Tag: women poets

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experiences

Nikki Giovanni Talks About Libraries Supporting Readers on Earth and Mars

Poet and activist Nikki Giovanni joined Books in Bloom in Columbia, Maryland, on May 13 to discuss the importance of libraries, including one in outer space.

The book festival’s headliner was introduced as someone who identifies as an “earthling” by Busboys and Poets founder Andy Shallat. This led to a conversation with Nikki discussing her work with libraries and her curation for a library on Mars.

A library was established in 2008 by NASA’s Phoenix Mars Lander, thanks to the funding and development from The Planetary Society, where TV scientist Bill Nye is the CEO. The space shuttle left an encoded archival silica-glass mini-DVD on Mars and called it the Visions of Mars digital time capsule.

The DVD contains a collection of literature and art about Mars from mostly male authors such as Isaac Asimov, Ray Bradbury, and Carl Sagan. California-bred science fiction author Leigh Douglass Brackett, who was dubbed the Queen of Space Opera; Canadian sci-fi author Candas Jane Dorsey, and Finnish speculative fiction author Johanna Sinisalo seem to be the only women whose texts are in the interplanetary library of over 80 literary works. The DVD was designed to last hundreds, possibly thousands, of years, according to the society.

It’s unclear if Nikki was referring to the 15-year-old library already on Mars having its collection updated. At the festival, Nikki said she was tapped to curate a library that will be on the Red Planet. Though the first collection had works in English, she said this time the library she is working on will translate works into the Navajo language as the oldest language in the U.S.

“Whatever life forms might come to Mars and say, ‘What is this?’ It’s going to be a disc. ‘Oh, that one is something called English, but let’s get this. This is our language,'” she said. “Because Navajo is probably someplace else in the universe.”

Her work coincides with the new documentary on her decades-long civil rights activism and Afro-futuristic views on outer space called Going to Mars: The Nikki Giovanni Project. It debuted at Sundance Film Festival this past January and is still on a film festival tour.

“The trip to Mars can only be understood through Black Americans,” she says on the documentary’s website. She sees connecting with other life forms as a way to evolve past the division we see with race and gender in global history, she said at the festival.

“When we go into Mars or we go all the way up to Jupiter, we won’t be lost,” she said. “We will know where we’ll be going, and we’ll be meeting the people there, the other life forms there.”

Nikki was also promoting her newest book, A Library, a children’s picture book released last year and illustrated by Erin K. Robinson. From mentioning her childhood library, she shared how her grandparents lived on a street in the “colored” section of Knoxville, Tennessee, called Mulvaney Street. The library was at the top of the street. After a small Black community was established there, she said the University of Tennessee eventually used eminent domain to force the Black families to move away.

She is now working on a book about the former Mulvaney Street—later renamed Hall of Fame Drive she says in honor of basketball coach Pat Summitt—so the historically Black neighborhood would not be forgotten. Her essay, 400 Mulvaney Street, in her 1971 book, Gemini: An Extended Autobiographical Statement on My First Twenty-five Years of Being a Black Poet, also touches on her feelings about losing her grandparents’ home to an “urban renewal” project in the 1960s.

Going from Mars to Knoxville, she says our own stories should be considered vital since we would be the only ones to tell our individual stories.

“There is always a story. I think a lot of people forget there’s always a story,” she said. “A lot of people say, ‘I want to write an important book or I want to write a best-seller’… When I was teaching, the first thing I would say to my class: ‘What is the number one best-seller?’ And not one of them ever knew, not one of them knew the number one best-seller. If you don’t know what it is, then why do you want to be it?”

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what's lit

‘Shakti Girls’ Author Shetal Shah Uses Poetry to Tell the Stories of Indian Innovators

A former teacher who taught at all-girls schools, Shetal Shah said she noticed how the girls’ self-esteems soared when they were learning about women of various diverse backgrounds. This has led to Shakti Girls, her debut children’s picture book featuring poetic biographies about trailblazing women across the Indian diaspora.

