SISTORIES LITMAG: The Forged Woman by SISTORIES

CONTENTS 4

Contributors

5-11

The Suspended Woman Artwork by Dakotah Haiyanna

Poetry by Sonia McCallum

Essay by Ashley Nickens

12-23 The Assimilated Woman Artwork by Dakotah Haiyanna Short fiction by Retha Williams & Jouelzy

Poetry by Sonia McCallum & Afeni Grace

24-35 The Emergent Woman Artwork by Dakotah Haiyanna

Poetry by Afeni Grace & Divine Love

Nonfiction by Falon Harden

Essay by Ashley Nickens

36-52 The Forged Woman Artwork by Dakotah Haiyanna

Photography by Shan Wallace

Poetry by Divine Love & Afeni Grace

Essay by Mariah Webber

Interview with Cidney Tiggett

Nonfiction by Ashley Nickens

SISTORIES LITMAG Editor & Director Ashley Nickens Contact info@sistories.org www.sistories.org @sistoriesclt

SISTORIES LITMAG

Contributors

Mariah Webber Pages 39-41

@slaiborneinc

https://www.femst.ucsb.edu/people/mariah-webber

Sonia McCallum Pages 7-8, 18

@pleasesaythekay @skm76

www.soniakmccallum.com

Ashley Nickens @ash_applebutter Pages 9-10, 27, 31-34, 50-51 www.ashdanielle.com

Cidney Tiggett Pages 46-48

@sin_ciddy

Dakotah Haiyanna Cover & pages 5, 12, 24, 36

@dakotahhaiyanna Afeni Grace Pages 22, 40, 49

@afenigrace

Shan Wallace Pages 38, 42-43, 45 Falon Harden Page 26 Divine Love Pages 28, 43

Jouelzy Pages 19-21 www.smartbrowngirl.com SISTORIES LITMAG

@jouelzy

Retha Williams Pages 14-17

@rethawrites

SISTORIES LITMAG

S U S P E N D E D “The first cycle of women belongs to the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and the early decades of the twentieth century.” -Alice Walker, Interview with Mary Helen Washington

“They were suspended in a time in history where the options for Black women were severely limited...And they either kill themselves or they are used by the man, or by the children, or by...whatever the pressures against them. And they cannot go anywhere. I mean, you can’t, you just can’t move, until there is room for you to move into.” -Alice Walker, Interview with Mary Helen Washington

SISTORIES LITMAG

“People say, that which doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. But they are wrong. What doesn’t kill you, doesn’t kill you. That’s all you get. Sometimes, you just have to hope that’s enough.” -Tayari Jones, The Silver Sparrow

SCARS

Sonia McCallum

It would be cliché to say That they run like a river It is also inaccurate My scars Don’t look like anything And they certainly don’t run They feel like a dull ache A cold, numb Like my legs feel After they’ve fallen asleep And they don’t run. Unfortunately. They stay.

Write the story of how you got one of your scars. How old were you? What were the circumstances surrounding the event? What stands out most in your memory?

SISTORIES LITMAG

“We also often find it difficult to separate race from class from sex oppression because in our lives they are most often experience simultaneously.” -How We Get Free, Black Feminism in the Combahee River Collective

GAZE

Sonia McCallum

I followed her up the creaky staircase. Each step felt soggy, heavy. Not like the carpet was wet But like the steps were rotten. The smell was familiar. Stale, unclean, old. A nigga house smell. My mamma would say. Cooking grease and fried hair, cigarettes and weed. Cheap incense and piss. A dirty fan with no cover in the window mixing the smells like stew. I wanted to pee after we played in her front yard with its cracked sidewalks and broken glass but I wasn’t comfortable in the piss smelling house, so I stood politely and waited. Her mamma was heard but not seen. Yelling out instructions in that hard, black mamma voice. A man was sprawled on the couch. Do rag, wife beater, no socks. He stared at me too hard for my age. (I didn’t know yet that I would later confuse that look for attraction and potential affection and for many years search men’s faces for that look. For my value) It was Eastern Avenue where the hookers walked. Big, stately homes that once held rich, white folks. Some still maintained by quiet, good black folks. Others multiunit housing for those getting by whether good or bad. After my playmate peed and took a long swig of water from a greasy looking glass of which I declined We descended the rotten staircase and back into the front yard, on the same street where at night the hookers walked by.

SISTORIES LITMAG

Ungeographic

“Had I been taught to understand what Zora meant when she wrote, ‘de nigger woman is de mule uh de world so fur as Ah can see,’ when I read Their Eyes Were Watching God in 11th grade, maybe things would’ve been different. If I had heard the lines in the Malcom X speech before it was quoted in Lemonade maybe things wouldn’t have gone the way they did. But, by the time I knew that I needed armor to survive as a Black woman in this world it was too late.” Ashley Nickens, How Mules Make Lemondae”

Ashley Nickens

Before that night, I had no reason to learn the workings of Uptown. As an undergrad, my time spent in the city’s heart was marked— I learned my routes and stuck to them. From class to his Uptown loft, from the Uptown loft to a bar I could sneak into, from there to clinicals, from clinicals to my job(s), stopping briefly in the scholarship-sponsored dorm that I never slept in because the forced solidarity was too much, and then back to the loft. That night happened years before I marched Uptown streets chanting Keith Lamont Scott’s name. Before I learned the Bank of America stadium looming in the distance sat atop 19-year old Joe McNeely’s lyching site1. Years before athletes began kneeling in stadiums, and protestors removed the confederate statue at my sister school 134 miles away; erected in 1913, that same year Joe was murdered in the New South for reportedly killing a Charlotte police officer. Years before ICE raids, economic mobility reports and HB2, I could not perceive my surroundings. That night when I escaped his Uptown apartment I couldn’t see. I stumbled into the chilly, drizzly, 3am-dark sans glasses and appropriate attire. He’d taken everything—my cell, the keys to the 96’ geo prism trapped in the parking deck I couldn’t access, my computer, my clothes, my mind. My instincts/ ancestors/ancestral instincts compelled me to run up what I now know as E. 7th until I reached a garage with two third shift security workers—a Black woman and man. I gave a stuttered rundown of what happened—Beaten. Trapped. Lost. Afraid. The man’s voice fills the air. I got a sister. Don’t play about stuff like this. He hands me his spray-painted bug bunny jacket—the only protection he can offer. The woman looks me in my eyes. You said you live on campus? How old are you? 19. She understands and hands me her phone. She doesn’t talk much after that. She does her job well—keeps watch. It was the first/last time I would call the police. They look annoyed when they arrive. The guards fall back. I repeat my story and feel their agitation swell. I can’t go back by myself, I say in the most rational voice I can affect. They use their badges and their white maleness to access the building. They stand in the middle of the elevator commenting on its luxury, asking me questions. I answer from the back corner. It’s Hussein.

SISTORIES LITMAG

I see their interest peak. I shift. Hope I won’t have to face the guilt beginning to roil up. Hope I don’t have to defend him post-mortem. Hope I don’t have to defend myself. They knock on the door in the way they’ve been trained. He opens likewise. I am unvisible2 collecting my things but can hear their line of questioning. Hear the arrogance under the charm and the question of his own he’s trying so hard to suppress. Do you know who I am? They do not. And even if they did know he was the son of a former Prime Minister of a shithole country they would not care. They walk me to my car. Their last chance. They inspect for damage. Did he break that handle? No— it was like that before. Ok, be safe. I drive away. From Uptown to University. I unlock my dorm. Open the closet to check the mirror for scars/ bruises. I see. Nothing. They are unvisible2. I get ready for my 8am.

