawn Chavis, Editor-in-Chief, Bronze Magazine
Standing right next to her was Emelyn Stuart. I recognized her by the cool confidence she exudes, and in the striped dress (inside joke). Media magnate and prolific film producer, her repertoire and resume remained quiet within her. She didn’t greet me with her resume or reputation. She doesn’t bring them into our conversation at all. Instead, she bestows an authentic invitation to learn about one another. In fact, she asks ME questions that have me since thinking about where and how I want to direct my future endeavors in writing. She offered advice on how to gain sponsorship for my blog to build its readership and reputation. Being around her was like being released to explore and dig deeper into one’s dreams, and I found myself rattling off all that I wanted to be and become in this new chapter of my career and life. She offered her phone number and suggested we keep in touch.
Even more than what I learned from the outpour of sisters like Shawn and Emelyn is learning what we can offer others. Before the start of the show, acclaimed model and business woman Njie Sabik informed us of the silent auction going on as well, with proceeds going to two charitable organizations. She bravely shared that one was created in tribute to her mother; the designer, Suzette Kelly, earlier informed us Njie just buried her mother days before the show. Such character to remain committed to participating in the show and disclosing such a personal tragedy marks Njie as evidence of resilience. After the show, she was swept away for a barrage of photos. Between the flashes I snuck in to share with her how I was moved by her celebration of her mother. I told how I too lost my mother to cancer (AML), and offered for inspiration that eventually better days do come. I relayed my admiration of how brave she was to disclose what she did, staying committed to the show, and that I believed her mother would be proud of her for her endeavors. Njie embraced me in a long understanding hug. It felt fulfilling to know that even in sorrow there is the root of kinship, and that even as strangers we can each be healing balm for one another. Not to mention her power on a runway. She rips it with methodical presentation and presence. She owns a room when she enters, and leaves it mesmerized when she exits.
Njie Sabik at 2012 NYC Fashion Week
Njie Sabik at 2012 NYC Fashion Week
The House of Sarahi definitely lit up the night. Yet this night proved more to be a walk through the power and potential of sisterhood than retinal reverie. Amelia, Shawn, Emelyn and Njie irradiated my soul. I returned home, and in high heels and red swing dress, resumed the maternal work of feeding my son and rocking him to sleep. Out of sheer gratitude I thanked my husband who worked from home that day for this once in a lifetime opportunity.
Back to work . . .inspired.
Suzette Kelly (far left), designer of Sarahi, with models
Woman, Wife and Mother: An Evolving Intersection
As a new wife and mother, I experience jubilee and juggling. I receive constant fulfillment yet expend breath and best guesses finishing challenges. I stand in an intersection of past/present/future. This triptych daily positions me to negotiate divergent responsibilities, prior obligations and new undertakings, obliging yet unifying them all. Hopefully my intimacies, epiphanies, and suggestions offer footstools into your own possibilities.
Professionally, my career spans being a high school ELA teacher, assistant professor, educational consultant and fledging writer. I’ve enjoyed fortune and mistakes on my own terms. Then I met my husband, and with him anticipated blessings and unanticipated compromises unfolded.
While single, we’ve been rightfully selfish with our lives, doing what we want to do when we want to do it and how we want to do it. Consequently, we’ve come to this goal of incorporating flesh and future with dissimilar tastes in music, different perspectives on how to manage money, divergent expectations on best uses of time, disparate notions around planning for the future, etc. You get the picture. It’s a clumsy walk. Now we have to collaborate in little and big decisions. Identify priorities for our relationship and agree upon ways to fulfill them. Budget money for immediate expenses AND allocate it toward long term goals. Learn what it means to be a partner while also honoring and providing space for each other’s independence. Accept flaws and mistakes without later using them as leverage against one another. Work in partnership raising our first child.
After the marital oath of cleaving as one flesh, our grafted limbs are evolving to thrive collaboratively. But we have to share in creating answers. What do we need to do to prepare for the future? What are the best approaches to solve problems? How do we nurture interdependence and maintain independence? What do we lose in order to gain? As woman AND wife, a pressing duality I constantly address is how to prosper us AND be true to myself?
Here’s what I am discovering . . .
Being a wife is a new role. Grow into it. You don’t simply step into the role of a wife like a wedding dress. You evolve to fulfill it. So don’t clutter your growth into this role with assumptions or comparisons. Let go of ideals and magazine exaggerations. Explore and invest in what it means for you to be a wife for yourself and to your partner. Give yourself permission and time to experience, evaluate, and even revise accordingly.
Dialogue. Devote space and time to broach and disclose fears, concerns, and dilemmas. Uncomfortable topics that go undiscussed (like money, parenting, a need for quality time alone, etc.) eventually fester. Making them transparent and in the open diffuses their cancerous potential to leach from your primary goal to grow as allies. But be careful not to bulldoze your partner into meetings. While I thought it efficient to have weekly conference calls while planning our wedding—agenda and all—my husband thought these meetings at times were burdensome overkill.
Preserve what is personally important to you. It is very easy (and implicitly expected) that upon becoming a wife to sacrifice personal happiness for the “greater good” of marriage and family. Yet if you are not happy, what fruits of yourself can you offer others? Marriage and parenting WILL impact the amount of time you can devote to fulfilling your passions, but foregoing and sacrificing them altogether is an unhealthy solution. Find ways to maintain what feeds your core. While now I have to fit writing in between schedules I have with my child and husband (like writing blogs at 2am), doing so maintains my wholeness.
I wasn’t tooled with blueprints to structure this marriage. At times I fray at edges and peel at margins. What I am learning from the daily walk is that I unfold the answers through folded hands (physical and spiritual). Surrendering to the unfolding helps me carry out and accomplish these roles as best I can.
(This blogpost occurs simultaneously in MBAMOM’s May 2012 newsletter as “Wife and Mother: What I Wonder”).
(Artwork: Woman Thinking by Stephanie Clair)
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Looking into the Mirror of a Great Divide: How We Define Ourselves at the Expense of Others
In the recent blogpost titled “Black Canadian Like Me,” Alyson Renaldo suggests a contention between kindred of shared borders—Black Canadians and African Americans. She recycles the “Black on Black” crime of people of shared African Diasporic experience disliking and distancing themselves from each other, suggesting that cultural cluelessness, assimilation, and a “lack of reaching back” are the culprits. Yet in irritating this sore spot, is the author as much its promoter as its clarifier, when suggesting for example that artist Jill Scott’s lyrical references to southern cuisine lacks insight and makes her “clueless” to the cultural experiences of others, and the questions of one Los Angeles bus driver to the author about her diction suggest a universal myopia about African Americans’ understandings of other Black people’s experiences? The post below explores the dimensions of Alyson’s argument, and the larger dilemma underlying the building and burning of bridges between Diasporic neighbors.
In the blogpost “Black Canadian Like Me” (http://www.theroot.com/views/black-canadian-me), Alyson Renaldo begins her blog sharing reflections on recently attending a Jill Scott concert in Canada with her friends. She admires Jill’s music, acknowledging it as a portal into an intimate portrait of Jill, a translation of personal experiences churned into lyrical public artifacts. But it is this very translation that the author criticizes and deems offensive, indicting Jill’s song on a platform larger than her lyrics, holds the song responsible for more than self-expression. Going wider and deeper than classifying Jill’s performance as creative expression, she critiques both Jill’s song and herself as an artist. Because Alyson and her friends were unfamiliar with some of the cuisine and cultural references Jill made, the author alludes to Jill’s references to food as intentionally excluding her and her friends from what “should” have been a concert of inclusivity. What follows are some of the comments Alyson and her friends recorded that they made during this collision between concert and culture:
“[Jill’s] just setting up her experience in the song. But, well, not really, because she’s asking us to reminisce with her, which means we’re supposed to know about these strange food combinations, too,” and “I don’t think they know there are others on the planet with them. Maybe she thinks the ‘c’ in ‘Canada’ really stands for ‘Carolinas.’”
Alyson and her friends situate Jill’s center of gravity—how she defines herself—as off-putting, and in the author’s words, “cultural cluelessness.” She asserts that Jill Scott disappointedly does not take into consideration the experiences of others within her music; talking about certain cuisine indicative of her personal story excludes and alienates others’ stories.