“Shakti” refers to an individual’s divine power and energy in traditional Hinduism. This energy is considered female because mothers have the power to birth new life, according to the first page of the book. Throughout the book, the poems highlight the accomplishments of newsmakers such as Vice President Kamala Harris to actress-producer Mindy Kaling, but we also learn about former PepsiCo CEO Indra Nooyi, gymnast Mohini Bhardwaj, and astronaut Kalpana Chawla.

Empowering Hindi words and motivating messages are woven into the verses to affirm each young reader’s identity and self-esteem. A short glossary of English and Hindi words is provided on each page to enhance the experience, as well as activities to empower one’s inner shakti.

The inspiration to tell these stories are not only from Shetal’s education background, but it also pairs with her upbringing in New York City as a second-generation Indian American. She talks to she lit about telling these women’s stories in rhythm and seeing her children’s reactions to the finished product. Check out the conversation below:

she lit: How did you come up with the concept to tell these stories in rhyme and intentionally use Hindi words and phrases in the poems?

Shetal: The idea of sharing these stories was in the back of my mind for quite some time. However, it was my youngest son who sparked the idea to present them in a more engaging format that would resonate with young readers. In order to capture their imagination, I knew the writing had to be lively, fun, and ignite their thirst for learning.

As an educator, I was aware of the cognitive benefits of rhyme in enhancing memory retention and concentration. Additionally, having experienced the sheer pleasure of reading and reciting rhyming poems, I knew it would captivate and delight my audience. With this in mind, I embarked on the task of narrating the stories of these remarkable women in verse.

Later on, I felt compelled to incorporate Hindi words into the poems when I reflected on my own grasp of Hindi and Gujarati, a regional language of India. Having realized that my exposure to these languages did not include many self-affirming and empowering words, I imagined how uplifting it would have felt if the first words I learned were words of empowerment. 

she lit: Growing up as a second-generation Indian American, how and where did you learn about women of Indian descent? What was your sense that classmates and kids around you knew about these women? 

Shetal: Growing up in the United States during the ’80s and ’90s, I did not have access to the resources that would have helped me learn about women of Indian descent. Occasionally, a family member visiting from India would bring me short stories about Hindu goddesses like Lakshmi, but I never encountered a secular book or article about an Indian woman until I learned about Indira Gandhi in high school.

However, the information was limited, and Gandhi remained the only woman of Indian descent I knew about until college. I realized that my knowledge, or lack thereof, was not unique and was likely shared by my peers. Even as a frequent library-goer, I had little knowledge of books and media that celebrated Indian women.

Today, I am grateful to see a shift in diversity represented in children’s literature, but there is still much work to be done. While we have made progress since I was a child, we have yet to scratch the surface of adequate representation.

she lit: From your experience as a teacher at all-girls schools, how did you engage students in learning about women from different ethnic backgrounds who may have been left out of their history lessons? 

Shetal: Witnessing my students’ natural curiosity about the world and its diverse cultures and people was a privilege and a joy. Teaching an extension lesson on Murasaki Shikibu, the author of the world’s first novel, The Tale of Genji, as part of our unit about medieval Japan, was particularly memorable. The thoughtful questions and wonderment my students shared about her and her achievement were exciting.

Fortunately, many of the courses I taught fell under the umbrella of global studies, making it easier to introduce diverse cultures and viewpoints within the curriculum. By starting with student inquiry and later giving them the space to reflect and make connections to historical figures like Shikibu, my students took ownership of their learning and forged deep connections that transcended boundaries and cultures.

Learning about history and the people who made it can be incredibly empowering, especially when students are given a choice and voice in how they want to learn. The true challenge, however, was finding the resources to support different learning preferences and interests.

she lit: There is an interactive component with having readers look for symbols related to the poems in the illustrations. What motivated you and illustrator Kavita Rajput to add this type of engagement for young readers? 

Shetal: As an educator, I recognized that incorporating an interactive component would enrich the learning process by enabling readers to make connections between the visual cues and the women featured in the book.

In my teaching practice, I favored a multisensory approach that engaged learners through storytelling (hearing it), illustrations (seeing it), and activities (interacting with it) that fostered reflection and interaction. I was determined to apply this approach to Shakti Girls, as I believed it would create a more meaningful and enjoyable learning experience for readers.

she lit: How have your children reacted to the book and what has impacted them the most? 