Funk, Tim. “Carolina Panthers Stadium Sits on Top of Charlotte’s First Documented

Lynching Site.” The Charlotte Observer , October 5, 2018. https://www.charlotteobserver. com/sports/nfl/carolina-panthers/article219547375.html.

McKittrick, Katherine, and Katherine McKittrick. “Introduction: Geographic Stories.”

In Demonic Grounds Black Women and the Cartographies of Struggle, 25. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2006.

SISTORIES LITMAG

READING LIST

THE SUSPENDED WOMAN Beloved- Toni Morrison Difficult Women-Roxane Gay Hunger -Roxane Gay Out of the House of Bondage- Thavolia Glymph I’m Telling the Truth But Im Lying- Bassey Ikpi The Thing Around Your Neck- Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Cooking in Other Women’s Kitchens- Rebecca Sharpless Medical Apartheid- Harriet A. Washington Blues Legacies and Black Feminist- Angela Davis Coldest Winter Ever-Sister Souljah Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments- Saidiya Hartman Freedom Narratives of African American Women- Janaka Bowman Lewis

SISTORIES LITMAG

A S S I M I L AT E D

“In the second cycle of Walker’s personal construct of the history of black women are the women who wanted to integrate with the mainstream of American life alienating themselves from their roots and denying their ethnicity. The black woman who had some chance at education is pushed and pulled by the larger world outside of her and is urged to assimilate the mainstream of American life in order to overcome her background.” -Alice Walker, Interview with Mary Heleen Washington “Probably the most destructive ideas in the history of human thought. Both originated in envy, thrived in insecurity, and ended in disillusion. In equating physical beauty with virtue, she stripped her mind, bound it, and collected self-contempt by the heap. She forgot lust and simple caring for. She regarded love as possessive mating, and romance as the goal of the spirit. It would be for her a well-spring from which she would draw the most destructive emotions, deceiving the lover and seeking to imprison the beloved, curtailing freedom in every way. She was never able, after her education in the movies, to look at a face and not assign it some category in the scale of absolute beauty, and the scale was one she absorbed in full from the silver screen. . . It was really a simple pleasure, but she learned all there was to love and all there was to hate.” -The Bluest Eye, Toni Morrison

“When a black person behaves in a way that doesn’t fit the dominant cultural idea of how a black person should be, there are all kinds of trouble. The authenticity of his or her blackness is immediately called into question. We should be black but not to black, neither to ratchet nor too bougie. They are all manner of unspoken rules of how a black person should think and act and behave, and the rules are ever-changing.” -Bad feminist, Roxanne gay

SISTORIES LITMAG

To Her Rescue Retha Williams

Her hands hurt. She held them up to try and see them with the moonlight through the darkness. The broken skin on her knuckles caught a glimmer of light and looked like the satisfying, sweet remnants of raspberry jam. That was her latest injury from the Wilson house, where they insisted on her using a washboard before putting the clothes in their new machine to clean them. Bleeding knuckles were a small price to get the four dollars they paid her every week for a couple days of laundering. The Wilson house alone would pay for most of her bus ticket to Chicago. With the few extra dollars she earned from cleaning other homes, and hid in plain site among the roots of the blooming wild flowers in the field behind their house, she could also have a meal along the way. The brakes on the truck screeched loudly as her uncle slowed down for the approaching stop sign. His wide, honey-brown eyes squinted as he peered into the darkened directions of the crossroad to try and see if anything was in the distance. She thought about all that his brown eyes had possibly seen over the years and why they were probably the reason that he didn’t talk much. She imagined him to be a handsome man about forty years ago, before those honey-brown eyes repetitively showed him the unforgivable cost of having coffee colored skin down here in The South. Again the loud screeching signaled the truck was slowing down to pull into the bus depot parking lot. The noise reminded her of why the journey that lied ahead was a necessity. She could still hear a faint ringing in her ears after the last blow her husband Macon laid on her. Always careful to not hit her face, because no one in town wanted the display of a battered maid in their good, Christian home, his large hand landed on the side of her head. The blow toppled her to the ground and left her with the constant sound of church bells ringing in the distance. She looked over at her uncle, who patiently waited on her to process her thoughts. He smiled and nodded in the direction of the Coloreds Only Waiting Room sign dangling from a rusty hinge on the side of the building. “Thank you, Uncle Buddy,” she said before climbing out of the truck and grabbing her small suitcase from the back. He extended his hand to her with a small, crumpled piece of paper at the end of it. As she struggled to read her cousin’s address and phone number scribbled across the paper, she heard him say, “Be safe.” She watched his honey-brown eyes rim with the distinctive sadness they always showed after the words left his lips. She managed to return a half smile to him as an assurance that she would do her best to stay safe on the arduous travels that lied ahead. A nod followed her smile before she closed the heavy truck door. She watched her uncle drive away until the red lights disappeared into the darkened distance. The colored waiting room in the bus depot was small with the stale breath of patrons clouding the air and hanging in its corners. The few benches were crowded with people awaiting their departures, all wearing the same perplexing mixture of worried relief on their faces. Perhaps they too were embarking on an escape. She stood in front of the dirty ticket window and waited for the fat man on the other side to acknowledge SISTORIES LITMAG

“A ticket to Chicago, please, sir,” she said softly with the timidness that had been ingrained in her since birth. The fat man raised his head so that his blue eyes bored into her. He spit a dollop of brown juice into a soda can before saying, “Gal, are you stupid or something?” She dropped her head further to avert his angry, piercing eyes. “No, sir,” she said in an even softer tone. “A ticket to Chicago, please, sir.” “You must be stupid, because the next bus to Chicago doesn’t leave for six hours.” “Yes, sir. A ticket to Chicago, please, sir.” The fat man shook his head with disbelief and rolled his eyes in disgust. “They don’t pay me enough to deal with dumb niggers,” he said while punching the numbers on the cash register with more force than necessary. After the register drawer opened and a bell range to signal the completion of its calculating, he said, “Twenty-two dollars and forty-five cents.” She pulled the tightly rolled bills from her jacket pocket and counted out twenty-three dollars before placing them in the opening under the dirty window. Her remaining two dollars went back into her pocket. The man picked up her money and counted it twice before slowly raising his head back up at her. His blue eyes narrowed and something sinister deposited on his face. “Gal, are you trying to cheat me,” he said with a harsher evil lacing his words. She looked up at him with confusion. “This is only twenty-one dollars.” A sneer spread across his lips with an unspoken message of the unfair challenge he was forcing on her. Give up her last two dollars that he watched her put back into her pocket, or risk stating that she had given him twenty-three dollars. A mere statement that could possibly result in her being arrested or even death. For the last year, between the beatings from Macon and the drudgery of cleaning the homes of people that barely acknowledged her as human being, the number twenty-five had been the skinny ray of sunlight fighting between dark clouds. Twenty-five would get her far away from this life she hadn’t chosen for herself. Twenty-five would take her to a place where optimism was more than just a word she had read long ago in a book. Twenty-five was the number of dollars she had grown among the roots of the wild flowers behind their house, and it was the number of dollars she had pulled from her jacket pocket to pay for her bus ticket to Chicago. Realizing her inevitable defeat, she reached into her jacket pocket and pulled out her last two dollars. She slowly unrolled them and placed them in the opening beneath the dirty window. “You niggers are always trying to cheat me,” the fat man grumbled after snatching her last two dollars from the opening. The tears welled in her eyes as he placed her bus ticket and change of fifty-five cents in the opening. She widened her eyes to keep the tears from breaking and streaming down her face. Her last glimpse of her Uncle Buddy’s sad, honey-brown eyes danced through her head.