The author seems to be going in the direction of a cultural indictment of a personal cuisine-based affinity upheld by Jill Scott, but is using Jill’s lyrics to lead into a generalized assumption of African Americans’ cultural insularity and exclusivity. She interprets Jill’s culinary affinity as an elitist cultural alienation of them, foregrounding it as an implication of African Americans as a whole as being culturally insular and ignorant. Using the concert as a case study, the author devotes the rest of the blog to also discussing a premise that African-Americans participate in a self-erasure, with this erasure being a non-affiliation with Diasporic cultural and historical roots, a cultural and ethnic myopia whereby border kindred of African Descent (in this case, Canadians) are disregarded, and an unhealthy assimilation and absorption of Americana.
The blog has me pondering, and probably will continue so long after writing my own response. Trying best to not write tit for tat, there is something about this supposition of Diasporic and border-based betrayal that does not rest well. I think the blogpost offers a personal account about how one’s identity is formed and informed by historical and contemporary factors, but makes an over-sweeping judgment to about African Americans as a whole that further contributes fuel to an artificial fight between the survivors of the African Diaspora.
Jill Didn’t Mean No Harm
Alyson frames Jill Scott as “culturally clueless” because of the particular culinary references and cultural connections she made with them. However, artists work on dual planes—they express a particularized experience, yet do so in forums which universalize its access and foster new possibilities. This universal access then allows as audience to experience the framing of life as offered by the artist, while also being invited to innovate upon this offering by infusing or revising pieces of ourselves (writing a poem or essay based on a phrase, creating a dance to complement it, reminisce about a time in our lives when we experienced similar, do research, ask questions, etc.). As another option, we can accept it at face value as just an artist’s interpretation and integrate nothing of ourselves. To Jill’s defense (and credit), while not everyone grows up on collard greens and candied sweets as particularized by her, there is a universal human experience induced by food and tradition. As a universal human experience, food and tradition are intertwined, used to commemorate universally human events such as rites of passage, marriage, birth, death, war, victory, etc.
Art is an invitation into a dialogue between artist and audience, a conversation amongst a multiplicity of beings. I am a fan of Jill Scott in how she mixes a range of emotions, experiences and epiphanies with a range of sounds. I admire how John Coltrane translates the divine into music. Composer Clint Mansell generates a soundtrack for the movie “Requiem for a Dream” that gives a sound to addition—razor-backed, uncomfortable, brooding and solemn. Teena Marie blends guitar and a multi-octave range to make compelling narratives. Jamiroquai makes the ethereal into the audible. Astrud Gilberto sings Bossa Nova in a way that is seductive, soothing, and sonorous. Yo-Yo Ma interprets the history of countries and different music genres, rendering them into melded art. I may not come from where each of these musicians comes from, nor agree with or enjoy everything each produces. But, as artists do, by siphoning their specific experience through music, each provides a medium and channel into the human experience. So to argue as Alyson does that someone’s articulation of his/her experience to be deliberately excluding of others is a huge stretch. To suggest that an artist’s singular articulation is endemic of a practice of a people is erroneous and unfair condemnation (I’ll return back to this point in the next section).
We have to be careful of criticizing musicians (and perhaps artists in general) as cultural elitists and exclusionists because of references made in a song, and just because some references are unfamiliar or outside the realm of our specific experience. My husband is a fan of several artists old and new, across a span of artists (from Aretha to Adele, from The Dramatics to The Bee Gees, from David Ruffin to Neil Diamond), eras (60’s, 70’s, 80’s), genres (movie scores to classic soul) and continents (here and abroad). Several of my nieces love and grew up with Soca and Calypso. Being around them has made for me a feeling of discomfort because I am unfamiliar with many of the songs and artists they like. However, it is the intersection of our shared lives as family, amidst this discomfort, that has encouraged me to ask questions and penetrate past a wall of assumed difference, rather than be immobilized by assumption. Lesson learned and the take-away. . .while there is variance in our musical tastes, and in the content and cultural referencing of the artists, these things make for more of an opportunity for curiosity than criticism or Diasporic cutterage.
Cultural identity Held Up in the Mirrors of Others’ Eyes
Another argument made in Alyson’s blog is that there people of the Diaspora living in the United States “process race and community differently than I” (than Canadian-located counterparts), that there was a kind of oppression-and-assimilation orientation that people of color in the United States hold compared to brethren living in Canada. She recounts her rearing as being entrenched with identifying with the country of family origin, not current location (in this case, Canada where she was born as a citizen). She makes several statements that that end. For example, she states, “It was absolutely unheard of for anyone of my ilk to claim Canada,” which “absolutely everything, from your table etiquette to your family pride — was figuratively imported,” and “my generation’s parents knew what they were doing when they insisted on raising us as West Indians first, rather than Canadian.”
There are two implications here. One is that only Alyson has been reared this way, suggesting that no other immigrant groups, whether voluntary or involuntary, practice the preservation and continuation of old traditions in new lands and inculcate their young to do the same. Second, the author implies that if someone was not raised this same isolationistic way, that she or he is deprived and “less than.” The author’s mentioning of how she “processes race and community” seems more as to bring separative distinction and deliberate distancing to the forefront. Isn’t this the very same elitism she accuses Jill Scott of doing during the concert? Jill is accused of cultural elitism because of references made in a song and “promoted” during a concert, yet the same indictment could be imposed here for the author’s elevation of how she was raised to the assumed absence of how others are not.
The author also makes an interesting statement about her rearing and interracial interactions between white Canadians and people of the African Diaspora living in Canada. She asserts that in Canada there is a deliberate distancing between those of West Indian descent and the white majority:
“. . . when it comes to my sense of self, I am Caribbean, first and foremost.
As a child of West Indian immigrants, I clearly remember my dual development: When I stepped outside, my whole world was white, with a smattering of minorities, but when I returned home, the inverse was true. My entire socialization mirrored black and West Indian sensibilities, training that took place exclusively at home. All standards of progress were set by West Indian ideals. None of this was explicitly articulated so much as explicitly modeled.
It could be reasonably surmised that, as a community, we were invested in privacy and distance from the majority. Our parents interacted with the country’s white majority as one would a friendly co-worker. Caucasians were not our parents’ superiors — nor were they subordinate. They were just people with whom our parents were expected to spend significant amounts of time. Granted, if, while using this model, they forged friendships, that was cool, but it wasn’t even remotely necessary or solicited. Also, it goes without saying that it was not considered wise to bring one’s ‘work’ home . . .
Perhaps my generation’s parents knew what they were doing when they insisted on raising us as West Indians first, rather than Canadian. It meant that we could live within a white majority but not be defined by that majority. This is how our parents ensured our solid foundation, which was and remains an immeasurable gift.”
The author states that confining interactions with “the majority” to just work is optimal to preserving one’s own identity. To contrast, it is the lack of preserving this distance, and the adoption of “the American dream” has led to the “downfall” of African Americans. Based on a brief stint of living and going to school in Los Angeles, talking with a bus driver, and attending a party with white Americans, Alyson contends her understandings about African Americans grew. Yet the author condescending argument has holes as well, as evinced by judgmental comments about African Americans such as, “[there is the] American cultural norm of self-absorption, a trait to which black Americans are not immune,” “I had completely forgotten is that black Americans are still Americans, a nation firm in its resolve that no person or thing on this planet — or in the heavens — matters as much as they do.”
Alyson doesn’t specifically state what she believes as the way African American process race and community, and its differences to her own. By implication, it seems from the blogpost she is suggesting “differently” that being born as an African American means to be devoid of rearing that infuses one’s growing up with being brought up with history, knowledge and traditions of Diasporic ancestry. It also implies an over-willingness to accept, acculturate and assimilate the beliefs and practices of the dominant culture—to the consequential cheapening of one’s self. Her premise also implies that to assimilate some beliefs, to participate in some of the traditions of one’s current country of citizenship, is a cheapening of oneself. Suggesting that there was not enough “resistance” placed against integration and “hence the consequence” of marginalization. As if to suggest living a daily strategic negotiation on multiple fronts of culture, employment, and identity are demeaning work.