Shetal: From the inception of the book, my children were part of the creative process, unapologetically critiquing, editing, and validating all aspects of it. Now, I catch my son who inspired the rhymes, casually reading the book on his own. I can tell they are proud of their mom, but I can also tell they are excited to learn about these brave women and are inspired by their stories.

As a mother of two boys, I am confident that reading this book will help break down any unconsciously held beliefs they have about women and girls. A defining moment for me came when my oldest son, who enjoys swimming competitively, asked me if I knew any Indian American swimmers who had competed at the Olympics. Given the statistics on diversity in the swim world, I wasn’t surprised when our internet research drew a blank.

However, I was able to share Mohini Bhardwaj’s story from my book. As an Olympian and former captain of the USA’s gymnastics team, who happens to be a vegetarian like my son, her journey was a source of inspiration for him. While it didn’t entirely answer his question, it helped him see that people like him can achieve greatness in athletics.

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book reviews

Book Review: ‘Surviving Home’ by Katerina Canyon

*Given a copy from the publisher in exchange for an honest review*

Surviving Home by Katerina Canyon is a collection of poems examining the author’s South Los Angeles upbringing in the 1980s and looking for comfort in the harsh memories from then.

Each poem tells a story about realizing the beauty in a situation although it’s difficult to find the beauty amid the obstacles of growing up in the area formerly known as South Central.

In the poem “I Say You Can’t Go Home Again,” for example, she shares her experience of being unhoused as a child and her family living in a dispossessed home of a convicted drug dealer. A bright spot is witnessing the collection of roses by a female who may be her mother. She steals varieties of roses from their unknowing neighbors as a “rose petal shoplifter.” But they as a family look for the hidden drugs on the five-acre property; stealing is a source of comfort, whether it’s stealing roses or drugs.

“Life Map” describes the geography of where events take place from home to school, but also include where her father bought crack cocaine and where her mother was treated for cancer. Traveling off familiar highway ramps and on avenues like Slauson and Vermont touches on nostalgia, yet her parents are dealing with hard truths as they make their daily trips around the area.

The origin of the term “assault weapon” is explored with the term being born the same year as the author along with “Band-Aid” in a poem called “I Left Out ‘Bells and Whistles’ Written with a Little Help from Websters Dictionary.”

Assault weapons could 

have easily served 

as pacifiers in my 

South Central Los Angeles home. 

I was seven the first time 

I remember holding one.

With making lemonade out of the lemons that fell into her hands, there is still mental trauma happening within the pages. A poem called “NYP Psychiatry” describes the fear of keeping everything inside or spirits will take advantage of those emotions. The last line: “I arrived a martyr and exited a shadow.” Poems such as “All Day Long” and “I Felt My Brother’s Wrists” shows how she is with her brothers seeing them be abused and tormented by their father. She tries to be their savior and watches over them. Thinking she has the power to help her brothers overwhelms her as she realizes her actions can’t stop the pain. 

I hold my brother’s hand. 

I clench my breath. 

His scream lowers to a bleat. 

The closed door becomes an ocean, 

Our prison an oasis. 

Just he, me, and the sea 

Playing hand-clap games,

And we cannot be bound. 

We are free, I tell him. 

We are infinite 

Because I declare it 

As sister and deity.

Being a Black woman is also an underlying theme. “Sojourner” narrates the hardships of living in a society constructed and maintained by White men today and during slavery when abolitionist and activist Sojourner Truth walked the planet. 

You never forgot to say who a woman 

Could be, what a Black woman could do 

When we eschewed weakness and misogyny. 

No one helped you. You just carved the trail. 

No one helps me either. That’s what I learned 

It means to be a Black woman. 

To be strong, to plough, to plant, to raise barns. 

That’s what you did. I do that metaphorically. 

Now, I raise children, plough through journals 

With my pen. I always remember to never 

Pin my tongue for fear of other’s thoughts 

This is the way you walked.

Overall, the poetry follows a path of Black girlhood to Black womanhood amid traumatic settings when one needs to fixate on what’s beautiful or what’s calm in a situation to survive the moment. Random thoughts as a way to deal with the obstacles turn into a poem like the one about words that were added to the Webster’s Dictionary the year the author is born. It’s a way to examine life, the time of birth, the hometown, and all the elements that make up the cosmic journey.