SISTORIES LITMAG

As she grabbed her bus ticket and fifty-five cents, the printed word Chicago beat back her welling tears. In her hand was the little bit of money she had left in the world, but she also held a ticket to her rescue. With the benches tightly packed with others awaiting their departures, she could only find a spot on the floor to begin her six hours of waiting. It was a deliberate choice to arrive at midnight for a bus that didn’t leave until six in the morning. Macon was probably swinging a sledge hammer at this moment to pound a spike into the ground for the new rail track that was being laid. At the break of daylight he would be loading his tools into his truck and preparing for the hour long drive back to their home. And at that same time she would be watching the town of McComb grow smaller in the distance from her bus window. Her excitement subsided the ringing in her ears, relieved her swollen knuckles, and enlightened her to the creative ways fifty-five cents could be stretched over her fifteen hour bus trip. A soda and a hotdog wasn’t a meal, but it would only cost her forty cents. A cup of coffee would only cost her a dime. And she would have a nickel leftover to call her cousin when she arrived. She scooted down to a spot on the floor in a corner far away from the fat man behind the dirty window. Her bus ticket was gripped tightly in her hands as she kept studying the printed word Chicago on it. She thought back to a few years prior when she last saw her cousin Lorraine during her visit home. Lorraine painted Chicago into a utopia in her mind. “You can go wherever you want and sit anywhere you like. The white people there aren’t like the ones here.” The printed word Chicago transformed into the word Freedom on her bus ticket. She closed her eyes and saw the bright flashing lights of the city. The ringing in her ears became a melodic tone of jazz music flowing into the paved streets from night clubs. She felt a cool breeze of wind tickling her skin from the lake that divided the city. The tickling inched further up her legs and scratched at her knees. She opened her eyes to see if the sensation she was feeling was indeed only a part of her fantasy. On her knee she saw a mouse trying to free one of its paws from the entanglement of her stockings. Shock and revulsion made her jump to her feet and dance around until the mouse fell off and scurried away. It was then that she noticed several of them running about and adhering mostly to the corners like the one she was sitting in. The awaiting patrons simultaneously gave her a knowing look. Now she understood why they were packed on the benches. She moved to lean against the wall on the opposite side of the room where the mouse traffic appeared to be lighter. Six hours of standing would be more than tiresome, but, like the Wilson house, it was a small price. As a distraction she pulled the paper from her pocket that her Uncle Buddy had given her. She read her cousin’s phone number and address over and over to try and memorize it. After the fifth time she read it, a welcomed distraction distracted her from her distraction. “Bus number three sixty-eight now arriving,” the fat man announced through a speaker and around the wad in his mouth. “Departure for Memphis in twenty minutes.” A bench was cleared almost immediately as some of the patrons gathered their things and headed to the bus lot in front of the building. She made her way over to the bench and was greeted with the relief of sitting down in a mouse free area.

SISTORIES LITMAG

Relief allowed her mind to resume thoughts of the possibilities that were waiting for her in Chicago. Maybe she could find a job where she got to dress nice everyday like the women she sometimes saw on the magazines in the homes she cleaned. Maybe she would meet a man that would take her out and show her the inside of one of those fancy night clubs. Maybe she would just sit by the water and watch God run his hand across it to make waves. For the next few hours, she alternated between thoughts of all that she was running to, thoughts of all that she was running from, the printed word Chicago on her bus ticket, and her cousin’s information scribbled on the small piece of paper. Exhaustion began to set in and started pulling her eyelids down. Knowing she needed to stay awake, because falling asleep could be more detrimental than just being cheated out of two dollars, she pressed her swollen knuckles against the unwavering wood of the bench. The pain jolted her back into alertness, and would continue to do so over the next couple hours when her eyelids were heavy. Again, a welcomed distraction distracted her from her distraction of awakening pain infliction. She hadn’t noticed that, at some time during the night, the fat man had been replaced by a woman with tight pin curls and pursed red lips. “Bus number one twenty-five now arriving,” the woman said with a long drawl. “Departure for Birmingham in twenty minutes.” She looked down at her bus ticket and saw the number one twenty-five next to the printed word Chicago. Her eyes were no longer heavy, and her latest self infliction of pain subsided. She, along with many others, gathered her things and made her way to the bus lot. The sun was breaking over the horizon in the far distance while she waited to board the bus, causing the sky to be blanketed in a cascading orange to purple hue. She was reminded of the early mornings when she ventured to the field behind their house to add a couple more dollars to her growing stash among the roots of the wild flowers. She smiled at the thought.

SISTORIES LITMAG

Save Yourself Sonia McCallum

Save yourself I remember Thinking as I laid on my mat Breathing deeply Feeling the force I let go and I breathed him in. And again. And again. I left class feeling love. What I learned since And that I now share with you Is that breath is life but Never breathe him in Unless you know He loves you back.

She Wrapped Herself Sonia McCallum

What does it feel like—physically, emotionally, and/or spiritually— to be safe?

She wrapped herself Not in rainbows But in the scratchy leaves Of corn And instead of lovely flowers Tucked in her hair She stuck dandelions there Silly girl, those are weeds She didn’t yet know That dandelions Grow wild To heal wild souls

SISTORIES LITMAG

Perpendicular Contradictions Jouelzy I want to shake this feeling out of me. Scrub out the scent, readjust my self. I have this feeling right between my legs and just below the clasp of the button on my jeans that keeps reminding me of my drunkenness. The point of no return. I incurred another notch on the belt, I’ve desperately been trying to shorten. Damn, why can’t I go back. I just don’t want to feel like the victim. I was in my own home. That just don’t feel right. It’s easier just to be mad at myself then to point the finger at someone else. Open up a whole can of worms that I don’t want to deal with. The finger pointing, back against the fence, throwing me under the bus, “you know you wanted it” commentary that leaves you cringing because you don’t exactly remember everything that happened that night. I should have been in more control. I should have stopped it sooner. I should have put the damn cup down. I should know myself. And this is what I’ve been dealing with since that last boy. You know the one I actually wanted to sleep with. I should know myself. But everything just keeps coming back glaring at me, like ‘bitch, what the fuck is you doing?’ I don’t know anymore. And what I’m finding out just hurts my soul. This is not a story I can go championing amongst my homegirls. I can’t read him his rights because arguing with the ignorant just makes you lose your intelligence. There’s nothing to be said. I keep trying to recount it to see why it happened. At what point did I write this into existence. Offer my hand out in a come hither motion. All I remember is shadows. Shadows in my bedroom, right after I had crashed in my bed from dispensing everything I had consumed that day into the toilet bowl. Another time where my mind and my body aren’t moving in parallel motions. Perpendicular contradictions. I don’t remember time frames. One minute I’m here; next minute it’s black and a whole hour could have passed. Then I’m up and he’s there. Why are you in my room, in my bed...on top of me? Why can’t I just say no? Where is my voice? Didn’t I just throw up? Is he really putting his mouth to mine? I had so many thoughts running through my head and not one of them came out. Other than, ‘I’m too drunk for this shit’ as I pantomimed in my dark room to find my underwear. My legs finally came to back to life and I was able to move my body off the bed. I had turned the light on but then quickly turned it off because I didn’t want to realize what was really happening. The smirk on his face didn’t help either. Let it sit in the darkness. Let it be a figment of my imagination. My salacious imagination. Turn the light off and exit stage right. But no. He thinks it’s all, all right. That was just the appetizer and there is a full meal awaiting. Son, I’m too drunk for this shit. I dived back into my bed and pull the sheets over me. Fuck, they smell like him. Why is he picking me up and pulling me out of my bed? Dear lawd. Lets walk to the door and end this. I’m too drunk for this. I want to slap my head a million times. Replace his little comments with me saying no. But I didn’t. I want to wash this feeling between my legs out of me because I keep waking up with the memory. He proved that I’m a dirty little whore. I have no limits, no boundaries. Dirty little me, I just want to scrub out of me. Took out the emotion, the sincerity, the intimacy. Yanked it from right under me. It’s easier just to be mad at myself rather than play the victim. Something about being the victim in my own home, with someone I know, just doesn’t sit right. Then I keep having to replay if it was something I did or said. So I’ll just be mad at me right now. Till I wash this dirty little feeling out of me. And then we can play, ‘forget that memory.’ It’s not one that’s needed.