However, growing up through multiplicity does not lead to mediocrity or “selling out.” As a woman of color born and living in the United States, I am the culmination of various experiences. Some directly rooted in my ancestry and ancestral history, others based on living within a multi-ethnic nation. Some experiences I have had through growing up in a major urban city, others from visiting family in rural settings. Some experiences are inherited from family traditions, others from sharing in the family experiences of others. Some experiences as a woman of color have helped me ascend, other have been afflictions because of people’s assumptions based on my gender and ethnicity. Who we come to be is more mosaic than singular.
I was not sure of the connections the author makes between Jill Scott’s music, her cultural upbringing, and suppositions about the African American experience. What I did read and note was the tracing of experiences distancing, in both the author’s accounts and also in my experience as the audience. A conventional conclusion that summarizes talking points wouldn’t do justice here, because what Alyson’s blogpost brings up is the need for more dialogue and conversation across borders of land and heart.
For now, for us all I offer one suggestion. Stop placing so much responsibility on a song, and so little on introspection.
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This Woman’s Work: Blueprints for Being an Activist
Article for Bronze Magazine Anniversary Issue, November/December 2011
“a woman sleeps as if
tomorrow a war will begin” –Vera Pavlova
For the 1st anniversary of Bronze Magazine (http://bronzemagonline.com), I wrote this article about the activism of women locally and internationally. It highlights the involvement and investment of women in efforts spanning environmental issues, AIDS awareness, exposing governmental tyranny, educational advocacy, self- defense, and helping adolescents plan and prepare for the future. But the writing of the article extends beyond telling about the impact of others. I wrote it to also make a space for women to tell about the work they too are doing here and abroad. To create an open space to share what each of us is doing to make a difference, move others from margin to center, contemplate a new world, and speak truth to power.
I invite you to share at the end of this article the ways YOU are making a difference.
This morning I began drafting a blog about inspirational women, meditating on the living examples of goodness they harbor and promote. Sister friends like Carla, Lisa, Kim, Karen, and Tonya balancing being employed while raising children, pursuing personal passions, and nurturing relationships. Deceased kindred such as my mother, aunt, and Eastern Star sisters who by bloodline and example exemplify what can become possible. Their dreams pulse now in my blood. Writers like Audre Lorde who used words as tools to instigate and liberate, playwrights like Adrienne Kennedy who pushed the envelope of drama by tooling it to shed light into our darknesses.
Yet, I indulge the guilty pleasure of watching the “Basketball Wives” and “Real Housewives” franchises, with a fascination of what will happen next. Who will be the next woman to get a drink and then a fist thrown at her, a knife of venomous words plunged into her back, a secret put on blast, a reputation that gets her thrown under the bus? But the actions and outcomes are cyclical. After repetitiously seeing the cattiness, two-facedness, duplicitous fidelity, diabolical planning, sinister backstabbing, escalating emotional bullying and downright physical assault, a command for different is radiating from inside. I think I reached the saturation point of witnessing the broadcast of the basest aspect of womanhood, and the affirmation such shows get in the forms of high viewership and popularity. But at the end of the hour, what can be culled as inspiration, a lesson, experience, strategy or new outlook that we can glean from watching women on “reality” shows to then employ and emulate in our life’s work? There’s nothing new to learn. So why are such shows so popular, despite the nullifying examples of trailblazing women like Suzanne Malveaux, Shirley Chisholm, Cathy Hughes, Rolonda Watts, Malkia Amala Cyril, Shirley Ceasar, Ursula Burns, Cicely Tyson, Carol Jenkins, Donna Brazile, and Oprah Winfrey?
I’ve reached critical mass. A new reaction beside distaste and criticism has to occur. Taking my own thoughts off the video editing floor, I am taking some time to reflect on the tenacity, resilience, spirituality, talent, sacrifice, perseverance, benevolence, insight, intelligence, ferocity, savvy, surrender and serenity harbored and offered by the phenomenal women who use breath other than to bait kindred for public entertainment.
What’s absent needs to be made present.
Marypat Hector, in her recent blog “Enough with the Basketball Wives, Let’s Talk About Girl Power!” identifies several young women under the age of 30 whose lives, while not regularly broadcast on a weekly show, demonstrate contributions that confirm what our hands can produce when devoted to creating change instead of slapping a woman in the face and decimating her worth.[1] Through her efforts as Executive Director of the National Action Network and contributing writer to NewsOne, Tamika D. Mallory uses her life and access to media outlets to bring to light issues of violence within the African-American community. [2] Dominique Sharpton, Director of Membership for the National Action Network and thespian, employs her talents resulting in the near tripling of the organization’s membership from since 2008, producing her father’s syndicated radio show, organizing marches and rallies, and creating several venues and outlets for youth to express their artistic talents.[3] CNN Hero, activist, author, college student and black belt martial artist Dallas Jessup, after seeing in the news the abduction of a young girl, uses her life to train girls and women in self defense through self-produced training videos, and facilitating activism within communities worldwide through her non-profit organization Just Yell Fire.[4] Environmental activist and author Jordan Howard, after being a Green Ambassador at Environmental Charter High School in Los Angeles, employs her learning of the environment to galvanize others, using films to educate the masses about sustainable living, leading and organizing the Rise Above Plastics “Student Speaker Series” that trains fellow young adults in how to promote environmental awareness within their communities, and participating in various political and social forums to raise awareness.[5] AIDS activist and living testimony Hydeia Broadbent devotes her life experience of being born with HIV to inform the consciousness of the world, doing so through several national television and radio shows, educational institutions, panel discussions as well as international forums.[6]
And I’d also like to add three friends who are phenomenal agents of change. Angela Romans, currently Senior Advisor on Education to the Mayor of Providence, Rhode Island, has worked in several community-based organizations, public schools, institutions of higher education, and political capacities to avail post-secondary opportunities to under-represented youth. [7] Tiffany Gardner is founder and Executive Director of One World Foundation, whose mission is to “develop and place young leaders (18 to 25) from poor and under-represented backgrounds in human rights and development service projects and prepare them for leadership in both the public and private sectors.”[8] Finally, school social worker and aspiring graduate student Tonetta Collins works tirelessly in her job and within the organization CEOKids of Atlanta,[9] describing her work within the organization as helping “middle schoolers connect what they are learning in school to real world professions . . . to realize their gifts and strengths at a time when their need for social acceptance becomes important and connect them to the possibilities.”
One-sentence descriptions of the activists mentioned here is an injustice to their selfless intentions and the impact of their work. But, the point of naming each of these women and their contributions is to reclaim space polluted with exaggerated and bifurcating depictions of women: we have media suggesting the “best” of women that is “worthy” of extensive broadcast is the banality of the actions of a select few. Such is the purpose, nature, and success of the beast of media. These depictions are a concerted effort toward what Martha Lauzen in the documentary “Miss Representation” associates with symbolic annihilation. Such depictions kill off a consciousness of what we are and can be other than what is harmfully exaggerated, intentionally manufactured and massively promulgated. “You can’t be what you can’t see,” admonishes Marian Wright Edelman, which is the point of why some media images of women prevail over others. Ask any of us to rattle off the names of “Basketball Wives” or “Real Housewives” cast women and it can be done in a heartbeat. Ask us to name several contemporary female activists and HOW they pave roads for change, and we become mute, having first to do some research.
The women activists in this text counter such toxic messaging. They are mirrors for us to see an affirmative reflection of ourselves, a counter portrayal illustrating purposeful uses of our breath in harnessing and improving others’ lives. Mirrors that empower by deflecting the media’s transmission and instead position us to learn blueprints for making a difference locally and abroad. The “reality show” wives are not extraordinary, nor are the scope and mission of these activists outside your own reach.