Categories
what's lit

‘Love Life’ Examines the Underappreciated Black Editor Experience

*Spoilers ahead! Watch the series’ second season on HBO Max*

The Good Place star William Jackson Harper leads the HBO Max series Love Life as a Black editor in a White-dominated publishing world who evolves his approach to diversifying the field.

The first season of the series starred Anna Kendrick as an art dealer stumbling through relationships. In this new iteration, we meet Harper’s character Marcus Watkins, who is also stumbling through relationships with the show emphasizing race and culture in his romantic and career choices via pitch-perfect narration by Keith David.

Marcus Watkins in the beginning of the series is married to Emily, played by Maya Kazan, but he’s starting to feel she doesn’t understand him as a Black man in America since she’s White. He makes this realization after meeting Mia Hines, played by Jessica Williams, at Anna Kendrick’s character Darby’s wedding reception at a bar. Marcus and Mia hit it off, though he’s married and she’s in a relationship with who we soon learn is no other than basketballer Amar’e Stoudemire playing himself. Marcus’ emotional affair is discovered by Emily via iPad messages, and they get a divorce. Marcus blames Mia for the divorce, which of course starts a fight that separates them. They reunite after a few relationships, then another mishap happens in their budding love that forces them to separate.

In the end, they finally get together and stay together with a marriage and baby. As an editor, Marcus struggles to get Black voices heard through the book projects he picks up because his publisher, the fictional Sutton Court Publishing, and boss Josh, played by Steven Boyer, are not supportive of his vision. After Marcus quits his job, Mia convinces him to pursue his own novel. He becomes a full-time author and finishes his novel within two years. And they live happily ever after.

Uplifting Black authors

The first episode “Mia Hines” starts off with Marcus poking fun at his new client, a social media influencer who wants to add an insane amount of words in a subtitle of an instructional book. He wants to take on more serious projects, like an Afrofuturism manuscript he found from a Black grad student at Columbia University.

Josh asks about an update on the social media influencer’s book, and Marcus pipes up about the Afrofuturism book. Josh isn’t interested because the sales projections on that type of book is unpredictable while the social media influencer’s book will become an instant best-seller with her built-in audience.

We see Marcus fighting through the frustration of trying to push more works by authors of color. He decides to invite student-author Trae, played by Jordan Rock, into his office. With Marcus’ notes, Trae is not having it. After ridiculing Marcus’ posters of Black authors from Toni Morrison with cigarette in hand to James Baldwin with cigarette in hand, Trae calls Marcus a “safe, nonthreatening” Black editor voicing the opinions of a White editor. Marcus argues no publisher would take on the thousand-page manuscript. They agree to disagree.

It’s not until the season finale “Epilogue,” Marcus reunites with Trae to get feedback on his novel. Trae, who appears to have sold his book, tells him that Marcus’ Black character trying to maneuver through the White publishing world lacks personality. Marcus takes the note, and it motivates him to improve the book that eventually sells to a publisher. After not seeing eye to eye, they become beta reader brothers.

Celebrating a legend

Marcus visits his University of Michigan professor parents in episode “Destiny Mathis.” His distant father Kirby, played by John Earl Jelks, and mother Donna, played by Fresh Prince of Bel-Air “first Aunt Viv” Janet Hubert, seem to be disappointed that Marcus married Emily too soon out of college and now is divorced. Marcus feels like his happily married parents who are celebrating 35 years together don’t understand the complexities of his modern-day relationships.

In episode “Becca Evans,” Marcus is given an invitation to The Paris Review dinner from Josh as a consolation prize of sorts for receiving a promotion without a raise. The dinner honors poetry legend Nikki Giovanni. It’s the perfect way to lure his father to Manhattan from Ann Arbor for a night of bonding out on the town with their favorite poet.

