And welcome to the counter narrative Show. Welcome to everyone who is watching live from Facebook. Welcome even to the people who will probably watch this recording later. And welcome to our guest tonight. Tonight's episode is called black women, right? I'm really excited about this particular episode, just to be able to highlight and amplify the voices of and the lived experiences also of black women. Before we get too deep into our our topic of what we will be talking about tonight, I just want to have a few moments of reflection in particular for black women who have died at the hands of police police violence. I have been noticing over, you know, it's a regular going trend that we are very much activated as a collective by the death of black men, as we should be at the hands of state violence. And I have also felt like I've noticed that sometimes the mention of black women who have been killed at the hands of state violence is more sometimes seems to feel more of an afterthought. I think some of us can name at least 10 black men who died at the hands of state violence, and there's probably equal number of black women, and we can only name a few. So I just want us to have a few moments of reflection in reverence of the black women who have died at the hands of state violence. And if you know some of those names, please take the time to type them in the chat. And I want to allow this time For 30 seconds of Silence starting Now You
okay, thank you for that again, everyone. Thank you for joining us. I am really excited about this particular topic. I wrote a bit about why I'm so excited about it in a recent blog post, because some of the most influential people in my life have been black women writers. So without further ado, I'll get right into our guest, all of our guests, we have Teresa Stovall, Brianna, Asia, Angela and Carol Deborah M Ricks, and I'm going to give each one of them a moment in time to tell us a little bit more about themselves. I want to go ahead and start by asking the question, and I'll start it off with Deborah. Um, I'm curious about what what led you in the direction of being, of writing, what led you down that path and to writing in the particular way that you write.
My first book was love addicted, and it was my story of how I was addicted to love and men because of my relationship with my father and my troubled relationship with my father, and I hadn't seen any talk about black women being love addicted. And so this book, Love addicted wanted to be written, you know? So it's like something wanted to be said. And I was a scribe, it felt like I was just answering the call to. Put that book into the world,
and after you have written that, I know that you've done several other things in addition to the work that you've done around love addicted and other things that you've done around women and healing circles. Can you tell us a little bit more about that overall background and some of the other things that you written and worked on?
My second book was called, why did he break up with me? And actually, Asia has a story in there, and there's 10, like, amazing stories in there from black women, sharing who they became, what they learned, how they were hurt, what pains they went through when they experienced a breakup. And I like Toni Morrison, had to regret about using her name, Toni Morrison rather than her birth name for her first book. I regret the title of the book because it doesn't really speak to to a lot of black women. I think a lot of black women like no, don't Let's not ask, why did he break up with me? Let's ask, Why did I break up with him? Or it's just but the book is full of stories and interviews from people around love and relationships. And I think it's important for us to tell our stories, right? And we can't expect anyone else to tell our stories. We have to tell our stories. So when I founded, or I like to say spirit founded sisters gathering a hill back in 2012 it was around healing black women's relationship, first with themselves and then with others. And so I'm passionate about being a black woman like I'm a black woman, proud to be a black woman, and I wouldn't trade it for anything. I wouldn't trade I wouldn't want to be any other race, any other gender. And so for me, I just want to see us live our fullest lives. You know the I want us to be joyful, powerful, happy, expressive, who we are. Like thinking about coming here to this space this evening, I was thinking, how do I show up as me, fully as me? And I think every black woman I see, more and more of us doing that. And what I want to do is be a part of black women's knowing, knowing that they have, we have a right if we allow we loud it, there's no right way to be on this planet, whatever your race, whatever your gender, sexual orientation, there's no right way. And so my passion is being an example of someone who says, I'm owning me. Toni Morrison says, You are your best thing. You are your best thing.
Thank you for that. I definitely think that you know one of the questions, or one of the things that you said about, how do I show up as myself? Um, I feel like that's definitely a theme that has been a little bit more challenging for me. I feel like lately, just with the the current circumstances, like, particularly like in work spaces or certain spaces, like I am not. I have been feeling raw in emotionally raw in a lot of ways. So I think it's important to have spaces and to be able to make spaces where you can show up as your full self. And one of the things I appreciate about some of the work that you've done, Deborah, is you make space for women to be able to show up and heal, not just writing about healing, but you actually make space for people to kind of do just that Asia. I really like to hear from you about how you came to your writing and some of the things that you're working on, and even more so, I'd also like to hear about what are some of the things that you are that you're reading right now.
Let's see, I like the, what is the Terry McMillan quote that I write because it's cheaper than therapy, so, yeah, I use it as a reflection tool. And you know, as you know, I'm a teacher as well. So I'm a big believer in writing as a reflection tool. I think that's another quote I can't remember who I'll look it up that says I don't know what I think until I write it down. And so sometimes it really helps me to process the world, to put it into written form. And I feel like I've been doing that since. I was about, I'm sorry, I'm trying to get my picture together. There you go. Since I was about 13 when I started to write poetry, and I've really experimented with the form, you know, as a theater major, so I've written a couple of plays. A couple years back, I did an album where I wrote a bunch of songs and combine them with some spoken word. And my first book, like Deborah, was, you can't see my face. You can't say Asia's video. Can you block Oh, that's the problem. Can you block out the one that's just the square with my name? You see right how I'm on twice. I'm on my computer, and I'm on my phone, and on my phone, you can see my face, but what's just my name?
So what they would Oh, because on on this end, it shows so I could delete one,
yeah, delete the one. That's just my name. That was okay.
Okay. Now we can't hear you, though, we can't hear you.