The message? Contemplate how you ARE doing something to make the lives of others better. Why is such reflection essential to our personal and collective existence? Because the stakes are really high. Consider the following statistics from the documentary “Miss Representation” that illustrates the disparity in the portrayal of women, and their actual presence in important media and political junctures:[10]
- Only 16% of protagonists in films are female
- Women comprise only 16% of all film writers, directors, producers, cinematographers and editors
- Women own only 5.8% of all television stations and 6% of radio stations
- Only 7% of directors and 10% of film writers are women
- Women make up 51% of the U.S. population but only 17% of Congress
- 34 women have ever served as governors in the United States, compared to 2,319 men
- 67 countries worldwide have had female presidents or prime ministers, of which the United States is not one of them
In examining yourself, what are the ways YOU make a difference in households, schools, communities, and board rooms, regardless if the cameras are on our off? And are you broadcasting how you make a difference in the lives of others? Who knows the work you are doing, and using YOU as an exemplar to learn how to replicate and reproduce it?
Broadening the scope of women’s work worldwide, we recently received news of three remarkable women who do not spend their time pointing out flaws and blasting the past of cast members. Instead, they present palms and hearts to other women as allies to prove themselves embraceable. Use their voices for the protection of others. Offer themselves as sister kindred to create chains of solidarity. Harness and promote others’ potential. Their lives are proffered as a sacrificial proof of commitment. While their stories have taken time to traverse the oceans (regrettably), Leymah Gbowee mobilizes Liberian women to save their country from 14 years of civil strife, Yemenite Tawakkul Karman protests for the rights of journalists and an end to governmental corruption, and Liberian President Ellie Johnson Sirleaf works in private and public sectors to rebuild her beloved country. They have, now with the Nobel Peace Prize announcement, arrived on the shores of our minds, and I hope garnering a growing consciousness for what WE can do as women across borders physical and mental.
Leymah Gbowee is no stranger to the afflictions of war. She was no stranger to children conscripted as toy soldiers and catalysts for a war they did not create but would be responsible for exploitatively executing (literally). Young girls and women’s bodies were commoditized and brutally raped as the spoils of war. Hunger became the crown and shroud of too many Liberians, with starved children dropping as new food for flies. Liberia’s history of strife between warmongering avaricious warlords and a corrupt political regime, and its consequences, were regrettably familiar. Having had enough, she prayed for peace. While pregnant with her third child, she incubated perseverance and persistence, birthing them into a mobilization of women to “pray the devil back to hell.”[11]
Leymah’s first work was transcending assumptions of religious difference, moving beyond fears of diluting or soiling each another’s religious dispositions. Armed with conviction, and with fellow women compatriots, she mobilized Liberian Christian and Muslim women to unite in the commerce of peace, forging a collective effort to pressure religious leaders to advocate for them. These “Market Women,” the fodder for what would later become WIPNET (Women in Peacebuilding Network), initially began protesting in white garments along roadsides of the presidential convoy so their need for peace would glare against the tinted windows. Despite refusals of an audience, they continued to peacefully protest until gaining an audience with President Charles Taylor on April 23, 2003. Stepping on fear and into faith, Leymah vocalized their position statement, presenting their entreaty for peace within their nation.
Following this presentation, peace talks between then President Taylor and warring factions convened in Accra, Ghana. Assembling with Liberian women refugees already in Accra, together with the women of WIPNET they stood guard, daily vigilant to the need for peace in their country and attentively watching the warlords and President make progress to this end. After almost two months of posturing and jockeying for position, and seeing these men enjoy comforts of hospitality they did not enjoy while in the bushes, the women were fed up, and on July 21, 2003, they locked arms around the building where the talks were being held, asserting they will not allow the men to leave until the peace talks were taken seriously, and a treaty was reached. Subsequently the talks changed in tone, content, and direction, and with eyes and pressure offered from the international world (the threat of funding to be cut off), change came. Taylor was exiled to Nigeria, and a transitional government was installed. WIPNET under Leymah’s efforts, knowing that the struggle for peace just began, returned working in their communities to promote the reconciliation of Liberia (such as forgiving the rebel soldiers), as well as educating their people about the candidates, laying the fodder for sister Nobel Peace Prize recipient Ellen Johnson Sirleaf in 2006 to become the first woman elected President of Liberia.
I write about Leymah’s work in detail because I had never heard of her, this radical mission or the incredible accomplishments of these Liberia women, until the announcement of the Nobel Peace Prize and then watching the documentary “Pray the Devil Back to Hell” in October. Given this event occurred in 2003, not knowing this women’s work until eight years later sheds a glaring spotlight on my own myopia. Saturated with too many colonizing lies. You may have experienced the same. The rallying of women who were stripped of all things but belief, makes the rallying of women over futile gossip and fabricated drama pale in comparison. On the “Racialicious” Blog, a blog about the intersections of race and pop culture, guest contributor RVCBard writes about such colonization in his post “Fandom and its Hatred of Black Women Characters.”[12] Both the author and several dozen respondents commiserated that the syndicated depictions of women of color lack multi-dimensionality, yet fans’ responses have been vitriol. To this observation, RVCBard comments that “what gets overlooked is that the way these characters are hated [referencing such characters as Martha Jones, Tara Thornton, Guinevere, and Mercedes Jones] happens in a particularly racialized and gendered way that echoes a lot of stereotypes about Black women.”[13] I would add to this mix “reality” shows as well. Why aren’t there reality shows about women activists? It has to go beyond simply the suppositions of low ratings and lack of interest.
Again, this is why it is so important that the work you do to make change be made known, not for kudos, but as catalysts and models for others illustrating what can be done, and how. It took an announcement for such work to get a blip on my radar. I am sure I am not alone. Imagine if we pipelined the work we were each doing to improve the community and world, this information would not be exceptional. Maybe I/we need to develop better pipelines to disseminate such information and role models to one another, instead of allowing the media to spoon-feed us stereotypes and caricatures.
Speaking of pipelines, Leymah’s work was the precedent and ground-laying foundation for another of the Nobel Peace Prize sisters. Kindred recipient and countrywoman Ellie Johnson Sirleaf, veteran in finance and political sectors, has grounded her life’s work in nation building. Out of ashes of political strife and economic exploitation, she has been instrumental in helping the phoenix of Liberia resurrect itself. She has served in several professional and political capacities and women’s groups. Over the span of four decades, she served as one of the founding members of the International Institute for Women in Political Leadership Liberia’s Minister of Finance, President of the Liberian Bank for Development and Investment (LBDI), Vice President of CITICORP’s Africa Regional Office in Nairobi, Senior Loan Officer at the World Bank, Vice President for Equator Bank, and under the auspice of United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) served as Assistant Administrator and Director of its Regional Bureau of Africa with the rank of Assistant Secretary-General of the United Nations.[14] Even in exile she continued to work on initiatives to prosper Liberia, such as the Kormah Development and Investment Corporation, a venture capital vehicle for African entrepreneurs, and Measuagoon, a Liberian non-profit community development organization that helps war-devastated rural communities rebuild themselves (doing such things as in 2002 bringing improved sanitation to the Budumbura Camp, a Liberian refugee camp in Ghana), and later subsidizing young girls’ education.[15] In 2003, when Charles Taylor was exiled and the National Transitional Government of Liberia was formed, she served as Chairperson of the Governance Reform Commission, later culminating in her unprecedented inauguration on January 16, 2006 as the first female President of Liberia. In this role, she continued her work to build her country by fostering relationships with regional partners and the international community, and attracting resources to rebuild Liberia’s infrastructure. She has served on several peace-oriented, women-empowerment, transcontinental and international initiatives, and several advisory boards.
The Nobel Peace Prize trinity of transformation and advocacy is completed by Yemenite Tawakkul Karman. Journalist and human rights advocate, she has taken the tools of her voice and beliefs to collect and rally her people. The catalyst for her activism was the refusal of the government to intervene in the intentional displacement of 30 families expelled from their village so the land could be given to a tribal leader close to the president. [16] To quote Karman, “They never responded to one of our demands. It made it clear to me that this regime must fall.” Engaged in weekly protests since 2007, she established with compatriots a tent camp called “Change Square” in the heart of the capital city of Sanaa.[17] [18] Tawakkul’s work has been advocating for the rights of free press, heading such groups as “Women Journalists Without Chains.” Additional advocacy entails demanding the release of political prisoners, unabashed protest against granting immunity to corrupt government officials of the current political regime, and being a parliament member of Al-Islah (Yemeni Congregation for Reform).[19] She is both the first Yemenite and Arab woman to receive the award.
