NTOZAKE SHANGE SCHOOL OF LITERARY THOUGHT PRESENTS: The Space Between: Yoni Narratives, Volume I
Ntozake Shange School of Literary Thought Over the past one hundred years, Black Women have written themselves into the forgotten pages of a male-dominated society and literary world. They have written about how this power constricts their intersections of simultaneously being Black and Woman. Ntozake Shange writes from this perspective. Her literary work begets a consciousness of Black contemporary femininity in a society that crosses many genres: Playwriting, Novelist, Poet and Essayist. In the celebration of her name and all that Shange represents (“she who has her own/walks with lions”), we have come together to create a Sister’s circle/literary group entitled the “Ntozake Shange School of Literary Thought”. This is a safe space where Black Women can be subversive and recover ourselves through words in the form of reading, writing and critical analyses through verbal dialogue. Therefore, it is our hope that, Ntozake School of Literary Thought will be a place where Black Women can (re)affirm each other to heal many of the wounds that are inflicted by racism, sexism, classism, and homophobic views through our collective narratives. Our Sista Erin Morales-Williams who encouraged us in the circle to write our own Yoni narratives and thus, inspired this body of work. Enjoy!
Ntozakes’ Daughters Yoni: is a Sanskrit term used to describe the most sacred part of the female’s body, the vagina. Instead of looking at our sacred space through the eyes of the dominate society, we self-define and honor our seed of power, which to us, is a natural maternal source of supremacy. A liberator of herself, a healing space, provoking magic. Sheltering the moon, mosque between our legs, Yoni is You + I. Our Yoni is Black.
Diata is a teacher, aspiring novelist, and long time poet. She is from Maryland, loves nature and traveling. One day soon she will pack her things and live somewhere faraway and sunny. Ladi’Sasha Genia Lee-Jones is an awesomely amazing dreamer. Living in her head eighty-three percent of the time (with the remainder being lent to the wisdom and hearts of elders and little black girls & boys) she is committed to personal and communal development through creative healing practices - via writing, praying, archives, sisterhood, and sunflowers. Iresha Picot is a lover of books, and all things Nappy, Black and Woman; everything else is secondary. While activism lies at the core of her soul; she also survived graduate school and has an M.Ed from Temple University. Iresha spends most of her time, practicing her theories and trying to take over the world, one Black Woman and Political Prisoner at a time.
Darasia Selby is a lover of sunflowers, pineapples, and springtime, Darasia Selby has been writing since girlhood. Darasia is a Philly native and community activist, directing her energy towards defending the rights of people of Afrikan descent. Her writings reflect and focus on the innate beauty and love in the world, two elements we all seek but that are often ignored, neglected, and uncultivated.
My Yoni Looks Like:
Long wide Savannah plains, Blackened Flat, topped with cocoa oil and Johnson's Purple-Browned velvet skin with Grapefruit entrances and African hillsides, full and strong
Erin Morales-Williams was born in East Harlem and raised in the Bronx. She is currently a doctoral student in Urban Ed at Temple University with a research focus on adolescent sexuality. She is a lazy spoken word artist who wants to become a yoga instructor so she can hear the hood say, namaste.
Leaving only a Feathered Pearl to peak out from between
---Ladi’Sasha
My Box Don’t beat & batter me anymore. That’s not love. I don’t even have much to do with it. Don’t invade my secret place, Poking and prodding Don’t call me a pretty one. Just call me by my name: Cleansing. Powerful. Creation. It took me a while to realize my box is my secret place. But not a dirty little one: my box is the place I live in. Like a child taking pleasure in cardboard fixes, Rather than in artificial plastic toys… Don’t talk about my scars. From sickness head to toe, From minds and bellies Don’t talk about my past Don’t talk about my guilt Because it’s not fair They say I can’t get pleasure Don’t even mention the torture: Shaved and itchy! Dominated, dry and bored! Subjected to ridicule! Deceived, nervous
LIBERATE ME!
I liberate myself. Affirm my Yoni-ity. I break out of the box to become the new me. Healthy and conscious: I make decisions on my own. Do not enter at the door. Let me please me first. Beautiful creation, whether of child or love; Beautiful cleansing of spirit and of touch; Beautiful woman deserving of… So talk about it sisters: Sing a song and dance. Hold hands to connect our seats of power. We sit on a throne made of copper, gold, and onyx. Talk about the soft natural touch, the frizzy bush, the happy smile of an acknowledged Yoni. Tell the little ones about it. Talk about the respect that’s due for another to enter the heavens. Talk about it. Talk about it.
Diata
My Yoni Be Strong Honest and All Truth Telling Like I Wish I Be
"My Yoni Smells Like..." wet moist earth. sweet like sunflowers dipped in honey. lilacs in spring rain.