The fact that the show writers and HBO managed to book the legend and have her on TV is amazing in itself. At 78 years old, Nikki Giovanni takes the stage as the living legend she is, reciting “Autumn Poems.”

the heat
you left with me
last night
still smolders
the wind catches
your scent
and refreshes
my senses

I am a leaf
falling from your tree
upon which I was
impaled

Nikki Giovanni, “Autumn Poems”

Taking a stand

The season finale “Epilogue” makes several time jumps, starting with New Years’ Day 2020 to March 2020 as the COVID-19 pandemic takes hold of society. As Marcus adjusts to working on his laptop from his couch, he realizes his live-in fling is not taking precautions seriously and breaks up with her. But as soon as he grows accustomed to his stay-at-home routine, the murder of George Floyd forces him to examine his role in society as a Black man.

Due to the pandemic, his job furloughs almost the entire staff, leaving Marcus the only employee of color. Via videoconferencing, Josh asks Marcus to review Sutton Court’s message on George Floyd and its commitment to diversity and inclusion. As much as Marcus had to fight to bring on authors of color that he still wasn’t able to bring on, the ask is too much. And Marcus demanded a proper promotion with a salary bump and didn’t get an answer. The missteps spark an expletive-laden explosion of how Sutton Court fails to have any commitment to diversity and inclusion whatsoever. Marcus quits on the spot by slamming his laptop screen down.

He soon reunites with Mia, who texts him out of the blue. They meet up masked up and commit to give their relationship another try. Then there’s marriage, a baby carriage, and the book Marcus always wanted to write.

The series packs in some Black Hollywood heavy-hitters like Blair Underwood and Kimberly Elise, both playing Mia Hines’ parents. Every episode is named after a person, mostly the woman Marcus is seeing, but under the romantic stumbling is a character of color also looking for his footing in the current publishing landscape.

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music reviews what's lit

Halsey’s Poems May Dive Deeper into Her Biracial Identity

2019 AMERICAN MUSIC AWARDS.® - Hosted by Ciara and broadcasting live from the Microsoft Theater in Los Angeles on Sunday, Nov. 24 at 8:00 p.m. EST, on ABC. (ABC/Image Group LA) HALSEY

Grammy-nominated singer and songwriter Halsey announced she will have a poetry book come out later this year called I Would Leave Me If I Could. With the poems hitting shelves on Nov. 10, will it touch on race and her fight to be understood as a biracial woman?

Halsey’s poetry collection will explore “longing, love, and the nuances of bipolar disorder.” Publisher Simon & Schuster describes the book as:

In this debut collection, Halsey bares her soul. Bringing the same artistry found in her lyrics, Halsey’s poems delve into the highs and lows of doomed relationships, family ties, sexuality, and mental illness. More hand grenades than confessions, these autobiographical poems explore and dismantle conventional notions of what it means to be a feminist in search of power.

The “family ties” part looks promising for Halsey to share her story on being half-Black and half-White and the criticisms she received about her racial identity while famous.

In an August 2017 Playboy interview, Halsey said she was “White-passing” and that she has “never tried to control anything about black culture.” At first, it sounded like a Rachel Dolezal situation until she cleared up that her father is Black and her mother is White and that her light complexion on first impression does not show her Blackness.

After she emphasized her biracial identity, she complained about hotels in 2018 for having toiletries that “entirely alienates people of color.” She goes on to say she “can’t use this perfumed watered down white people shampoo.” The hair care industry still marks products for “normal hair,” meaning it’s designed for the hair of most White people, for example.

She quickly corrected those who said she is White and didn’t believe racism exists in the hotel toiletry business with clarifying again that she is biracial. Months later, she revealed a photo of herself in her natural curls, where again she faced attacks from fans who didn’t know her biracial identity.

Over the past few weeks, Halsey has been sharing content surrounding the Black Lives Matter movement and the latest protests by supporting Black artists and activists on Twitter and Instagram. She even participated in a protest in Los Angeles which she shares in a post on June 1 where she treated protestors hit with rubber bullets and tear gas with a massive first aid kit. The post has 1.5 million likes.

Halsey joins other singer-poets such as Jhené Aiko, the author of the poetry collection 2Fish, and Lana Del Rey, who plans to release her poetry collection and spoken word album Violet Bent Backwards Over the Grass later this year.

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book reviews

Book Review: ‘The Poet X’ by Elizabeth Acevedo

The Poet XThe Poet X by Elizabeth Acevedo
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

“The Poet X” by Elizabeth Acevedo is a coming-of-age novel that expertly showcases the teenage life of a girl of color who’s first-generation American scared to share her true voice due to family expectations.