An intersection shared by all three NPP peacemakers is that they are all mothers. They harness motherhood as motivation for their activism, an impetus for improving the lives of all, especially children, so they may inherit a better world. Interestingly enough, motherhood is also a commonality shared with their “reality wives” counterparts. The difference? The former spend no time labeling potential comrades in struggle as “worthless,” “jumpoffs,” or “crazy.” They do not use voice or venom to garner and manufacture divisiveness, alienate or create pariahs from potential allies. These activists employ their energies and talents to fling fists not at one another over fabricated squabbles, but to the brick and mortar of oppression. They use their talents to channel and forge new pathways and possibilities. They neither agitate already festering wounds, nor manufacture confrontations that last across episodes and legacies. Leymah demonstrates cunning ability to transcend potential religious barriers to unite Christian and Muslim women in a united front. Tawakkul transcends religious, political, and gender barriers to unite the voices of Yemeni people into one. President Sirleaf integrates various initiatives to unite a people torn by war into a country of prosperity.
We don’t have to act like Pavlovian dogs conditioned to respond as “trained” by the media. We can bolster and build instead of berate or resign ourselves to pre-determined corners. Our national sheroes and three Nobel Peace Prize Women Warriors offer alternative routes and models for how to use our energies and resources to magnify ours’ and other’s talents to promote and harness them all for the greater good of both gender and world. “Miss Representation” closes with offering suggestions for how we can do such work . . .
- Stop scrutinizing each other
- Support media that champions accomplished women
- Boycott media that objectifies and degrades women
- Write your own stores and create your own media about powerful women in non-traditional roles
- Be a mentor to others
- May we all make empowering other women and girls a priority
I am hoping at the end of this blog you will take a moment to write and post the ways you ARE an agent of change. This could be the pipeline that activates change in others. Please share your blueprints, and pass them down to us. After reading a draft of this article, my friend/brother/mentor John Jenkins shared with me its impact on him:
“I am inspired to use my mouth and mind to spread good positive stories of impact so that others gain the authority to do the same. And in this way we will begin to create the counter-narrative of who we are, who women are in this world.”
In tribute to the women mentioned, and to you, I share an original poem about the fortitude of women activists and the lessons they pass down.
What’s absent needs to be made present.
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The North Star (for All Women Warriors)
Women/compose the North Star/
visions from their minds endow its shine,
spin its beams wide from dreams, and give it
pulsation from ripening affirmations/
transmitting from the transcended to the transcending.
Sojourner Truth and Harriet Tubman
clasped my hand,
hastening through muck and
dark with steeled steering
commanding, “Follow the North Star!”
They relay my hand to Ida B. Wells
who deposits pen into palm
to record and remind the world of
the law of lynching and lynching of the law
decreeing, “Write the North Star!”
She brought me to meet
Mary McCloud Bethune
who conferred my other hand with a degree/
with mind elevated, emancipated by education
declaring, “Teach others of the North Star!”
Then Zora Neale Hurston
visited on campus/
witnessing pen and degree advised
“Now chile, youz got th’ degree fo’ da mind,
Now ya need th’ degree of da spirit!”
Took me down to the muck,
shaking me all through
the Everglades, New Orleans, and the islands,
sprinkling dialects and roots on me,
and unleashing, “Conjure with the North Star!”
Then Septima Clark came forging through/
recruiting/opening Citizenship schools that
farm the word and grow the vote/
took me into crowded back rooms with adult kin
compelling, “Build a bridge for others to the North Star!”
She carried me West to Angela Davis
who on sidewalk and in classroom
vivified the intersections of politics, activism and
the responsibility of change/
escorting me from California to Cuba,
showing me light in prison of industry and prism of mind/
shot my arm straight into the sky
demanding, “Protest in the name of the North Star!”
Then we traipsed to the dance festival where
Judith Jamison and the troupe
were summoning the spirits.
The Black Swan, as principal, in principle
pulled me to her stage,
and sauntered, careened, strutted, sundered
my body into chanting limbs
proclaiming, “Dance in the name of the North Star!”
I pirouetted cross country back to the East
where Ntozake Shange recognized
who I was to be/
put a stage in my mouth/
sat me over roses to menstruate/
performing surgery on the art of me/
expunging mayhem/so it emote milk/
uttering, “Make language/for the North Star!”
Then my mother,
forger of road from heaven to earth
put her hand to her stomach
feeling for my hand back,
beckoning, “Now, come. Be the North Star!”
© TMY 2011
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It’s my sincere hope that this article/blogpost serve as a launching pad for others to become inspired by learning and familiarizing themselves about the work YOU do, to use YOU as a role model, and to contact YOU to contribute. If this blogpost does this, then the mission of writing this article has been fulfilled. To post your response, click the red “Response” button at the end of this blogpost. A box will appear where you can type in your response.
Write a response in which you share about what organization (or movement) you support, what communities you work within and support, the work you do, the impact you are trying to make, and contact information for more details. Whether in your home or across the world, whether large or small scale, telling what you do MATTERS. Amplifying your contributions to the audience hear helps us learn and grow.
Finally, please also support Bronze Magazine by purchasing a print or digital copy of the anniversary issue. The founder and editor-in-chief, Shawn Chavis, created the magazine to invigorate and affirm fellow women and their work. It is replete with information, insight, and inspiration. The site is http://bit.ly/vtX9U6.
To read others’ responses, or to write your own, please click the red button below.
To read previous posts scroll to bottom right side of page and click on title of choice.
[11] “Pray the Devil Back to Hell” is a documentary profiling Ms. Gbowee and the work of several women to bring peace to Liberia. http://praythedevilbacktohell.com/
[12] http://www.racialicious.com/2011/10/18/fandom-and-its-hatred-of-black-women-characters/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Racialicious+%28Racialicious+-+the+intersection+of+race+and+pop+culture%29&utm_content=Google+Reader
[13] http://www.racialicious.com/2011/10/18/fandom-and-its-hatred-of-black-women-characters/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Racialicious+%28Racialicious+-+the+intersection+of+race+and+pop+culture%29&utm_content=Google+Reader and http://arsmarginal.wordpress.com/2011/10/07/fandom-hates-black-women/
[15] http://www.theperspective.org/measuagoon.html, http://www.modernghana.com/news/24579/1/facility-to-benefit-25000-refugees-at-budumbura-ca.html, and http://www.liberianeducationtrust.org/grants.htm.
An Autobiography of Poetry, Part 2: The Skin On Which This Poetry Is Written
In Part 1, the last blogpost, I chronicled how I came to write poetry. In this second installment, poems from different periods in my life are shared. The three poems are “Menstruation is My Poetry,” “One the Knees,” and “Scratched Scalp.” Each one is prefaced with an introduction of how and why it came into existence. Poems have become my life and death, the way I reflect on a moment in life, as well as how I bring chapters of experience to a close. The writing of them serves as a mirror, a way to see what I am thinking and feeling, to draw it out, and make sense of the pieces. To what grand puzzle do the pieces fit? What product am I to generate from processing this experience?
Menstruation is My Poetry
Menstruation is My Poetry is in homage to my mother and the struggle of women to reclaim their bodies from self-rejection, abnegation and humiliation. She was an advocate of my body as beautiful simply in its being. But as years passed, and the influences of what is beautiful in the culture began to seep in, I began questioning my worth. Does the shape of my hips, length of my hair, color of my skin, deem me worthy of recognition and affection? In addition, circling around my head and heart were several derogatory remarks about women and menstruation. That because of “raging hormones” we unhinge and become sensitive, hysterical, or overbearing. For five days each month we become physically and emotional incapacitated. References to the flow itself also become misnomers. Menstruation was paralleled with being “on the rag,” “the curse,” and “the monthly” as something nasty, fishy, and painful. And something that could “get you in trouble” (signaling to a young girl you are now able to get pregnant). As these influences converged on my body and psyche, I felt foreign to myself.