SISTORIES LITMAG

(THE TALK) Emphatic exhale. We talked. Exactly what I didn’t want to do. But blinded with anger at myself and no easy way out, I concede when he shows up at my door. Twice. In the world of misogyny he seeks out my homeboy, the connector between the two of us, Sheldon, to discuss how he wants to “get at me.” In the world of his ignorant bliss, my tight and drunk pussy seems quite indulgent and he wants to pursue. Never mind the fiancée that lives with him and whose medical school tuition bill he’s fully funding. Or the more-than-ajumpoff whom he’s housing in New Jersey. Or the stripper in Long Island, who I’ve seen him 4 finger fuck with a titty in his mouth at the strip club. All women that I’ve met on his own accord. He wants to “get at me.” Somehow I fit in line with this stable. The new conquest. So he rings Sheldon up the Monday after our dirty little drunken exchange. Sheldon tells him he needs to have a conversation with me, as a man, because his actions aren’t acceptable and I’m not that type of chick. At 29 years, he can’t seem to assess this for himself. So he promptly drives over to my house with Sheldon. “No, I’m not answering the door. He can’t come into my house. Come back in thirty minutes.” He comes back and we head to Peaches to eat and talk. He acts as if everything is hunky dory as I try to signal for Sheldon to not leave us. I don’t want to have this conversation by myself. He keeps asking me how I’m doing. Tries to make innuendos about our future. As if there is a future. “Do I drive?” “Yes.” “Good to know, so I can let you drive my car sometime.” I guess that was suppose to get my panties wet, have me panting all over him and his Navigator, like ‘Oh daddy, I get to drive your Navi.’ Gun me. “No, I don’t like big cars.” “Oh.” We order. And then begin the bullshit conversation that left me not touching a drop of my food and him arrogantly picking at his chicken wings while he comes up with flip flop excuses and lies. I call his bluff. “It’s better if we no longer associate with each other.” He looks shocked. The man with the money never takes the L. Today you will.

SISTORIES LITMAG

“I feel violated. Couldn’t you tell I was drunk. Why did you come into my bedroom? I just threw up. Bullshit, you had to taste that on my breath. Disgusting. You fuck mad bitches and then just want to stick your shit in me. Oh yeah, you thought about it, huh. I’m embarrassed. You couldn’t approach me like a man. Don’t accuse me of being attracted to you as if that is an excuse.” I spewed all this at him as my face contorted into stank, disgust, and hatred all at once. He then switches to low blows with a giggle and smirk on his face as he tells me that I need better middle men. “Middle men? There’s only one person we both talk to, stop talking in riddles. Sheldon?” “Yeah, Sheldon, he told me that you’re down for whatever.” Bullshit. Lies. We’re in a public place. I can’t yell. I can’t jump across the table and choke the life out of him. I can’t gouge my fingernails into his cocked right eye that never seems to be in sync with his left. We’re in public and the waitress is asking me if everything is okay. I curtly tell her yes. “Middle man? Sheldon? Testing my personal friendships? Fuck you and your bullshit. Fuck you and your lack of respect. You are a grown ass man that can’t own up to your actions. You violated me and while I’m adult enough to accept my role in this. You were wrong. And you have to respect my feelings.” He plays around with his macaroni and cheese. Takes a scoop of collard greens. Chews loudly, then retorts that there’s no point in discussing anything because I’m not compromising and I think everything he says is bullshit. He’s sorry that I feel violated. He has a smug look of glee. The gotcha’ bitch look. He could care less. Offering half apologies and low blows. I can’t even look at him. I’m boiling as I realize I’m talking to a sociopath. He has no remorse as I walk out of the restaurant. He has no remorse until he again talks to Sheldon who flat out tells him he’s wrong. No remorse until he realizes he might lose face amongst his homeboys. Then he thinks to call me and offer an apology. An apology that I will not hear as I double tap the ignore button.

“It’s incredibly important that black women know that they do not have to strengthen themselves or deny themselves access to pleasure in pursuit of respectability.” -Omise’eke Tinsley, Beyoncé in Formation Remixing Black Feminism

SISTORIES LITMAG

Honeyed Tangelo Afeni Grace

Yes, I know that August bleeding sun compelled us to run. But our path was jaded. As we ventured onto emerald lush, I remembered your apprehensive but colorfully plush movement through new territory. So perfect as to have been done a thousand times before. A creamed coffee brown, your back turned to me in a sweet saunter. Your outline grandly clashed with verdant backgrounds. I could practically hear Bob’s Waiting in Vain in the air. Your voice, a baritone that sends chills through the body of a novice and melodies through this heart of mine, was yet fragile; I could always hear the desperation of a love lost. I so desperately want the energy you shared with a lover I’ve imagined countless moments now. A lover who’s your mother’s brown-sugar cookies personified. Who renounced that energy to be craved by another broken soul. Yes, I know that like our route on that clementine August day, your love for me is jaded.