Xiomara is a Dominican teenager living in New York City with the gift of poetry she feels she can’t share with the world because she has to please her strict parents. Her religious mother makes Xiomara and her twin brother Xavier aka Twin attend after-school bible lessons. Xiomara is rough around the edges while Twin is active in his religious lessons and goes to a high-performing school, so Xiomara suppresses her love for poetry, especially since Poetry Club coincides with her religious classes. Her young teacher, Ms. Galliano, inspires her to find her voice, and when she does, Xiomara is falling in love with her classmate Aman, which is another no-no under her religious household. When Xiomara begins skipping church for poetry, her world begins to crumble as she realizes she can’t be the pure Catholic Dominican girl her parents want her to be.

This is a great YA novel with the necessary elements describing the hardships of an adolescent girl of color struggling with being American and also having immigrant parents going by the stricter rules of their homeland. I read it on audio book, so the characters’ names may not be spelled correctly, but the author does a fabulous job in her poetic prose-y voice, so definitely recommend the audio book.

View all my reviews

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experiences

Poet Cleo Wade Talks Setting Intentions at Aerie REALtreat Event

Aspiring author-model Iskra, author-gymnast Aly Raisman, and author-poet Cleo Wade hold a panel at Aerie REALtreat in downtown Los Angeles on Saturday, June 8, 2019 / she lit

Best-selling poet Cleo Wade emphasized the power of setting intentions and navigating one’s way to success in today’s world at the Aerie REALtreat conference in downtown Los Angeles Saturday morning.

The Heart Talk: Poetic Wisdom for a Better Life author is also an #AerieREAL role model as she pumped up the audience at Rolling Greens Nursery in the Arts District then joined a panel with fellow ambassadors Olympic gymnast and Fierce: How Competing for Myself Changed Everything author Aly Raisman and body-positive model Iskra. Aerie is the intimate apparel lifestyle offshoot of American Eagle Outfitters.

Using advice from her book, Cleo said one of her intentions is to exude kindness when she’s most stressed.

“Another one I have is: Can I be patient? Can I not make rushing everyone else’s problem?” she said. “I’m sure you’re all familiar when you’re the one running late, but then all of sudden it’s the Uber driver’s problem if they’re not going fast enough. And then you’re like, ‘I have to be there in 10 minutes,’ if like you needing to be there in 10 minutes has to do with whether or not it’s 20 minutes away or not, and that is somehow their fault.”

Several of the estimated 100 women in attendance in Cleo’s speaking session went up to the decorated stage to share their intentions. Cleo said she requested Aerie put notebooks and pens in the giveaway bags to do the five-minute, intention-writing exercise.

“For me, intentions are a space where we can say I know I have these default settings as the person I am, but what does it look like for me to carve out the person I know I can be,” Cleo said. “That’s what we really do when we set intentions for ourselves.”

In partnership with Create & Cultivate (disclosure: I’m an insider), the event focused on tapping into women’s power for entrepreneurial success, so Cleo brought up the theme of making connections.

“If you’re someone who doesn’t like to be the first to walk up to someone to say like, ‘Your hair looks really amazing today’ or ‘I love your scarf,’ or ‘Hi, my name is Cleo,’ then maybe your intention for today is ‘I’m going to be the first to say hello,'” she said. “If you came here today, like so many of you I’m sure did, it’s such a beautiful and safe space to create fellowship and participate in sisterhood and make new friends then maybe your intention today is, ‘I am going to be open enough to allow connection to take place between me and another sister I walk or sit next to today.'”

She then had the attendees hug the woman sitting next to them with an introduction. The session ended with her reading a poem from her book while sitting on the edge of the stage.

Joining Aly and Iskra in the next panel, Cleo discussed how many use the internet to connect and grow a brand but recommended to be cautious of what works or won’t work for you.

“Before you endorse anything, there are people who are working with you, for you, not for how many people follow you or how many people’s eyeballs are on what you see or do,” she said. “And you do that by getting to know brands or people before you work with them, so that they are there for your voice, they are there for your story, they are there for the way that you have built your community rather than anyone reducing you to a number or anyone reducing you to an algorithm.”