In my early 20s, there are books I read confirming my mother’s words of my body and myself transcending definitions given to it by the outside world. Hygieia: A Woman’s Herbal by Jeannine Parvati, is a book of herbal remedies for myriad conditions, but one section that really touched me was about menstruation. There were inspirational writings, herbal remedies for cramping, as well as step-by-step methods for even making one’s own herbal pads. Its’ approach to the body was of healing rather than concealing or even outright rejection. Reading the book helped me feel a comfort with my body. It was not a thing to fight against. Another book was WomenWho Run with Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype by Clarissa Pinkola Estes. Reading stories, folklore and fairy tales from diverse cultures about the transcendental aspects of woman’s body and spirit gave me language and concepts I could use as tools against commercial exploration, stereotypes of limitations, or pornographic exaggerations
Such readings gave me a lens into thinking of my body not as something to shun, but a portal, a conduit, a channel of possibilities physical and spiritual. Informed by part spiritual beliefs and archetypes, I began understanding a woman’s body as being given the great gift of translating the divine into flesh. So the poem delves into how a woman’s menstruation is not an incapacitation, but a channel through which hers and others’ lives emerge.
Menstruation is my prophecy/
a talking galaxy/
a legacy of language/
that spells in five days/
the incarnation of my uterus/intone homage to
my hallowed region/my carnal reason that I am the gate
through which God passes to replicate/
my menses/my sabbath/reminds me
that for five days I am five Sundays/
recording the way woman can
translate God’s wishes into flesh/
menses is my monthly rest and test
to assess my worthiness to remain
the conjurer of children/the immortal porthole
where spirit becomes son
and man becomes multiple.
My menses are my melodies/
songs of ascending harmonies
brewing visions into victory/
chanting red rivers of inspiration
refocus my rejuvenation
for when I shall weave black nations/
each cramp a chord plucked for cleansing/
my holy harp mellowing/
the gospel of cyclical hatching/
not a dirge but to drench/
cause being a woman is a religious experience.
One day/summoned to reproduce reproduction/
bring forth the gift of giving
from orbits of eggs
housed primordial in pyramid/
eventually to rotate and spin
rhythms of moons named Malcolm and Iyesha.
So each month I prepare
as the old souls come down me/
remind me that
the health and heritage of my body and my people
are preserved by the shedding/
that these five days of closure and cleansing
anoint me before my journey.
My cycle
is conversation with the universe,
imagining and rehearsing
made possible by
inheritance of a temple of eggs
buried at conception/
resurrected each month to return me from woman back to the edge of genesis/
to transport child into destiny and embrace.
My menses announces my arrival
from bud to bloom/
nothingness to anew/
a gift of life to giver of life/
its language narrates my legacy of
dawning from girl to retiring as elder/
my adoption into a sacred tribe/
my rites of passage.
My menses is the museum of my mind/
a curator of my mission/
in destiny and divinity
my menstruation is my poetry/
my period of honest speech
where I write on cotton
the record of what has
stretched and strengthened,
strained and strangled me/
hindered my horizon from spreading/
my birthright from telling.
Each falling vessel
speaks of the vision
that someday
my rightful place under the sun will come/
the capture and collection of my closure
on cotton tells me so/yet the collection
has wrongfully been called abominable/
assessed evil and unclean
yet the period is so much more than the symptoms/
it/is not an it/but of her/of me/a gift/
it is a mine/it is mine/
it is our course and not our curse/
comes from the place where we are
first/songs commune in my canal.
© 2011 TMY
On the Knees, Where Macedonia was Born
“On the Knees, Where Macedonia was Born” emanated from a request from a fellow church member asking me to write something to commemorate Macedonia Baptist Church’s 70th Anniversary. To write the poem, I interviewed people to learn about the church’s history. But I also wanted to conjure images of growing something from nothing, literally. Recently I had seen the movie “Beloved” produced by Jonathan Demme. While not a fan of the movie’s interpretation compared to Morrison’s masterpiece, one scene that resonated with me was the one in which the slaves congregated and “held church” around a tree stump in the wilderness. During slavery religious expression was institutionally restricted; our ancestors were stealthily resilient in practicing worship and maintaining tradition. This history and the offshoot of resilience upheld by the founders of Macedonia became the impetus for writing the poem.
Later I found a book that chronicled the making of the movie through several writings and images, of which the aforementioned image was one. As well, other images in the book showed the suppression of speaking (the use of iron bits) and the affliction imposed as a consequence of knowing too much (whip marks on the back), moved me too (so much that I incorporated them within the actual performance of the poem at the anniversary service). Another movie that impacted me was “Sankofa” produced by Haile Gerima Mypheduh Films, Inc. Its Anka- inspired admonition of remembering the past in order to move forward, and its message liberating oneself regardless of the cost, resonated with me. The movies and images and history of the church converge in the poem. Being able to show the resilience and perseverance of a people is its impetus.
I. Call to Worship
Buildings can stand yet not be churches,
but churches can stand without four walls.
This is the beauty of being a displaced African.
Congregations constellated
long before the privilege of walls,
inching into communion/
embarking The Word,
championing The Word,
seeds in vacuum contradicting circumstance.
This church was built
not by the purchase of materials
but under the hems of walkers
worshipping/wielding/being wounded for The Word
across contesting border, armored indignation and soil called soul.
The beauty of unfolding a Christian.
Preaching and converting/
engaging the mouth/symbolizing the body/
the Word recruits/
a building does not recruit heights and hundreds/
only belief of being and doing more
than the confines of skin and persecution does.
The beauty of becoming faithful.
Mouths harboring Savior’s song/
cleansing others’ feet/
affliction churning blood into silt/
casualties of inflicted misery/unyielding mercy.
The lineage of crusaders/
forging for us following as their longitudinal kin.
Tree barks would not betray our trust.
Our seedbed, sown deep in the forest,
builds from tree-stumped pulpits/rooted seats,
burning bush/instruments of hands voices feet/
domed by dusk/ canopies of leaves poring/ submitting with us/together
braiding arms,
rotating around common axis,
catalyzing Sovereignty/
unbraiding mouths/ soldered iron bit melts from tongue/
vaulting victory/ nooses lost their intimidation in strangling our praise/
rallying redemption/ shackles fraying into thread/
power indwelling/inhabiting us.
The beauty of purchasing life with purpose. Not by sight.
II. Sermon
By surrendering hollowed
the skies within the founders’ hearts
clustered stars/ bodies as galvanizing vessels/
souls/portholes through which the harvest unfurled.
The beauty of relationship churning into religion.
Robed with word and will,
the charge now/again/is to
build and be built.
The Word,
as with ancestors,
as with our founders,
unsheathes the vocal blade,
readies earthen fields.
So with the charge of building a church,
the founders did not look first
for a building or lot
but inward for the first brick.
Their hands wrapped not around
building tools of cement or dirt
but around bibles and palms/
to pour Macedonia’s foundation.
Cords of the throat built the church/
seedling expeditions
of prayers watering the ground,
and with focused fertility, Macedonia was born.
Walking on visions,
pews and pulpit were
carved from ancient ambition/
Bricks were mortared word by word /
All purchased by prayer.
III. Benediction
The church has crossed the marking of a new century.
Their words and works echo in remarkable sculptures/
Full now with newer warriors and students seeking sight.
Their convictions our footbridges,
the old voices recruit again/spinning His threads,
Continuing us in the cloth/
their elixir, continual/
His Will, realizing . . .
© 2011 TMY
Scratched Scalp
“Scratched Scalp” evolved from an experience of writing and performing with a group of phenomenally talented women. From different religious, ethnic backgrounds and sexual orientations, we converged to create a multi-poem performance piece that galvanized our experiences as women. I was honored to be adopted into the group, as the women had already worked together previously. This poem was originally written as a call and response, with the group and me alternating reading portions of it.