SISTORIES LITMAG

READING LIST

THE ASSIMILATED WOMAN Bad Feminist- Roxane Gay We Should All Be Feminist- Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie The Origin of Others-Toni Morrison Surpassing Certainty- Janet Mock The Street- Ann Petry This Will Be My Undoing- Morgan Jerkins What it Means When a Man Falls From the Sky- Lesley Nneka Arimah Heads of Colored People- Nafissa Thompson-Spires Sula- Toni Morrison Silver Sparrow- Tayari Jones Passing- Nella Larsen A Seat At The Table-Solange

SISTORIES LITMAG

EMERGENT “My women, in the future, will not burn themselves up - that is what I mean by coming to the end of the cycle, and understanding something to the end . . . now I am ready to look at women who have made the room larger for others to move in...I think one reason I never stay away from the Southern Movement is because I realize how deeply political changes affect the choices and life styles of people. The Movement of the Sixties, Black Power, the Muslims, the Panthers ... have changed the options of Black people generally and of Black women in particular. So that my women characters won’t all end the way they have been, because Black women now offer varied, live models of how it is possible to live. We have made a new place to move.”-Alice Walker, Interview with Mary Helen Washington

“The women in the third cycle come just to the edge of a new awareness. They make the first tentative steps into an uncharted region. They are totally aware of the political, sexual and psychological oppressions. Many of these women experience a sort of epiphany before they occupy and claim any new territory…These women insist on their own space and the right to their own names. They refuse to be victims of any kind.” -Alice Walker, Interview with Mary Helen Washington “Black feminist often talk about their feelings of craziness before becoming conscious of the concepts of sexual politics, patriarchal rule, and most importantly feminism, the political analysis and practice that we women used to struggle against our oppression. The fact that racial politics and indeed racism or pervasive factors in our lives did not allow us, and still does not allow most black women, to look more deeply into our experiences and, from that sharing and growing consciousness to build politics that will change our lives and inevitably end our oppression.” -How We Get Free, Black Feminism in the Combahee River

SISTORIES LITMAG

A Woman’s Thoughts A personal reflection Falon Harden

Sometimes life has you question every decision you’ve ever made. “Should I have bought that? Why did I sleep with him? What if I didn’t meet them? Why did I sell my car? Why did I move there, then? What if I didn’t take that class? What if I played sports more? What if I didn’t have children, or more children? What if I had the decision to do this all over again would I do the same?” We all sit back and think of the what ifs in life... It’s hard to look back then look at what’s in front of you. I myself have tried really hard to not have these thoughts and questions. But how does one not? All my life I’ve felt as if I didn’t belong and I wasn’t loved. At least not for the right reasons, and most definitely not genuinely. I find I’m looking for a love I will never have. The love I get from my kids? Now that’s unconditional no questions about it--they give me purpose and a reason to keep moving forward. Sometimes I sit and cry over how I don’t want to be in this world anymore but I can’t bare the thought of leaving them here without me. For them I try to do what is best for them. This often puts me in a situation that’s not best for me. To love and to be loved is something everyone wants. For some reason we search in all the wrong places and waste time on all the wrong people. That’s how it seems to work out. We live and die for love. Why is that? When you love hard it hurts you, you love a little it hurts them, when you don’t care at all its a waste of time. I’ve loved and still love. The more I love the more I feel unloved. When you try and try but nothing changes long term. The person’s mindset is still just as ignorant as the first time they ever lied to you. What’s next? Same thing, Same cycle. At some point it becomes insanity because you are doing the same thing with the same person expecting different results. It’s like the hamster on a spin wheel your moving but getting nowhere. Still in the same place as you started. You can’t change someone they would have to first feel they need to change. Then they change not for you but to better themselves so they are a better person because they love you. Ignoring the obvious doesn’t make it easy. Why am I settling do I not deserve better? Have I not shown my loyalty and trust? Do I know sacrifice more than needed? When do I get what I give. That is the question no one can answer. Sometimes we get tired and weary about things we know the answer to. We try to keep holding on to that happy memory and hope that one day it will be like that again. That little bit of faith hurts you to the bone. You’ve tried it all. You’ve done everything you could but it’s just not “All too often, representation of a woman’s strength overlook the cost of that strength, where it rises from, and how it is called upon when we need it most.” -Bad Feminist, Roxanne gay

SISTORIES LITMAG

Another Woman’s Thoughts A found poem

A found poem uses language from non-poetic contexts to create a new piece. Think of a collage — artists take

Sometimes, You should sit. Sleep, be still, think. Question every decision, feel the what ifs. Cry. Then. Move. Forward. To what’s Better. On purpose. Because, We deserve that world.

pieces of various materials to create magic. You can do the same with language and poems.

This

poem uses language pulled from Falon Harden’s, “A Woman’s Thoughts”

Use the next writing page to write your own Found Poem with, “A Woman’s Thoughts.” 1. Carefully re-read the text. Highlight or underline details, words, and phrases that you think are important and make the text memorable. This is what yoou will use these words to write your poem. 2. Make a list of the words and phrases you highlighted. Leave extra space in case you want to go back and add other words/phrases later. 3. Reread your list and cross out anything that is unimportant. Make sure that all of the items on the list relate to your topic so that your poem will make sense. 4. Look at your list again and make minor changes if necessary. For example, you can change verb tenses or add punctuation. You may even need to add a word here or there. 5. Create a title. 6. Rewrite the words and phrases so they are written as a poem. Pay attention to line breaks and use bold or italics to help emphasize different parts. 7. Read the poem aloud to hear how it sounds. Continue to make changes until you are happy. SISTORIES LITMAG

SISTORIES LITMAG

Imagine you are in a room with past and future versions of yourself. What conversations would you have with each other? What moments/memories would you share or reflect on?

Exit Stage Left Divine Love Curtains close The house lights beam brightly ushering the crowd to take their leave Backstage is a buzz with excitement as our last show of the tour has come to an end We all gather around to share our fondest moments and contemplate a second run Alas, you and I have no intention of returning to the stage Our days of putting on a show have long since passed and we have vowed to only live the life we are currently charged with An honor such as this can only be provided to those willing to forgo the taunts from an unruly crowd and withstand the heckles of bitter critics and cynics We have stood our ground while reciting lines from scripts bold enough to rewrite history and held our tongue in the spotlight of our own life Now we are to write, direct, and star in our own show No co-stars or understudies necessary This is a one man play I sub in You sub out Walk-ins, they call it YouĘźve walked into my being And I in yours Shifting within our own respective BEings The audience that is society has no clue who theyĘźve been applauding All they see are the glow left behind from the trails of dust we emit Stars shining both day and night We EXIsT

(PHOTO)

SISTORIES LITMAG

Swimming in the Sky Afeni Grace

A bronze-skinned young woman exploding arms up head up into a vibrant but hazy, sun-rising sky. She is flying out of a translucent stone cased in the shape of her body. It was indeed a stunning sculpture. But as she rips through her once crystalline body, the beauty she knew could only fall to the feet of her current glory. She is newly unresponsive to the beauty of being enclosed and validated only by the gaze of others. Though her grandeur as an art piece was certain, her real glorious fate is to swim unbounded in the sky. The speaker of this poem breaks out of her esteemed marble encasement, leaving only rubble behind, to align herself more fully with her destiny. What structures do you need to breakthrough to reach your “glorious fate,” and what will fall to your feet when you emerge?