And with so many connections, the act of gluing the connections can become stressful to the point where slowing down may be the best option.

“I think in that space it’s always OK if you allow yourself to not be Superwoman. I always say with the women who work with me, it’s like I don’t want to be Superwoman because she’s not real,” Cleo said. “That has to be OK because that’s the truth. So when it comes to whether having the answer or that one piece of advice—if I don’t have that, I don’t put pressure on myself to have that.”

Aly later said as the main takeaway she wanted to share with audience was partly inspired by Cleo’s book, and that’s to be “authentically you.”

“Know your value and what you want in your life,” she said. “If you are willing to, I would recommend when you leave here, or when you feel like it, to really take time and really get to know what you want and who you want to be with… I think it’s about really knowing your value and really getting to know what makes you happy.”

Cleo co-signed actively surrounding ourselves with people who support us with recalling a moment she shared with her brother in their mother’s kitchen one day in Louisiana. After realizing it would’ve been a good anecdote in her book, she said her mother was cooking food in a pan when she and her brother mentioned “haters.”

“She looks up from the pan and says, ‘Haters? What are haters? I have no idea who hates me. I don’t hang out with those people.’ I always think of that as some of the best advice I’ve ever gotten because you’re like, ‘Exactly!'” Cleo said. “Sometimes, I don’t think we realize we’re moving in this world looking for people to criticize us because we don’t believe in our own power and we don’t believe in our own place in the world. We actually look around whether it’s on the internet or in social spaces for people who might reject us or tell us we’re not enough.”

The panel ended with Aly having the audience engage in a 10-minute meditation rather than the originally scheduled fitness workout.

Categories
experiences

Free Black Women’s Library Los Angeles Holds Launch Party in Slauson Community

Asha Grant, founder of The Free Black Women's Library Los Angeles, at the launch party on April 27, 2019.

Free Black Women’s Library celebrated its Los Angeles launch Saturday night at the Hilltop Coffee & Kitchen on Slauson Avenue in the View Park-Windsor Hills neighborhood with the performances by eight Black female poets.

The featured local poets were Amoni Thompson-Jones, bridgette bianca, Camari Carter, Iman Milner, Jessica Gallion aka YELLAWOMAN, Nadia Hunter Bey, Shakira Peterson, and Shonda Buchanan.

The party started with a networking hour for attendees to bond over literary happenings in the coffeehouse that’s quickly becoming a haven for similar events. A live artist, Brittney Price, painted a piece she later donated to the cause. Quotes were pasted on the glass from Black women writers such as bell hooks, Octavia Butler, Maya Angelou, Alice Walker, and Ntozake Shange. Bouquets of flowers sat on the tables with most attendees sitting in seats in front of the window that provided a backdrop of the sunset with painted skies for the poets as they recited their melodies.

As each poet spilled her soul to the crowd, applause naturally erupted. The poems magnified the Black female experience from different perspectives. For example, bridgette bianca and Camari Carter mentioned the death of six adopted Black children killed by their White lesbian mothers where one drove their SUV over the cliff in Mendocino County, a story forgotten in the constantly ticking news cycle. YELLAWOMAN lyrically spoke about her experience as a light-skinned woman with Louisiana roots while Shonda Buchanan played a drum and chanted a song before her poetry to honor her African-American and American-Indian roots.

The library’s goal is to compensate Black women for their artistry while collecting #300BlackWomenBooks, or 300 books authored by Black women, by June. Donations will be accepted at subsequent events and this address: 5350 Wilshire Blvd P.O. Box #36618 Los Angeles, CA 90036.

The original branch of the library was created in 2015 by Ola Ronke Akinmowo in Brooklyn, New York, the same year and place where Well-Read Black Girl began. The idea is to provide “a free, feminist pop-up library and book swap with Black women writers at the center,” as its mission states.

Asha Grant, the director of the Free Black Women’s Library LA, was the mistress of ceremonies at the launch party. She said she recently moved back to the LA area and wanted to bring Akinmowo’s mission here.

The next event has not been announced yet but Grant said it will involve interactive journaling with sitting on pillows, a more relaxed atmosphere compared to the party.