In terms of content, the struggle with hair is one experienced by so many women of color. Used to relegate the beauty of women (thinking of the song “Good and Bad Hair” from Spike Lee’s movie “School Daze”), hair has become for many of us a prism and prison. But instead of capturing the affliction of how we maintain and wear our hair, I wanted to get to the root of the matter (pun intended). I wanted to explore how doing one’s hair is a loving and sensory act, whereby the touching of the scalp makes for deeper relationships between the conjurer and the conjured. My mother enjoyed when I did her hair. There was a pride I felt in Mom wanting me to do her hair, from washing to relaxing to styling. There was an honor I felt that she trusted her locks in her daughter’s hand. I felt both great honor and great responsibility. Before every shampooing, Mom always asked me to scratch her scalp. And like clockwork she fell instantly to sleep. Her sharing this vulnerability with me as her daughter touched my heart, still resonating in my memories.
Another tradition of hair Mommy and I was styling my hair (as do many mothers and daughters). As a little girl, the ritual of daily bringing all my instruments, grease, bows and ribbons, then cuddling between her thighs as she parted and plaited my hair, was the foundation for how I would later reciprocate such loving care back to her. This bond of how she cared for me, and later I for her, harnessed my hands to weave these memories into the tapestry of a poem that follows.
The poem is also tinged with a somewhat erotic goal. I have always wanted a man to scratch my scalp and comb my hair. I wanted him, metaphorically and literally, to transcend and share in this original bonding ritual typically enjoyed by mothers and daughters. I’ve had the experience of men doing my hair (those that worked in salons and those in relationships), but these experiences did not reach the trust and intimacy I was looking to emulate (to no fault of their own).
Housed in hut of long legs,
head to thigh, summoned
as when my mom did this little girl’s hair/
the surgeon began.
First at top and center of crown,
small pressure and with complete patience/
toning with surgical precision/he began
pulling the ACE comb
down the middle
top to nape, ear to ear/
prepping
to deforest my scalp.
Descending, spreading into sections,
clamping them securely,
long searching fingers
parse the four parts/
lifting roots,
upturning soil
follicle by follicle
loosing from each mouth/snow to fall/
scratching briskly/is hypnotic/
eyes closing/slumber imminent/
loosening/the Milky Way/is shedding
on toweled shoulders.
Warm thigh
cushions face and balances neck/while he
continues purposeful walk through garden
to dislodge debris/the scalp the instrument of conjuring.
This cartographer
with each combed dissection
unzipped astral bodies,
unveiling the troubles of the galaxy/
investigating and discerning with each gentle rake/
supernovas of stress/excited and confessional,
collapse ghosts onto awaiting bath towel/
goose bumps profess in explosive force/to finally
expel pimpled planets.
Shooting stars,
careening comets,
roaming meteors
dashing star ice/
luring me into a cosmic trance,
crumbling into communion caused by his hands.
Galactic children now all disarray, I am
unwoven from the debris of my scalp and hair/
some places are scratched raw and a little bleeding,
but I am returned a scalp that can breathe again.
Sleep cued to cure the journey, such that
when I tried to speak
moons
fell out
of my mouth.
© 2011 TMY
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The Stretching of Marks: An Autobiography of Poetry
This two-part installation is a chronicle of how and why I started writing. I’ve been stuck in a rut about where to go and what to do with my poetry. This first part is a kind of exploration into the origins of what has inspired me to write poetry. I’m thinking the second part will be the sharing of the actual poems that have come out of this experience . . .
A Mecca of Stretch Marks
Many rivers
scroll down
the bend of my waist,
cross my oceanic pelvis/as
wild wandering weeds
simmering under the canopy
of dark-splashed vines/as
lightning bolts raging/
scattering and bursting
blooming luminescent fission/
in thighed sky/in
whose plenitude
number paths
for each ovarian warrior
who will spring/to travel/
ready for war/for
branching
babies’ fingers to trace upward
to consult with kindred/that
leap and bend
with conjured joy
when his tongue
traces them/in
whose mud phoenixes
return to die,
submerge, and arise . . .
yes/
so many rivers/are
transporting from my stomach,
rimming my pelvis,
anchoring my thighs/that
I should not
think myself less
than being a delta
for all.
© 2011 TMY
My body is changing rapidly in this seventh month. My stomach expands and stretches outward to accommodate the inner life. Especially present and growing are stretch marks. Some darkly punctuated, others sprawling blond and blooming branches, they serve as symbols of incubation, as road maps my body travels to a destination called birth. Their traversing exhibits the migration of life from inception to conception to initiation to commencement to resurrection. They are wrongfully regarded as an abomination to be creamed and oiled away.
The stretching of marks has been a metaphor dancing in my head for awhile, which catalyzed into a life reflection emanating from a recent conversation with my husband. He shared an epiphany about a relative’s behavior, namely how this relative’s consistent behaviors seemed attributable to the yearning to fit in, to be publically recognized and affirmed, even if the reflection is retracted in shallow waters. Every time we visit, we’re propositioned to attend some form or another of a social networking event, but it takes the pulling teeth to get him to come to family events. This metaphor and epiphany have stuck with me for weeks. They seem to capture my “poetry rut.” I finished my most recent manuscript this past December, but have only done two poetry performances so far this year. It used to be different.
In earnest I want my poetry to be a public artifact, something sought after and devoured. When I step onstage, I want the inhabitants in thunderous applause, the cacophony of noise and adulation brimming to overflow, and when I exit, riotous applause becomes my cape. Who doesn’t want fame and acclaim for performing and publishing? Well, that’s what my ego wants. The humble side of me wants nothing more than simply to share a truth about what walking this life for four decades has been like. To offer poems as mirrors for kinfolk to bear witness to reflections chosen and not chosen.
My husband’s analysis of my relative actually compelled me to turn my pen inward, to publish what was within that was “off.” I told him that the last visit with this relative made me contemplate my own selfishness harboring deep in the marrow of my intentions and ambitions doing open mics and finally (hopefully) publishing. And this kind of coveting is keeping me from being both at peace and blooming.
I’m trying to be careful in not summoning an audience to a pity party, but maybe pondering together the origins of my poetry can help me move back to center, recalibrate my intentions. There is a gift inside me, and yet competition. How to get it out, and for whom? To what end? The one answer I do know is that I do not want to fade to black.
Poetry began for me in part from immersing in worlds harnessed by stories and sounds, reading mythology (Norse Gods and Giants), the “make your own adventure” books, the Bible and Prince songs. Each steered my imaginings about what could be written about, encompassing love, battles of good versus evil, and the explanation for how and why things came into existence. I tried my hand at emulation. Writing Battle sequences, tragic love stories (my 6th grade teacher called my mom about what I was being “exposed” to at home because of a Prince-inspired story I wrote): these were some of the topical curiosities my pen sprawled on paper.
My most private lamentations were housed within my adolescent journals. Conventional complaints and suspirations about growing up, crushes on teachers, the lack of a boyfriend, the quirks of bodily changes, friends, parents, etc. I churned them into poems as a way to translate my feelings into “high art” (I smile). Pivotal to harvesting “my art” was my mother’s making of me to study the dictionary. After doing my teachers’ homework, Mom assigned me to learn new words and apply them to the compositions she made me write as practice. While tedious, thank God she made me study the dictionary, because it became (ironically) a source of inspiration. The rote conquest for vocabulary expansion and SAT success led to something wonderful. A love of words. A love of words as portals. The possibilities that could unfold from just one word, the worlds that could unfold from one word (some of my poetic experimentations include words like tohubohu).
Add to this lexical love an attraction to particular sounds. I tried practicing how to put words to the sweeping music, and mimic the depth and complexities of the emotions enveloped in the songs. Teena Marie’s lamentations of love living and dying like supernovas in songs such as “Casanova Brown,” “Out on a Limb,” and “Yes Indeed.” Riveting and haunting classical recordings such as Rachmaninoff’s Concerto No. 2, and Prelude in C-Sharp, Op.3, No. 2. Playing clarinet in the Bronx Borough-Wide Bands and Orchestras for years also inspired my ears and written translations. Music such as “Caravan” by Duke Ellington, and “1812 Overture” claimed my attention, fueling future wants to learn how to capture such sweeps and battles of sounds in words. This fondness of words fused with the aforementioned themes, and the sounds and power of music that make for it a resounding and resonating force to be reckoned with, collided on paper. My first canvas. Yet to this day, this poetry still slumbers in journals, old loose leaf binders, and manuscripts dusking, untouched by the light of others’ eyes.