All right, um, is ages getting that together. I'm gonna go um into the audience. I see Anika, uh, Anika queen, Anna, she was here last week on the black artists matter part two. She's named some names of Dominique Clayton, Tarika Wilson. I saw Sandra Bland earlier. I saw Brianna Taylor earlier. In terms of names, if anyone has questions, please feel free to post them here. Cameron. Cameron, thanks for watching Blue. Cameron, thanks for watching Okay, Asia's back.
All right, I am here. It's unfortunate because I had you plugged in on my I was watching you guys on my computer. So I'm going to come back in in a moment, but I'll finish what I was saying. I was saying that like Deborah. I was inspired by my relationships, kind of like that. Why did he break up with me? I was trying to figure out, like, what am I doing wrong? Like, things were going really crazy. And when you look back, it's funny how some things that are like really sad at the time are actually kind of funny, and you learn certain lessons along the way. So that's kind of how I was inspired to write my first book, and then a few years ago, I decided that I was real. I wanted to write a sequel to that book, but I also really wanted to write a memoir about teaching, and so I decided to do both at the same time. And I don't know why I decided to do that, but it was crazy, it was intense, and I got, you know, two drafts done, or got through the second draft of each book in about a year. But it's actually been over a year since I put them to the side and have not come back to them just long enough to maybe do this third round of edits and get it out into the world, you know. And I did run into some obstacles as far as, like, trying to get people to read my stuff for free, which was actually hard, like, Please, could you just read this and give me feedback? And people didn't have the time. I should have gotten into it now, because people have time. So I'll get back into it. You're inspiring me to do that. But as far as what I'm reading, I really love reading stuff from other indie authors as well. I'm like sitting in my room right now. I'm just surrounded by books I have my friend, PJ's book, forgiveness is bliss. I'm about halfway through that. I've got my my girlfriend, Ingrid, does a zine called black box. I've actually been thinking about sending it to you. Dr Ross, so if you send me your address after the call, I'm going to send you a I'll have Ingrid send you a copy of black box. I'll pay for it.
So, yeah, that's what I'm reading. I've got some astrology books around here. I've got some lots of self help books. I've got one next to me called Wish craft. And then my daughter just gave me a book called The Lucifer effect, which is about how good people turn evil. So that's on my nightstand because she wants me to read
that. Wow,
that's pretty heavy.
Yeah, no, I can appreciate one that that you have quite a few books that are. Are around healing, and I feel like that's some of the same energy and feel that I get from some of the books that Deborah has created and produced. Want to go back to the audience really quickly and just say hi to everyone there. Few people have said hello. So hi Ty Hi Cameron, hi Mona. And there's also been a few questions. I'm going to pop those questions in once I get through speaking to each person, and then after we've spoken to each person, we'll get into the specifics of those particular oops, those particular questions. Okay, I want to ask Angela if you could share with us more about how you came to doing the work that you do in terms of your writing. I know that you do blogs, you've done essays, you do article writing, and I feel like your writing is such a practice. It's It's like art and science, and it's like all of this put together, and you're also documenting in a way that I feel like your text is going to be something that anthropologists and people who are working on their dissertations years later, when they want to know more about the black experience and black artists, artists, they're going to be going TO to your work, I like to hear more about how you came to doing that sort of
writing. Yeah, I appreciate that, and thank you for having me on again. So honestly, you know, I've always written my family was very strict, and so as a result, I spent a lot of time at home, kind of by myself, you know, reading. And because they didn't have a lot of books for children, I ended up reading the books that were on my parents bookshelf, with which, you know, were Baldwin and Morrison and Alex Haley and, you know, and a lot of it, I had to sit with a dictionary, right? You know, have the dictionary, and you come to, you know, you come to a word you don't know, and it's like, okay, you look up the word, and then have conversations with my parents about about what I was digesting. And I'm so grateful for that. Now, I think I was resented it a bit when I was, you know, a child, because you want to go out, you want to hit the go, Go's out. You want to do things, you know, and my parents are like, No, you're gonna stay home, you're gonna read, you're gonna but all of that founded my political consciousness, right? All of it founded not only my political consciousness, but my understanding of what it is to be black in this nation, and really what it is to be a black body throughout the world. And film, really and animation are kind of my first loves, and what my actual education and training is in. But I realized that there was a kind of freedom in in in language as well. Right? That film was a language in and of itself, and that and that language was also freedom. And it wasn't until I was in school, in grad school, that I was realizing that most people are not deep in the kind of history of of black creative genius, right? Most people are not well read or well versed, right, in our histories, and don't have that consciousness. And when I went into the into writing about critique, because I've, I've never blogged before, actually, my website is just an archive of all of the places that I that I've been published, but the I realized that there was a deep deficit as far as people who were writing critical commentaries about contemporary artists who were not white. And so the writing in that lane came out of a need right to counter erasure ultimately, and because we know that ultimately, if you are not archived in some capacity, whether through through film or writing or through, you know, critical contextualization, then You're easily forgotten. And this has been kind of the what many writers, scholars, academics right now, curators are trying to kind of Buck