“Instead of crossing her legs and denying our sexuality, black women sometimes have to be publicly creative with our bodies— So we can fill out, experiment in, and play toward an erotic freedom that doesn’t exist yet.” -Omise‘eke Tinsley Beyoncé Formation Remixing Black Feminism SISTORIES LITMAG In 29

Like Any Artist Ashley Nickens

Deciding to write, much like the act itself, is a process. I’ve been deciding the past 17 years, and have only recently reached the conclusion which allowed me write the first word in a journal eleven days after it was gifted to me. In those eleven days, I fingered the floral pattern etched in the Italian leather cover, inhaled it’s authenticity, flipped through the 600 or so cream-colored pages bound within, and mostly stared at it sitting idly on my desk. It’s the most beautiful journal I’ve ever had—the kind you’re drawn to in bookstores because it looks sturdy enough to ground you in the truth of your artistry, but quickly put down after flipping it over to find price tag that pulls you out of your book-signing fantasy and places you squarely back in the reality of not being able to afford such dreams. The kind of journal so beautiful it intimidates. I didn’t want to mess it up. I’d only recently stopped forcing cursive while writing in old journals—a vain attempt to add some beauty to the random thoughts they contained. I was just beginning to accept that it was ok if the pages mimicked my thought process—false starts scratched out, pages full of scribbles, others torn out, unfinished sentences, unrelated mid-sentence ideas scrawled any way in the margins—unorganized. No, I wasn’t ready for this journal to look like a redacted file, and I certainly. I wasn’t ready to live up to the symbol of belief and encouragement it was meant to represent either. The principal of the school where I’d taught English gifted it to me on my last official day. Weeks earlier, I spoke to her about my decision to not return the following year and my desire to, finally, pursue a career in writing. ” In the eleven days after that, the anxiety which had only been suppressed by my surroundings— the school that forced me out of my comfort zone, fostering in me a newfound confidence, filled with people who believed and worked towards the “impossible” every day— swelled. I spent hours interrogating my decision while searching for a job that would allow me to pay bills, and free up the mental space to write, with no success. The encouragement I felt from my colleagues dwindled as I scrolled through MFA admission requirements and acceptance rates once again, now less sure of my odds and path. I spent a lot of time on twitter liking quotes by other writers, but not much of doing the one thing I’ve felt like I needed to do for at least 17 years. The first time I gave voice to that feeling set a precedent for how I would identify with it for years to come. We were in third grade, marching back to class in a staggered line after a career-day special claiming the professions best suited to the adult versions we envisioned of ourselves, when one of my friends professed she’d be an artist. I concurred before remembering a cardinal rule of childhood: no matter how true it may be, insisting on the same favorite car, food, or subject as a peer meant you were unoriginal, a copycat, jocker. Plus, when she said it, it made sense. We all knew how artistic she was. Whereas I on the other hand, struggled vainly in art class to translate the ideas in my head to whatever medium we were working with, so even though something in me settled when I initially spoke, I quickly followed it up with a more appropriate answer. “Or a writer.” By 6th grade I was sliding stories reminiscent of the B2K fan-fic that consumed their message boards and my free time across my desk and onto a classmate’s—a promise of the novel to come—with my arms pinned to my sides so as to conceal the nerve-induced pit stains. When they asked before returning, “When you writing the next chapter?” I was confident there would be one, but I quickly forgot about the dramatic storylines of my characters and became preoccupied with my own. SISTORIES LITMAG

Around Christmas that year my mom summoned me to her room, already heavy with the weight of what would be revealed, and told me that the man who raised me as his daughter was not my father. Instead, a man she tried to protect me from, who walked away then changed his mind 11 years later, was. I found out he was a writer too—a poet—and nothing else mattered. I was meant to write—preordained by the stars and my DNA. I called myself a writer from then on. Long after phoning my biological father for the first (and last) time to tell him the news—that even though he chose to give up the opportunity to cultivate in me his love of language I had found it anyway. I called myself a writer well after hearing his smile at the realization that despite the time and space that separated us there was this connection—he was my father, I was his daughter, and we were writers. I kept saying it after finding out the following year that the only writer I knew (and never knew) took his own life. For years after the laptop my mom bought to encourage my ambitions broke, years after I stopped being in newspaper classes, years after I accepted a teaching scholarship, years after I stopped lying about double majoring in English and Journalism, year, after year, after year, after year, until one day I realized it had been twelve years since I’d done the one thing required of me. In those years, I had however perfected feeling like one—mysterious and misunderstood. Mostly just sad. The precarious mix of Virgo perfectionism, 1st-child syndrome, and a proclivity (perhaps predisposition) to anxiety and depression led me to wallow in what needed expression. It wasn’t until I started reading regularly again that I was pulled to sort those feelings out through writing.

When I felt that same fear creep back up in the eleven days after being gifted my journal I knew what needed to be done. I read and re-read, denting my preferred couch cushion, searching for inspiration, or a sign, or something that would help me regain confidence in the decision I finally made to act on the feeling I know I’ve had for at least 17 years. And it worked. I read, like I write, like I think—unorganized. Picking up books and putting them down to copy lines on sticky notes. Plucking others from the mantel when I notice similarities between the freshly copied line and another from a different text I posted two months earlier. Powering through that one, folding pages to bookmark ideas rather than place; sometimes I have to start over to keep things straight. And I suppose that’s a good thing—reading like I write, like I think—because when I returned to Zora Neale Hurston’s Barracoon, after putting it down several weeks earlier when the subject became too difficult, I got hung up on a sentence six lines down the page: “I’m not sure there was ever a harder read than this, for those of us duty bound to carry the ancestors, to work for them, as we engage in daily life…”1 Hung up because my mind was rattling with other texts I’d read. Here was Alice, the woman who went Looking For Zora in the first place, who catalyzed the reading of her work in classrooms, acknowledging her duty, while recognizing the fruits of Zora’s.

SISTORIES LITMAG

Were it not for Alice feeling that same duty that Zora felt to preserve the stories of her people, which led her to make the pilgrimage she, “felt there was no alternative,” to mark Zora’s gravesite and “memorialize her light, I probably wouldn’t be reading the book. And I needed to know how Alice knew she was called to do this, because maybe then I’d have my answer too. And maybe that was all I needed to muster up the strength to write again. So I re-read Looking For Zora, and when I had more notes, but still no answers I re-read In Search of Our Mother’s Gardens. And when I got to the question not even halfway through the essay rightfully deemed by Alice as bloodcurdling: “What did it mean for a black woman to be an Artist in our grandmother’s time,”5 I thought about the Toni Morrison quote from Sula that was on my vision board: “like any artist without an art form she became dangerous.”2 I’d just been gifted a copy as another going away present, so I put the essay down, picked the novel up, and powered through. I saw myself in Sula—seeking something, unsure of what, caged-in. Saw her self-destruct and understood the quote in context now. Cried for her, and kept looking. This time, In Search of Our Mother’s Gardens, the collection this time, and that is where I found my answer. Which turns out is really just a process. The essay, “Saving The Life That Is Your Own: The Importance of Models in the Artist’s Life,” opened as if waiting for me with an excerpt of a letter written by Van Gogh while in a mental institution he checked himself into, after cutting off his own ear. “However hateful painting may be, and however cumbersome in the times we are living in, if anyone who has chosen this handicraft pursues it zealously, he is a man of duty, sound and faithful. Society makes our existence wretchedly difficult at times, hence our impotence and the imperfection of our work...I myself am suffering under an absolute lack of models.”3 Even Van Gogh, despite the cloak of his whiteness and maleness understood the difficulties of being an Artist with no models. He only sold one painting in his lifetime, yet here he was, bound by that same word which led me down this path and to this text in the first place, “duty.” Now enthralled, eyes sore from straining to track words on a dimly lit iPad, I read on, trying to find the answer to the question I initially sought: how did Alice know to go looking for Zora? And there it was. The thing that led Alice to “stumble upon Zora,” was her own search for something that would give her the foundation to share the stories she was bound to save. When Alice did find her, almost lost in the footnotes of the documents she was reading while conducting research for a story idea, she unlocked more than she realized she was looking for, a model, who, “provided as if she knew someday that [she] would come along wandering in the wilderness.”3 And at that moment I felt that tingling sensation arise which prefaces goosebumps and raised arm hairs. That feeling Alice described that, “writers sometimes get, but not very often, of being with a great many spirits, all very happy to see me consulting and acknowledging them, and eager to let me know through the joys of their presence that indeed I am not alone.”3