Ms. Kupperman-Guinals, my high school drama teacher, gave me a text that would catalyze my writing. For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow is Enuf inspired me, serving as the impetus for my writing ever since. Its first person accounts lathered me in symbolic colors and confrontational narratives. Reading them gave me a lens into how poetry could be a tool to exhume life experiences, excavate silenced testimonies and allegories about gender, ethnicity, and life itself, and place them on the stage of paper for us to witness. As part homage/part apprenticeship/part discipleship, I began situating my poetry as an instrument of social change and self-exploration.
During my undergraduate stage, my evolution as a writer was spawned by gravitating toward the literary, religious, feminist, and African-American literature surrounding me. I read The Qur’an cover to cover to conceptualize other interpretations of what is God and how best to obey God (while toggling being a Christian minister and medical doctor–I aspired to become a doctor of the spirit and doctor of the body). Toni Morrison’s and Maxine Hong Kingston’s melding of mystique and the female experience left me spellbound, imprinting upon me transcendental interpretations of what it means to be a woman of color. Morrison’s novel Beloved captured my heart and ambition for how to capture and synthesize the human and holy experiences of Black people on paper. Her classical writing, her mastery of a complex register that is both brutal to read and yet both beautiful and brilliant to witness, made me want to be just like her. Kingston’s The Woman Warrior fascinated me in how myth and memoir marry and divorced throughout one’s life. I read Shange’s other poetry collections (The Love Space Demands, A Daughter’s Geography, Ridin’ the Moon in Texas) as mentor texts for how to write about experience. Reading This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color showed me how words can serve as an impetus and agent of change. A class on Romantic writers connected me with Blake’s poetry and Milton’s Paradise Lost, immersing me more deeply into explorations of the relationship between morals and mayhem, between man and God. The sonic and lyrical revolution of Public Enemy compelled me “to keep it real.” Bram Stoker’s Dracula impaled my fascination of writing horror through the genre of letters and diaries.
Poetry became a centripetal and centrifugal tool to search myself, to explore and view myself bone by bone for what and who I was becoming, and learning what I could build bone by bone to later export. Poetry for me evolved as tool for activism, to make a forum for exploring gender issues, my growing interest in feminism and learning about my African roots. I began sharing poetry at open mics and began building a credible reputation. I also began writing yearly letters to friends and family during Black History Month (in homage to Marcus’ example), using words to share gratitude for them being in my life, and words to inspire each year as a year where anything and everything was possible. People wanted to hear what I said. These experiences galvanized in me a passion for writing as a means for change. Consequently I wrote an honors thesis identifying patterns in the ways female characters negotiated silence in Ntozake Shange’s texts, and a collection of poetry that expanded on this theme as well.
There was a series of events on campus that moved my poetic pen from paper to the stage. The catalyst was twofold. There was the posting of advertisements for an upcoming male and female revue with the eyes and mouth of the latter blacked out with a marker. Another was publications in the campus newspaper by one columnist admonishing how women need to respect themselves by dressing appropriately (one statement being that some women wear their clothes so tight you could see their pubic hairs). The overt objectification of what I believed as sacred—in mind, body, and spirit–compelled me to put pen to paper to stage. Compelling me to write an original choreopoem compiled from the poetry I was writing for my thesis, and to take action by both directing and producing it. Having no formal theatrical training, this endeavor was blessed by recruiting several classmates, the phenomenal talents and blessings of strangers and professors, and the benevolence of strangers who donated time, talent, and money. This choreopoem (“Episodes of Womanhood/Mahogany Women’s Movements/A Blackened Woman’s Voice from a Different World”) debuted in 1994. The underlying goal was to take all that I had learned from my readings and writings, and channel them to galvanize others’ voices, to spawn a larger conversation of what it means to be a woman of color. The play sold out both nights. There was such receptivity, words received and exchanged as gifts, where both I and the audience were moved. During the Q & A several audience members said they never saw anything like this. Neither had I.
This lesson has taught me about the power of poetry as the building of bridges and bonds with others.
The next phase was a kind of return to confessional poetry, but also a honing of how to channel the craft. Using poetry as confession, I would write about what I thought and felt about relationships. There was my erotic self, the one who wanted to understand love and the physical sharing of it as something earthly and spiritual (differing from the sexualized “do me baby” kind of poetry, though there’s a placeholder in my history where that occurs). I had started exploring this part of myself beginning in my early twenties, and took time now to invest in it more. I also began being a tabula rasa, writing for particular themes and purposes, such as Soul Kitchen (a monthly open mic), church commemorations such as pastoral and foundational anniversaries (and even a collection of hymns), and exploring journalistic/archivist poetry writing. I began writing about what I was witnessing in life and the news, spanning the rise of ultrasound clinics in India, the infibulations and genocide occurring in Africa, the impact of violence on culture, and translating experiences of friends into poems. A friend of mine who formerly was a state trooper told me a devastating account of a young boy who he stopped on the highway and the horrific cargo he was later found carrying.
What also marks this period in my writing is the prayerfulness within which I engulfed my words, that the words of my mouth and meditations of my heart be divinely inspired by something other than ambition, amorous inclinations, or ambivalence. This emanates from my belief that the authenticity of my poetry comes from a force greater than me. Not to say that what I wrote was never carnal, selfish or hurtful, but this at least was (and still is) my goal. Before writing poems I would pray, and before performing them I would do the same. I wanted my poems to honor the audience of an audience. It was really important to me (then and now) to not exploit the ears and hearts of others. This also marks a time when I started to forge writing in a different genre. I started a novel, trying to fuse the worlds of jazz, poetry and narrative in a multi-generational epic about a family.
Now looking back, I am not any clearer about the rut that was the impetus for this blog. But writing this helped me free up space. To trace the stretch marks of my poetry to read the autobiography they produce. At the core, I KNOW that I love the feeling of home that comes from writing and being at poetry venues. And the education that comes from both. There is something that feels both like homecoming and a harnessing to do more with your art when surrounded by fellow artists. To give context, there is the welcome that Starski brings to the mic and venue that is infectious. The unbridled power of Michael Richardson when he hijacks the mic to spit truth. The fire Backdraft blazes about life and love. Helena is precise and bombastic on the mic, and harbors an uncanny ability to laugh and cry reflecting on life as a social worker. Elijah is pensive and meditative. Shadokat is surgical with sound. Charan weaves stories with transcendental truths. Back in the nostalgic and phenomenal days of Soul Kitchen, Mojave preached for the audience to liberate from self-incarceration, Fisiwe’s voice excavated gold from muddy waters, Dee mellowed the crowd with melodies about love, and Dallas evangelized with the electric guitar. Attending the Urban Juke Joint made the sharing poetry a holy sacred art. Poets like Definition blessed the mic with visions. Hosting poetry readings was also a kind of homecoming. I hosted them for my high school students so they would have a forum to explore and share themselves, while also passing the baton to teach them how to host a home for others (thanks Kristen and Kyle).
Finally, there is the ultimate giving that comes with no coin-based profit. There is my sister friend Carla who self published her first book of poetry because it was just that important to give a gift back to the world. And now, there are my family and friends who have volunteered to read my most recent manuscript.
Now this moment makes me think to why I write poetry. It is a gift to give others. Though I still feel a kind of hesitation to be seen, I know my poetic bone still manufactures marrow. I feel like I am at a three-way intersection of wanting to contribute to different spaces, to experiment as I used to, and to shape and mold a new space and place altogether. Maybe because I am in a stage I can’t yet describe or perform yet on a stage. Maybe because of the changes occurring in my body and in my body of work. Writing this blog, I begin to understand from where I have traveled, and now where I could stand. As I watch my body of work change, it’s fascinating to see how it stretches and changes to accommodate new life. I’m moving from . . .
To Carla, Crystal, Donna, Kerwin, Marcus, Miles, and Terence, a special thank you for your investment and involvement.
A special thank you to Terry Matilsky for the original photography.
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