against, right is that is those histories of erasure and and so much of my work kind of starts and continues from that, from that space, right? And from that really critical charge, I feel that I'm continuing the work of, you know, scholars like Dr David Driscoll, who transitioned, you know, a few months ago, who helped found what we now understand to be African American art history, right? Right, and contextualize African American and African artists within the greater lexicon of what we understand to be art history, right? And he gave and he was a functioning artist, right? He gave up in, I mean, he didn't give up. He was still working as an artist, but he he could have just worked as an artist, as a professional contemporary artist himself, but he juggled and balanced and sacrificed that time and that energy in order to help found that field. And so I feel that we I feel an obligation, and I also feel that we as writers have an obligation to to continue the trajectories and continue the works of a lot of the you know wordsmiths that precede us right, the folks whose shoulders we stand on, the folks whose words affirm us right, the folks who we return to over and over and over again, we have a kind of responsibility to to make more reverent work, to make more critical work, to make more work that contextualizes and bucks against the systems that attempt to erase us, that attempt to kill us, right? And so that's that's a lot of the work that I'm doing, and I'm reading a lot of stuff. So I'm reading Fred Moten right now, like, who's kind of dense, but also just so brilliant. Black and blur is an amazing text. I'm rereading color of law, which is really disturbing and disappointing because it's so thorough in its assessment of the ways in which state and federal systems have, over and over and over again throughout history, been on the wrong side of history, right, chosen, ultimately, to disenfranchise black and brown people they chose. Right? There are moments where it's like, Hey, you have a choice. You can you can move in a righteous way. You can move in a civil and just way. And over and over again, those states and federal folks consistently chose to oppress us and and so what, what that done is sort of remind me about the importance of how black creative genius has always had to how we the the artists, the writers, the creatives, the thinkers, we have had to found for ourselves a context for ourselves, a kind of safety, right? Because outside of ourselves, very rarely is that kind of support sustained, right? Very rarely is that kind of protection sustained. So I'm kind of, you know, feeding, feeding myself as much as possible with, you know, just scholarship that that challenges me and challenges me to have a deeper understanding of history, so that the writings that I'm doing, and that I pray, you know, continue to do, will will have as much impact as as the authors that are feeding me.
You're right. You know, a lot of people don't have, I feel like that experience of having those, those brilliant, you know, people very early on, if they if they didn't necessarily have it in school. And I feel like the people who I have interacted with who do their their depth of knowledge and graphs of it seems to be a little bit deeper, and there's there just seems to be a little bit more familiar with, not just the artists or the author, but like the context, the idea, the concept, I want to go back to the folks in the audience, because they are saying, hey, and all of the things, and Megan Lewis said, Angela is brilliant. I agree. Melissa Erica said, yes, that book is a mess. Must Read. Mona Diallo also just said, Angela, I would like points. So thank you folks for that. And if you have questions, please do put them in the chat. I promise you, we'll get to them. Brianna, I want to ask, I want to talk to you a bit about how you came to, some of the writing that you came to. And I also want to know who were some of the first authors, black authors, black women authors, even more specifically, that you engaged with that you read about
of their work, yeah, so like Angela, I came to writing and reading from a young age. I unfortunately didn't have access to Toni Morrison or Baldwin or any of the canonical black authors until I was older and in college. So my love for reading started with a very like white lens. Um. Yeah, so, like a lot of Judy Blume and like, you know, coming of age stories like that, which you know, was what me and my girlfriend was reading, because I grew up in a predominantly white suburb in Harford County. But the first novel that I remember reading when I was younger by a black author was Shannon no Sharon G flake. She wrote the book The skin I'm in, and that was one of the first, like young adult novels where I saw a character that looked like me and was having the same experiences as me. And that kind of opened up my ideas of, like, what stories were possible to tell. And, yeah, so that's, that's how I came to writing, through journaling and and the type of writing that I do is a short stories. I just recently published a collection of short stories called those who fly this little thing, which was part of the requirement for the MFA program that I just graduated from. And yeah, that's what I do. And I write a lot of kind of like in a fantastical lean. I really like speculative fiction and fantasy. A lot of what I've been reading has been science fiction, like I started quarantine off with Kindred by TV Butler, and right now I'm reading work from the Japanese author arugum Murakami, I believe is how you pronounce his name. So I've been leaning more into science fiction, which I think is more palatable for me right now, like trying to disengage from, like, the realities of the world. So yeah, that's where I am with my writing
that definitely makes sense to me in terms of all of the things we've reached for in terms of like, right now, whether like, all the different ways of heal, of like, looking for things to heal like, I could definitely see how sci fi is definitely not even just not even, not even in a way of like, escapism, but just in a way of like. I'd love to reimagine this world, I'd love to just like, you know,
I think a lot of writing it like writing is about making sense out of nonsense. It's like creating a structure with language. So I feel like that's how I've been processing everything right now is through journaling, which is a part of my brand's identity, is journaling, specifically journaling with intention. And you can find out more information about that, I guess, through my bio. But, yeah, it's important.