SISTORIES LITMAG

And that felt like something I needed to stop and write down because clearly I had found my models too, the same way Alice had, the same way so many of us had, searching for the ones, the only ones, who can help us tell our stories. Alice had simply followed her intuition and it led her to Zora, like I had been led to her, and to Celie and Toni, and Sula, and on and on, and on and on and on and who was I to break this tradition? She reached the same conclusion I had. The reason behind the feeling, and the duty. Those of us who choose to tell these stories in this way do it because, “it is simply in our power to do this. We do It because we care... We care that Vincent Van Gogh mutilated his ear. We care that behind a pile of manure in the yard he destroyed his life. We care that Scott Joplin’s music lives! We care because we know this: the life we save is our own.”3 She validated my intuition, held me accountable to my ancestors, to all the people who have ever believed in the possibility of me. To myself. That is the conclusion which ultimately brought me back to the journal still sitting on my desk that I could open now with some trepidation, but propelled by earnest desire and a sense of duty. Inside the cover of my new journal I stuck three bright-orange sticky notes—written on them the steps that led me back to the page—and reviewed them once more before picking up my pen: 1. Accept it is your duty to follow that feeling. Channel it, or you will self-destruct. Follow that feeling until you are weary. 2. Feel the weariness. Follow that. It will lead you back to the models. Validate yourself and that original feeling, the one before the weariness. Remind yourself that you are duty-bound by your spirit and by theirs. 3. Write. Remember what the models have revealed. Use them tell the stories which must be heard. Lay out the path. Who knows. One day, maybe after years and years and years, and years,

Hurston, Zora Neale, et al. Barracoon: the Story of the Last “Black Cargo”. Amistad, an

Imprint of HarperCollins Publishers, 2019 2

Morrison, Toni. Sula. Vintage, 1998.

Walker, Alice. “Saving the Life That Is Your Own: The Importance of Models in the Artist’s

Life.” In Search of Our Mother’s Gardens, Open Road, 2011, pp. 9–19. 4

Walker, Alice. “Looking for Zora.” In Search of Our Mother’s Gardens, Open Road, 2011.

Walker, Alice. “In Search of Our Mother’s Gardens.” In Search of Our Mother’s Gardens, Open

SISTORIES LITMAG

READING LIST

THE EMERGENT WOMAN The New Spirituality of African American Women- Akasha Gloria Hull Emergent Strategy-adrienne maree brown Ezili’s Mirrors- Omise’eke Natasha Tinsley What A Time to be Alone- Chidera Eggerue Beyoncé in Formation- Omise’eke Natasha Tinsley Sanctified Church- Zora Neale Hurston Kindred- Octavia Butler In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens- Alice Walker Way of the Orisha- Philip J. Neimark *Lemonade-Beyoncé *Sunday sermons with Liz (YouTube)

SISTORIES LITMAG

FORGED “We gonna rise with the fire of freedom Truth is the fire that will burn our chains Stop the fire of destruction Healing is the fire running through our veins.” -adrienne maree brown, Emergent Strategy

“It is not about healing for the sake of individual wellness, though that is a radical act for any people slated for extinction. It is about healing trauma such that individuals and communities are not operating in reaction to oppression, and not relinquishing control over and over again because of changes outside their power.” adrienne maree brown, Emergent Strategy

“Sister is a verb…What is sistering? When is it happening? What is the freedom and accountability that accrues when “sister” is not just a static identity that you have but is something that you do or don’t do, with consequences. What happens when I apply that to all of my relationships? What happens if we replace the roles patriarchy has scripted us into with actions guided by what we want to create instead?” adrienne maree brown, Pleasure Activism

SISTORIES LITMAG

SISTERS WITH STORIES CHARLOTTE 2018 SHAN WALLACE

What story could this image tell? Write the beginning of a short story or poem inspired by this image.

SISTORIES LITMAG

“Are you sure, sweetheart, that you want to be well... Just so’s you’re sure, sweetheart, and ready to be healed, cause wholeness is no trifling matter. A lot of weight when you’re well.” -The Salt Eaters, Toni Cade Bambara

Southern Spaces & Formative Places for N. Carolinian Black Women

Mariah Webber

There is magic in the Southern Black woman and I have come to know her intimately. Skirt rustles and the scent between my legs consumes me, but I been smelling myself let my mama tell it. Unable to hide innate beauty, humility, hubris, comedic relief, and bluntness. We be warriors in flesh capsules moving through time, space, and… continuums. Abandoning the soil of my ancestors, I now find myself on the other side of the world, with egun clinging tightly to my head, and gently touching the back of my feet. “Move child.” “Gentle here.” “now, that’s enuf of that.” They lead, and only sometimes I follow. This lead me to ask: Do god take direction? Do she tremble at the darkness that she created? Do she get scared of how powerful she is? If she anything like me (and they tell me she is) she got to. The midst of my creation so chaotic. Big body sitting on chromes in the middle of the ocean, rims still gleam when the sun hits, interior’s fucked, she’s been swallowed whole. Black women migrate from the South in search of their own destiny, only to find ourselves washed back into the interiority of our own southern selves. Who are we to become when we leave? Leaving takes form in nothing but the physical. I still carry all that ever came before me on my back/in my heart. What it feel like for a Black woman to carry nothing but herself? I’m tryna see what that be like… The womb water baptized me in both trauma and resilience. Spent most of my life combing through ritual to bring myself into form. Water/soil/bay leaf/prayer/scripture/ Immersed in a gestational period from which I aim to give birth to a whole new self, a brand-new bitch, a whole ‘nother plane of existence. On some pray you catch me shit. It. Is. Laborious. Some days I really ain’t too sure that I want to be well. Hell, Beyoncé said she slept on a mat.

SISTORIES LITMAG

…but there are days when I get called to conjure new worlds for myself and my daughters, both born and unborn. Can’t stand when our grandmothers speak to us through soil and we as a collective recoil because we be good Christian Women now. come to find out we were just as witch as Marie. Alchemy is in that biscuit recipe baby girl. Black women are conjurers of destiny, world making, purpose, revenge, glory, pleasureee. I listen when the mothers of my chuuchh speak. Every morning I step out on the incantations of my grandmother(s). That’s why oceans swell and you can catch me -stilltippin’ on fofo’s. The magic of the South forever been embedded in we. Both light and darkness remind us of who I am. And who we be. And who you are. And who they gone be. A rememory of what beauty has been forged in hella tumultuous conditions. Africa be shadow, home, lost, gone, and iridescence. BLACK Carolina girls, home grown, cornbread fed, and foreva thee best in the world.

What is your relationship with The South, North Carolina, and Charlotte in particular?

SISTORIES LITMAG

Take some time to smell yourself. Literally—describe your scent. Is it spicy, sweet, musky? Are you wearing perfume or oils? Figuratively—what are you most confident about right now?

What rituals help you take shape or become?

SISTORIES LITMAG

“...we have plenty of examples of black women presenting black womanhood as they have observed and experienced it, a standard practice of black feminist women. In carrying on this tradition, these black feminist artists spurred the movement forward while expanding its reach— art functioning as a conduit for liberatory messages is central to freedom work.”