Darasia
Yoni Be Big and Little Me, Wise and Yoni, She/We Be Smiling Holding, Shifting Through Memories Soft and Bitter Stubborn, Curious Luring Brown Sweets Yoni Be Being Feeling Speaking Spirit Yoni be Strong Strong Honest and All Truth Telling Like I Be Black, Be Queer, Be Womyn Yoni is All the Better Me And We Be Good We Be Good Together --Ladi-Sasha
Natural
Iresha Picot My Yoni Sounds Like:
I always knew that I would go natural even as a
Happiness. It Giggles.
young girl, rocking a perm. I was in amazement at
Slurping, when it French kisses Afrikan wet tongues.
the hairs on my vagina with an acute and slightly stalkerish affection.
Humming to a slow Minnie Ripperton Song. Love Whispering Beauty. Sweet Damn, my Yoni sure can sing.
For years, I would twist and play, uncurl and, watch them curl back up in its nice little kinky patch and pat them back into place. It was a daily excursion to watch the hairs curl tighter and tighter into themselves, reminding me of the soft Black curly crown in my baby pictures and I guess in a way, I was holding my youth in my vagina. My country
--Iresha
sweetness laid there. My innocence. As a teenager, I went through a “fetish” of sorts, with wearing only white underwear. I told my mom, that I wanted to feel “pure” like the virgin that I was, but how could I wrap my baby in anything else? She needed to be wrapped in divinity. Placating her
spirits. Her beautiful curly naps needed breathable
Darasia Shelby
material to grow. And grow she did. Boyfriends would complain over the years that baby had too much hair and couldn’t I just “cut it down a little bit?” But I couldn’t cut baby’s hair. Didn’t they know that it was the hair that gave me a sense of power as I walked around the house in my undies and could see her peeking out from behind her white head wrap with a clenched fist, spiting a haiku: Kinky, Curly Brown To rebel: in between my things My Yoni fears none!
why do you fear my power? and scoff at my energy? is it the deepness and the darkness of my depths that frighten you? do you fear you will lose yourself in me? your fear so overwhelms that you cannot whisper my name without some display of what you think is manhood in your fear you fail to recognize my divinity or celebrate my vibrations pulsating in time with the earth's you fear my moon cycles and the red honey that rushes from my banks you should marvel at my ability to bring forth woman, man, and stars with sirius orbiting my core some of you are awakening to my truth my beauty and to you the keys of the kingdom are given Transcend.
What if I looked at My Vagina? By Erin Morales Williams My Yoni tastes like peach butter cream pie. Accented with peppermint tea leaves. It tingles your tongue like the tartness of tree bark. When bitten it gushes the tangy, sweet flesh of a strawberry as the leaves tickle your upper lip. Sip and slurp the smoothie of a lifetime.
--Diata
I was in the shower one morning, a new day dawning, water pouring down my back and past my feet, surprised when I heard words that I’d never thought I’d speak, especially since it was about woman things, secrets I were taught to keep not among other women, but secrets to only keep with me… so, I was cleanin down there, You know, the brown girl with the kinky hair, the one you might see when you change a pad, but you never really stare. Because she’s just kinda there, so you might not really care. Well, that morning with the water pouring, I thought about how much ignoring I actually do since only boys calk talk about their family jewels, so many rules on the vagina- hold up- I said it-so
lemme say it one more time in case it was a crime
if my vagina was not just another part of me, but a
against your mind- Vagina.
sacred part of me- not a shameful part of me, but a
I got one just like you, and I think about all the
main part of me-
ignorin that we too often do, how many stories of
What if my vagina was not just a thing, what if my
vaginas history too often excludes
vagina had a song that it never got to sing, since she
Like how the yoni was highly worshiped by the
was just there, and never was I listening-
people of Hindu, how Yoni powers came from the
What if I stared at my vagina, what if I thought
vaginas of goddesses that looked like me and you.
wasn’t pretty
Or even Tantric Buddhism that teaches to look
What if I looked at her with pride, would she start to
inside the vagina if you tryin to find the truth, all
look different, would she glow like a city
the vaginas ravaged in Rwanda, all the women that
What if I didn’t like her smell, or all the cramps and
lost their youth, all the children born from those
all the panties stained with blood,
vaginas, all the healing that they still do.
What if I knew to soak her with jasmine water, that
And just when I was jammin to Weazy F. Baby
the flood I see each month was tied to the
please say the baby, rhyming right wit him that he
movements of the moon, what if I put her on a
was a veneral disease like a menstrual bleed,
pedestal instead of some back room
I found out the Beng of West Africa see the period
What if she wasn’t made just to make little boys
as cleansing need, a sign of purification, not a dirty
feel like men, and give them a little fame, what if
little deed.
my vagina was an independent woman, what if my
So in that morning in that shower I started to seek
vagina demanded some change.
and find a power, asking questions for an hour what
If you would like to read more of our work from the Ntozake Shange School of Literary Thought, you can find it at Ntozakesdaughters.blogspot.com. The Sisters of Ntozake Shange School of Literary Thought will also love to invite all Sisters living or visiting in Philly, to come out and partake in our literary circle. We meet every other Sunday from 35pm in W.Philly. For more information please contact us at Iresha.Picot@gmail.com or become our friend on facebook: “Ntozake School of Literary Thought”
“When there is Woman, there is Magic” --Ntozake Shange