No, I love that. I love, I love, I love all of these different connections. I'm gonna go back to the audience. And a few people were definitely resonating with Judy Blume as a early read, Mona Diallo said that her first the book, first book that she read from cover to cover, was the Hobbit. Um, and see you just say, Yep, I read all of these. And love every moment. She also said, Yes, Brianna, I grew up in hearth co what is that heart? Um, county, Harford County, and had the same experience. And love me some Judy bloom. Someone else mentioned baby sitters, club, Sweet Valley High, yeah. Like I read all of those. I read those and goosebumps. And, you know, Little Women, just so many different, different books that that we've read, that we have access to, Teresa. I'd like to ask you also about your work. I know you have a book recently. I think swerve swirl girl. I think it's somewhat girl, swirl girl, girl from along those lines. And I would really love for you to first talk about how you came to writing. What are some of the first authors that you read? I know I'm giving you a lot in one thing, what are the first authors that you read, the first black woman that you read, and tell us what you're up to. Now, I. Okay,
great. Hi. Thank you for having me. I'm really honored to be here with this amazing panel, and with you, this is really, really beautiful. So thank you. So I've been writing since I was seven years old, and I made up a poem, and my mom told me it was good, and said I should write it down. And she really took me pretty seriously as an author. So I started writing poems and writing them down. And at that point, I decided I was not I was going to be I was a writer. So I was one of those obnoxious little kids. When grown ups would say, Well, honey, what do you want to be when you grow up? I said, Well, I am a writer. That was just always my path or my goal. Rather, I didn't start actually writing books for anything till I was in my late 30s, so I've written a little bit almost everything, you know, coming through the years as a child, lots of poetry, you know, suitably angsty, some plays, few short stories, all that kind of thing, with no idea really what I wanted to write specifically or Why. And then I started publishing books, probably in my early 30s, and I've written an electric array of books. So the first one was about homeopathic medicine, because homeopathic medicine saved my life, and I wanted to it was a thing, kind of a just explaining it to lay people, because there weren't any books like that out. This was 1986 at the time. And then later I wrote a book on contract at Buffalo Soldiers history book for young readers through, you know, educational and then I started getting, like, really, really published. So the first big book was written with my ex husband and father of our children, and it came out 20 years ago, and it was titled, I love supreme, real life stories of black love. And there wasn't anything like that at the time. So it was a real intense goal to present portraits of a few well known people, but mostly just regular people who had strong, healthy, loving marriages that came out in 2000 it got a lot of buzz because it was published by a big publisher. It came out in February, so Black History Month, Valentine's Day. Hey, you know, ended up as a, you know, segment of Oprah's show, not, not as one of her, you know, Book Club books. And you know, it did pretty well. And then we got divorced. And what's interesting is it, people still love the book, and a lot of the couples in the book have now divorced, but, you know, that's real life too. But that was the goal at the time, that there really weren't, this is literally 20 years ago. So the year 2000 there weren't a lot of, you know, of examples out there since then, and that was non fiction, and my ex husband's adjourned was a print journalist, so we did that. One together, written some fiction, done many anthologies, co edited with the phenomenal writer and talent Tracy price talks. And we did a short story anthology, Proverbs for the people. And then we did two that were kind of a series to in black women to heal from different issues. First one was about colorism, titled other people's skin with and both. And then the other one was exploring healing from different kinds of intimate violence. And they were both done with Tracy price, Thompson, Desiree, Desiree Cooper and Elizabeth Atkins, so those were the most recent ones. Oh, and I did a novel in the middle of all that called the hot spot, which was urban chicken. Yeah. But was invited by one of my favorite authors, Donna Hill. And I was like, Sure, why not? But I don't know why not, so I you know. And then I kind of paused for a while. I've always done journalism, I've done some blogging, and to decide what I really want to do this, this memoir just out is World girl coming of race in the USA. You can see it kind of and, um, independently published. So I'm trying new things, um, because the mainstream publishing world was really isn't ready. And they've told me this for this narrative, that for a mixed race narrative that's not based in confusion, rejection and tragedy, and they're just not. And I there's nothing wrong with those narratives, but that's literally so, you know, I was like, I had to get to my 60s to read the book out, to write the book out, to see the book I wanted to read my whole life. I've never seen anybody in any book I could fully relate to. I could fully, I could relate to this, or I can relate to that, but it was always compartmentalized. So I was like, You know what? But this book was also an ancestral assignment, non negotiable. So I didn't necessarily want to write it. I really didn't, but I knew why I was writing it, and it's grounded and steeped in great purpose, so people seem to like it, which I really glad about. And it's designed. I wrote it to start the conversation and to elevate the conversation. Since nowadays there's sustained public conversation. It ebbs and it flows depending a lot on what celebrities do or how they look or appear, but there's a sustained for the first time in my life, and I think the first time in. History A sustained, ongoing public conversation about the dynamics of mixed race people's appearance and identity, and it's, you know, and I wanted my thing is like, but we're not usually, at this point, invited into those conversations. We're not welcome into those conversations. I've been blocked by a lot of prominent black influencers on Facebook just for coming into the conversation and asking a question or saying, Hey, I'd like to clarify something and be like, we don't like Rashmi. But I understood that, because nobody's ever heard from us. Nobody's ever heard from us unless our narrative is confused, rejected a tragic and so anything else is so uncomfortable that people do that, you know, people don't like it. So I said, Well, this is, this is my answer, that if you're open to another narrative that isn't grounded in those things, because most of us, our narratives are not grounded in those things. When I was born in the 1950s let's be clear, but I was not unusual where I lived. So, you know, there was no sense of you're weird. You got to explain yourself. Blah, blah. So, you know, I wanted another narrative that a young, mixed person, younger mixed person, could read and say, Okay, well, that's not my story, but at least it's not the danger of the single story, right, that we've been stuck with for 400 plus years. So that was, that's what, what drove swirl Grove in the subtitle is coming of race in the USA, it starts when I'm in middle school with the assassination of Dr King, and goes all the way through three days after President Barack Obama's historic election when he called himself a mutt on international television. So that's slow girl. But I've written all kinds of things. I'm now working on a novel. I'm not a natural memoirs. I'm not able to journal. And I really the whole time you're working on a memoir, you really wish you were somebody who journaled so you could just edit and curate your journals right now, I couldn't do that. So memoir was not comfortable for me. It really tested me. It kicked my behind in every possible way, as a writer, even as somebody who's been writing and being published for decades, it was hard. It was it was it was bone crushingly hard. And so I'm going back to fiction, you know, I'm working on a novel now that, again, tries to challenge some of the popular narratives we've been stuck with, so that we can break down the barriers in our community, create more solidarity, get rid of the internal fighting, so we can come together and fight the real enemy. That's really what my work is about.
I love that whole ancestral assignment and and you taking that ancestral assignment now that I've spoke with everyone, I want to go back to the audience, and I also want to pose some questions. So Ty Coleman said, Yes, ancestral assignments Ingrid Sibley say, Ain't that the truth? Asia said children of blood and bone is also accessible to me. How do you say her name? Told me
I think I am me. Okay,
um, yeah. So one of the things that I and I want to go back to one of the questions that was asked in the chat earlier, and it was a question that was posed by Ty, um, who made space for you as a writer, I feel like I heard from you, heard that some of that from you to Teresa, just in terms of your mom taking it seriously to that degree, you know. And I think that that's such a big deal, even having children I see whose parents take their drawings and frame them, you know, in Nice, nice matted board, nice frame put the label on it, who made space for you as a writer and who inspires you as a writer? And anyone can take that I want
to kind of just piggyback, because I didn't get to sure to answer your first question. So the first black woman, right? I read everybody, like everybody else, although I'm a different generation, but I read everything. I really like Dylan Thomas a lot as a child, Langston, Hughes, my first black woman writer was Gwendolyn Brooks, and she came from Seattle. She came to Seattle. I was probably 1011, maybe 12, and I don't even remember the details, but I made my mother take me to meet her, and I had prepared my little poems, and I put them in a little booklet with a letter, and I asked her if she could please read them and tell me what she thought. And she did. She took it home to Chicago with her, and she sent it back with a lovely letter full of praise. I wish I had that letter and encouragement, I mean, and I was, you know, pre adolescent, right? That I have to tell you that nothing else compared to that.
What would you say? Devorah, who made space for you. I. Oh and oh, you're muted. And who inspired you also.
Oh, you're still muted. Let me see if I can unmute you.
It says, Ask to unmute.
I'm sitting here wondering who made space for me. I feel like I had to make space for Could
you repeat that you broke up for me a little bit.
I was sitting here listening to Teresa and and pondering your question, who made space for me? And I feel like I had to make space for myself. I had to fight to finish high school. I almost didn't because of my troubled household. I went to college on my own. Somehow I managed to go to college, and then when I met my daughter's father, he supported me in going to law school. So nobody ever told me when I was in school that I could write or but I had teachers, and that's why I love Asia so much, and I love teachers because I had teachers. Now that I think about it, because some of these questions, you know, you really don't think about how everything fits together all the time, and when I think about teachers, I had English teachers. So when I have to recant that statement that nobody made space for me because my teacher, I have English teachers, art teachers who loved me, who tended to me, and they tended and a teacher, a good teacher, not only tended, tends to your mind, but they tend to your soul. And so I had teachers who tended to me, and they made sure that I knew, even though they could tell that something must have been going on at home that made it difficult for me. They made sure I knew that I was somebody and I had some capabilities and that I was smart, and so that took me to college, even though my parents didn't talk about college that took me to law school six years after graduating from college, and then when I graduated from college and in law school, my daughter's father, he was one first person who told me I could write. I had been keeping a journal by that time for maybe a decade. So Brianna talked about journaling. I got so many journals now I'm worried about, what am I going to do with them? You know? I'm like, Oh my God, what do you do with your journals? Do you burn them? Do you want you don't want everybody to read all of that stuff he wrote. He's like, she could lose some family and friends after your death. So, but it was the writers like Angela talked about, and I appreciate Angela's, I would say You are brilliant in the way that your brilliance comes from being steeped in your your in Baldwin and Langston Hughes and and I can speak on that, because just this last week, I've been doing girl trek. And every day we take a different woman and a different black woman. And we, we look at her life, and the first day was Audrey Lord, and that's a bad sister, right there. I mean, Audrey Lord, right? So I was reading her already, so I started dig, digging deeper and and what I want to say about that is, every day there was Shirley, Chisholm, Chisholm, and I want to tell you someone just called me from New York before this, and she told me, a friend of mine, that they just opened a national park named after Shirley Chisholm. Y'all the first to hear about it. Okay, that's, that's some bad stuff. So reading Toni Morrison when I was The Bluest Eye, I got, I got these books. I'm rereading them now. Sula reading The Color Purple before we knew it was going to be a movie, you know. So all of these books they when you read these women, because I love men. I love James Baldwin. Got to meet him long time ago. But it's something about reading about your foremothers, and you realize that Ella Jo Baker, she was doing what she did with very little concern about her life and safety. And then you realize that we could do more. I can do more. I can be more. Yeah, so I think the writers, when you ask, Who made when I think about as I unpack this, just my brother actually introduced me to books when I was about 15. They and he would just read a book, and he would give me a book, and he would give it to me to read. And then my sister turned me on to feminism. And so books, the people who wrote the books floor Neil Herson, and it's like they made space for me, and they told me who I am and who I could be, and that who says you can't? Audrey Lloyd reminds us that. So what you you are afraid, like, if you can work while you're tired, you can, you can work while you're afraid. I mean, like I I'm excited about it, because I want everybody to do what Angela. Everybody can't do it now. You know, Angela, you look like you're in your 20s, but maybe you could do it for your children and you or your grandchildren. Put books around your grandchildren, put books in the hands of your children young enough so that your mind, it shapes your mind the way I was listening to Angela. I'm like, this comes from reading at a young age, and so that your mind is not filled with all this foolishness and shallowness that comes from being obsessed with getting a new pair of shoes. So I say, all of the women who wrote before me and so and James, I can't leave James Baldwin out, because something about him touched my life deeply. But all of those women, Toni Morrison is one who said, what Teresa said, write the book you'd like to read. She said that. And so love addicted was she actually inspired me. And Maya Angelou, who's all I read, all, most of all, all of her books. So those black women writers who were really bold, and I sometimes struggle with the fear of saying what I really want to say, even at this stage of my life in writing. And I see, because I work with writers, the fear that a lot of black people have, or people have to write, and they wonder they don't write, they think they don't write because they don't have time. But with the quarantine, a lot of people still not writing, who said they wanted to write, but they're not writing because they haven't found their voice. And they haven't found their voice because a lot of them are not grounded and rooted in our foremothers, right? Because they they don't know that. This is Shirley Chisholm was talking bad before you were born, right? Shirley Chisholm was, you know, Audrey Lord was claiming her lesbian, being lesbian, claiming, you know, she's a lesbian. What activist mother and some and poet way before some. So I say read, I tell you what all the other writers. And I'm saying this to those who are listening, do yourself a favor and read, read, read. I used to wonder why writers would say that. Alice Walker, she would just say, Read, read, read, read. I was like, why they want to read what you want to read so much. And now I know why, because it shapes your mind. You're not the same person.
Let me, let me say, really quick, you are setting off the chat room right now in the group. So Ty says, If you can, he's quoting you. If you can work while you're tired, you can work while you're afraid. Whew, what a word. Yes, we are preaching to the choir, but I wish we could spread the message far and wide. Ceja says, Amen, Deborah, the fear is real. The fear is so real. Yeah. Ta says, I agree this panel is a testimony to the necessity of black women and black women's art. Um, before I move forward, because I want to talk to Brianna and Brianna, I want to talk to you about the significance of journaling, why that's so important that we write our stories. But I want to ask the audience really quickly if they would, if they could, if they could recommend one or two books that they would give to a little black or brown girl. What could you type in the chat for us? What those books would be that you would pass along to your nine year old self, and then one for your. Uh, 15 year old self, and then maybe one for your 18 year old self, or just books that really touch you, that you would share, um, with a young black girl, whether she's aspiring writer or not, just like encouraging that level of not just literacy, but to look to people who may have some similar lived experiences as she does, for guidance, for inspiration, for story, for adventure. Flossie Cleo says that they would recommend swirl girl. What are some other books that folks would recommend? And I would also, I'm going to say now, and I'll say again later, a call to action. Um, that everyone in this chat and everyone on the panel, so I'm sure you are probably already have on some level. Um, buy a book for a black girl. Buy everybody in the chat, buy a book for a black girl. Um, so in our on our end in our chat, Deborah says, Bluest Eye, Bluest Eye, oh my gosh. Um, little breed love, Paco, the breed love, um, yeah. Well, forever, forever, uh, be, you know, just a part of my life, like as a living character. Shug Avery will forever be a part of my life as a as a real character. Um, yeah, so I want to let you guys know. So in our green room, folks are some of the authors are chatting, but if you type it into the Facebook, they'll be able to see it, but I will read off. So there's blue side. Tony. Toni Morrison, um, it's I've shrunk in my screen. Yes. To into I'm not going to pronounce it right. I never get her name right. Can someone say it for me? She wrote for color girls. Ntozakengay, yes. And the book it looks like is Team gorilla, my love, by Tony K
Bambara came. Used to be Cabe Yeah. Bamboo came. Okay.
Toni Cade Bambara, okay.
They said it everything, by Jacqueline Woodson and Sharon Draper, The Color Purple, Alice Walker, Sula by Lupita yongo. I'm not sure if I said that right, and buy a book from a black store? Yes, Deborah added, buy a book from a black store. I know about this caged bird scenes by Angelo and the people could fly black feminist thought, Patricia Hill Collins definitely changed my life. So those are some of the books I'll look in the chat and see anything from Maya Angelou, someone said, akada Witch beyondi apophora. I don't think I got that one right, either. Brianna, could you say that for me? All
right, it's a Nadeo Cora for she's Nigerian. Nigerian.
Try. No worries, no. Ty recommended kindred. So you know the call to action speeches of Malcolm X and Marcus Garvey definitely changed my life. Um, buy a book for a black girl. Buy it from a black store. All right, I'm gonna get into Brianna talk to us about why journaling.
Um, so journaling, at least for me, has always been like the one place where I have complete autonomy, whether it's through the way that I work through my thoughts or the way that I shape the story that's happening around me to try to make sense of it all. Journaling is just it's so cathartic and it's so accessible. Like, if you are literate, you can keep a journal, and maybe not even if, if you aren't literally, you can draw, you can collage in it like it's just the possibilities for creativity and record keeping and Note taking is just endless in a journal. And yeah, and I think that everyone should keep one some of the work that I've been doing. So with 1134 press, which is my indie press, that I published my collection of short stories through I partnered with a local doula to Baltimore. Her name is Bree Mobley, and we created a self care journal specifically for moms. Uh, which has guided prompts and, you know, like weekly to do list and quotes from our favorite authors and, yeah, so that's, I just think that self care should be a part of everyone's or journaling should always be part of everyone's self care routine. Yeah,
I love it. I agree. What was the quote? I think Deborah shared it earlier. Was it Deborah Asia that shared about writing because it's cheaper than therapy.
It is.
I definitely think it's important for that. And I also feel like there's a significance to writing our stories now, because people just aren't writing writing our stories. One of the challenges that I had when I was working on, oops, sorry, I muted myself, one of the challenges that I had, challenges that I challenges that I had when I was working on my dissertation, is there's um, when you type in mother or motherhood, there is so many books Written um, about white women's mothering process, their memoirs, articles from their from their vantage point. And a lot of the things that I just found around black motherhood were just like looking at Black women from very much, from a deficit standpoint, very much looking at them through the lens of their ability to produce and what they produce, and the way in which what they produce impacted the overall economics of the country. So
and as far as I know, this might be for us to self care journal for mamas might be the only self care guided journal specifically for black women. If I'm you know, we could double check, but I'm pretty sure that this is one of the only ones we because we did a lot of research to create this book, and we thought that that part of the narrative was very important to contribute. Yeah,
I want to ask Asia and Angelo, and I'll start with Asia from in your opinion, what is the role of literature and culture.
Oh, you're muted. You're muted. Asia
unmute. There we go.
I was just saying That's a deep question, but I think it's a part of culture, right? So it can be culture in itself, like, I feel like it's an element of culture, and then it's also a tool for documentation, like we could put these books in time capsules, right? I also, I was speaking to my sister last night about how much I love science fiction. And what I love about science fiction, as it relates to culture, is that some of it is apocalyptic and it warns us, like, if you continue to live this way, this is what could happen. But there's also this role of imagining ourselves into a future and creating worlds that don't yet exist, but could exist, right? And I think about like the time that we're in, specifically right now, I have been doing so much reading, and it's not literature, but I'm reading a lot of perspective. I'm reading a lot of I love argument, right and discussion and different viewpoints and people. What I'm noticing right now is a boldness that has come out of this movement, that the energy is affecting people in a way that they are telling their stories, and we're using social media to tell those stories, right? Um, so, yeah, I think there's a million roles that it plays, but it's definitely an essential part. The other thing I want to make sure I go back to very quickly, you asked a question earlier about who made space for you, and I definitely want to make sure that I give a shout out to all the teachers I know you're doing a show on teachers next week. So early, shout out to them, because definitely one of the people who made space. Place for me as a writer was my fifth grade teacher. Every year I got to move up a year in reading because I was all, you know, we had these reading circles, but I was always like, go to the next grade. So by the time I got to fifth grade, it was the end of elementary school. We didn't have a middle school there, so she created an entire poetry unit just for me. My teacher did, and that was the beginning of, you know, my love affair with with poetry. She didn't have to do that. I'm sure that was as a teacher myself. Now I realize how much extra work that was, but she did that. I also just want to say, before you move on to Angela, that you made me think with your post when you said a lot of books about boys and their dogs, and we were talking earlier in the chat about time to say that they thought that there were no black YA novels. I remember the very the first long young adult chapter book that I read in the fifth grade was called the yearling, and it was about a boy and his a white boy and his deer. Really good, but you're absolutely,
yeah, I mean, it was, it was in abundance white, like, that's literally, I felt like, that's all I saw was just like white boys and their dogs in elementary school, when I was looking through all the time. I know we're over time. I do want to get to Angela, and I also want everyone to get an opportunity to share where they're up to, what they're up to. Where can people find you next? Where can they follow you? Where can they purchase your book? Um, and all of that. Thank you, Brianna. Brianna has posted it in the in the Facebook group, so please paste it post in the in the Facebook group. Um, so people can follow you. Put your Instagram if you don't have if you don't currently have merch, put your Instagram, your website, all the ways for people to connect with you. Angela, tell us, in your words, what is the what is the role of literature in culture?
Yeah, I think, thinking back to I'd forgotten this, maybe I blocked it out, but when I was I always knew that words were significant and incredibly important, but I didn't realize how powerful and profound words could be and the impact that they could have until I was almost expelled from middle School for writing down a poem by Ursula ruckered on, you want more album by the roots. So I'm black, don't crack, so I'm in my mid 30s, right? But, so, um, but you know, the roots album came out, and I was just so moved by this poem, and I wanted to show my best friend, right? I was like, have you, and if you are not familiar with this poem, is called the unlocking, and it's graphic because it essentially is the story of a woman who has been gang raped and then comes back and is and asserts her power, right? And I was, I was moved by the story, because it was the first time that I had read something other than like Beloved by Toni Morrison that was so kind of guttural, but also that showed women with machetes, women with guns, you know, women as affirmed and confident and powerful and and my mother was so disappointed with me, because we had to sit, You know, in this principal's office, and I had to defend I had to defend myself. She was, she was proud of me for defending myself, but she was disappointed that that I chose that poem as a kind of, you know, as a as an inspiration, right, of all the things that I could have chosen. And so to that end, I think that literature, the role of literature and culture, is always to challenge us, right, always to push us. And I appreciate what, what, as you was saying about the importance of imagining a future, I've been thinking a lot and the importance of speculative fiction, as many others on the panel have spoken about. There was a beautiful panel with Tana new tananarive Do, talking about how Octavia Butler been new, right, how basically she was a prophet. And if you've read any of her work, particularly Parable of the Sower, it's so it's so relevant to the contemporary moment. And so in that regard writers and thinkers and artists and creatives, I can echo that. I think our role is to challenge and to imagine and to push the bars and to encourage and to affirm and to contextualize everything that's happening in the world. Because. The book itself is an archive, right? Our words and our words are an archive as well, right? Like we are how we're contextualizing this moment, and all of the moments that preceded and the moments that have yet to come are the ways that this moment will be remembered, right? And there's some, you know, there's a kind of responsibility with that, and an urgency with that as well. So, if you know, so, if you are feeling hesitant about writing, or feeling hesitant about throwing your hat in the gigantic ring of you know, creative writers, thinkers, streamers, don't, you know, do it, you know, put, put your words out there. We need to hear your words. There's black women writers are some of the most affirming writers that I have ever experienced. But even when we put that categorization like we have to remember that black women writers, that's not a monolith, right? We are not a monolithic group of people. You're not homogeneous, right? There are many different kinds of of of experiences. Black experience is broad. It is it is diverse and and so we need many writers from many different lanes all speaking to that, so that, so that, as many folks on the panel have spoken to the violence of that singular narrative does is not perpetuated.
I love the mentioning of how the writing marks space and time, and like document, like our individual stories, our collective stories, how we can envision a future. I love reading anything Afro futuristic, like all of the tenants of Afrofuturism, it is the full hour I will give. Is anyone have any last thoughts? I want to go ahead and plug in again and say really quick. Thank you so much to everyone who is watching live. Stacey Patton said, beautiful panel Ingrid Sibley says, beautiful message. Angela, thank you, Deborah, thank you for putting your link in and Deborah also lists her books love addicted one woman's spiritual journey through emotional dependency. I also want to still and Angela also share her link to her website, as well as her IG I definitely want to push through the call to action. Buy a book for a black girl from a black store. Um, yeah, I'll just keep saying that. And if there are any last thoughts from any of our panelists,
I want to encourage people who want to write to start and just know that writing is not something that you do well when you first start,
oh my gosh. Can you pause on it for just one second? That's a whole I can't tell you the value of that. Um, you just struck a nerve. Because if you don't know that, and you go into this practice, not having it will make you feel like you you're not good enough, you're not smart enough, you don't have it figured out. And I feel like, even as an adult, I got to a point where, when I wasn't getting it right, and the first, first two, two drafts wasn't right, um, it made me feel something very negative, but I'm gonna let you finish. I just when you said that, it was just like, I just it instantly resonated me. And I was like, I wish somebody would have told me that
writing is revising.
Actually, I had two professors say to me, one when I was in college and one when I was in law school, and they said the exact same thing. There's no such thing as writing is rewriting and so and it's a craft, so it's not something that you do, even if you get really, really good at it. You didn't start out that way. So I would encourage people to write in journaling, as we know, right us who journal, we know that that helps you become a better writer. So write journal. Keep writing, keep reading, and never stop because somebody wants to read what you have to say, but you have to know that. You have to find your own unique voice. None of us speak from the same voice. We all have our own unique. Voice,
yes. Um, Melissa Erica said, Damn, writing is revising. She says, the truth. She said, hug. Amber says, Thank you for these many wonderful suggestions. C just says, Oh, wait, it went, it left. There was a thank you for you. Deborah, you'll be able to see it in the comments. Um. Todd says giving, giving myself permission to write the first draft is the hardest part of writing. For me, hardest part. And I think you know the war, you also know a little something about that, because you have that, um, write that book. Yes,
I have it right here is a very small book, but I wrote it for people who would come up to me and say, I have a story for you to write, and I can't write their story. So I would say, you write it, and this is just to get you started. Yeah. So I'm gonna put my other link in there to my other website, but the important thing is to just dive in and as the as the person said as that the first draft is the hardest, but if you never do the first draft, You can't you'll never have a fifth draft,
right? Any other last thoughts? CD says, Thank you all for sharing Rasheem. Thank you for putting this together.
Yes, thank you, Rasheem.
Problem. I appreciate y'all. This is therapy for me, and I feel like, I feel like this is my work, yeah? I mean, I feel like this is part of my work. Well,
you do it really, well you do Thank you. Seriously, yeah, thank you.
I appreciate that, because I don't be feeling like I'd be doing it well. So I appreciate that. That's
how we writers feel about 99% of the way through.
That's another show, right? Imposter syndrome, right? So
I want to thank you all again. So much. The board, Brianna, Asia, Angela, Teresa, um, I want to thank you for coming on here. I want to thank you for the work that you, that you do. I want to thank you for the words that you put on paper. I want to thank you too. 20 you are going to go by. I know you've probably already bought a black girl a book, especially you Deborah, because your kid is in college, so you don't brought several books. I think she just grad, she graduated, so you know about plenty of
books, trying to move to New York, and she started a fellowship a couple of weeks ago. Yeah, Master's degree in English teaching. So you're right. Yeah. Girl is about the age of these other two young ladies, Brianna and um Angela.
So thank you again. And that concludes this episode of the counter narrative show black women, right. Please do stop by and join us next week where we talk about teaching in a crisis. I'll be speaking with teachers about their experience, their lived experiences of working or trying to work through this teaching students online with limited access and access to things and resources, and you'll hear directly from them about what it's been like for them teaching in the crisis. Thank you so much for stopping by and have an
awesome thank you so much. Thank you.
Thank you. It's an
honor. Blessings to everybody. Thanks. Thank you.