SISTERS WITH STORIES YWCA 2019 SHAN WALLACE

SISTORIES LITMAG

SISTERS WITH STORIES YWCA 2019 SHAN WALLACE

SISTORIES LITMAG

“No, she’s movingly, seductively, powerfully embodying a kind of luxurious, champagne-kissed, sugar-coated womaness that, as a queer black female, she was never supposed to claim— let alone dance to and be applauded for.” -Omise‘eke Tinsley, Ezilli’s Mirrors

Love Yours Divine Love Neon dreams and ultra light beams Streaming through my mind’s eye Lasers blazing out of every pore Cell walls collapsed and merged Unification and solidification commenced Structures now cemented A new dawn approached Heights and depths Nooks no crannies The muffins are quite tasty Now you may feast with thanks given Share all newness awarded Open perceptivity Clear receptivity Mind-craft Craft of mine

SISTORIES LITMAG

SISTERS WITH STORIES YWCA 2019 SHAN WALLACE

What story could this image tell? Write the beginning of a short story or poem inspired by this image.

SISTORIES LITMAG

A Forging of Self Cidney Tiggett explores self-identification, self-valuation, and healing through tattoos. Ashley Nickens I understand you don’t quantify your tattoos by number, but rather in hours of work done. Approximately how many hours have you had at this point? When did you start, and why? I have about 17 hours of work so far. I got my first Tattoo when I turned 16, on my right wrist. It says Wonder Woman with the Egyptian symbol for Maat the Goddess of the personification of truth, justice and cosmic order. Do you have a favorite piece? Can you explain what it is and what it means to you? Absolutely! My favorite piece changes from time to time but currently I would have to say my Mother’s signature. I had both of my parents signatures tattooed on my left wrist when I was 17. My dad is my everything and I wanted to have a piece of him, always, but I couldn’t just leave my mom out, so I got both. When I was 25 my mom died suddenly a week after weight loss surgery. She and I didn’t have the best relationship particularly pertaining to weight and self-expression, hell my own personal autonomy. I still struggle with our relationship in her absence even though I have a better understanding of her now. Over the last several years since her death I have been diagnosed with Depression anxiety and PTSD. My mother had her own mental health struggles that had an effect on our relationship but as I move through my own journey with life and mental wellness I see her more clearly than I ever could while she was alive. I love having a piece her unique to her so close so permanent. I had honestly forgotten all about it until one day a year or so ago I was sitting at my ancestral alter writing her a letter and I just happened to recall the significance of a signature. How unique they are and how special it was that I had the foresight to carry a physical representation of her on my person at 17, considering how things turned out. How/when did you begin viewing your body as an artistic surface/canvas? I have always loved tattoos. To be honest, I can’t remember a time when I didn’t view my body as a canvas. My first attempt at getting a tattoo was at 13. It wasn’t legal, so I settled for a series of failed piercings until I was finally able to get my first tattoo. What I can tell you is that my body has always been scrutinized and pushed and pulled around like a puppet on strings, a familiar feeling many black femmes particularly fat ones may be able to recall. I have always hated it and I have always pushed back. From not speaking when I don’t feel like it, not smiling just because it’s polite, wearing crop tops that expose exactly how abundant I am, to tattooing my fat arms against my mother’s advice that they will be distorted “if” I ever lose weight… My body was sold to me as my temple. MY temple for ME to do with it as I see fit in ways that make me feel worshiped and holy. Tattoos have always been a way for me to express that I am both wild and holy with the scenes that I have depicted and the phrases meticulously chosen and placed about my temple. So now that I think about it I would say maybe 10 or 11 specifically listen to someone talk about the body as a temple in some vacation bibles school or something like that.

(PHOTO)

For this issue of the magazine we’re exploring various interpretations of The Forged Woman. With the definitions we’ve provided as inspiration in mind, do you feel that any of your pieces represent your forging? How so? All of them. Ha—more specifically my left sleeve. I may even take to calling her a forged woman. She doesn’t really have a title but she deserves one. My left sleeve is my tattoo artists’ interpretation of me as a full figured black woman as a pinup. I asked that she be regal, earthy, and shapely other than that I gave her total creative freedom. SISTORIES LITMAG

I’m not sure who said it or if it was even said this way but my favorite phrase is “I found the God in myself, she was both wild and holy. For that, I love myself fiercely.” I have that tattoo on my thigh along with the Black Feminist Theory Symbol. It’s actually unfinished but will be resting on a bed of lilies and orchids that travel from my knee to my hip sometime this May. I would say that these two pieces are physical manifestations of my forging. From my introduction into black feminism and womanism through my evolution of self into someone who not only values but attempts to harness pleasure and the erotic as a source of power. These tattoos tell stories of a fat black girl from the south making space and existing in it proudly unabashedly so much so that she would permanently and prominently display it on her skin. And that’s not something I see often. Not full sleeves or chest pieces on fat, black, dark skinned women. Maybe white women like Tess Holiday but I’ve never seen anyone with my physicality with more than a few smaller individual pieces In what ways are your tattoos an expression of reclamation, self-possession, and selffashioning? So my left arm is my death arm. I have a red balloon floating into some clouds and the string reads “could have beens” for a miscarriage I had in my early 20’s. There is also a feather pen that has just penned “misery doesn’t live here anymore”, the spine of the pen says, “your wings were ready but my heart was not” with the top of the feather pen turning into 7 birds flying into the same clouds as the balloon for close friends and family members that I have lost. Chaotic and super sad right? Well life, death, loss and grief they are chaotic and sad as shit. I have lost a ton of loved ones and within that loss I started to lose myself. I literally have a PTSD diagnosis from the loss, but misery doesn’t live here, it can’t. I won’t let it because I allow myself the emotional flexibility and space to feel what I need to feel, express what needs to be expressed so that there is room for healing. That sleeve is a part of my story but it doesn’t define who I am and there is a certain confidence and freedom that comes with wearing your deepest pain right on your sleeve. Pun absolutely intended It’s a reclamation of my body. From the time we are born we have been puppeteered to look act be the way that society and our parents deem to be respectable or polite. Respectability and politeness have been used as tools for survival but our kits have so much more than that. The tools we choose to use are our own choice. I choose radical self-expression and work ethic so if you want to utilize my talents you have to make a conscious decision to accept the body( and its adornments) I bring to the table. That’s healing for someone like me who is consistently reminded that I don’t deserve autonomy because my body isn’t worthy, as if I’ve messed it up because I didn’t do what it takes to keep it skinny or because I don’t hide it now that it’s fat. It’s actually quite disgusting and very painful if you allow it to be. Everyone hates fat people and everyone vocalizes it constantly, whether they realize it or not. So I reclaim this fat body and I do what I want with it. From sex, booty shorts, tattoos and even things like being vocal and advocating for myself at the doctor. I call them acts of Autonomy. In what ways, if any, do your pieces express, heal, and reaffirm your individual and/or communal identity? The Black Feminist Theory Symbol on my thigh is probably the most obvious piece that expresses my womanist womanish identity, from its placement to the quote about my Godliness and even the bed of flowers that I’ll be adding this May. It tells the story of my forged woman--soft when she wants to be but a hard working woman who is restlessly in pursuit of pleasure and wholeness without trauma or needless sacrifice. I also have a tattoo on my foot for my collegiate Delta chapter. It reads “Pain is Temporary” with an African violet growing from the y. The OR is actually the Greek symbols for Rho Theta, which is the name of the chapter. Before I was a feminist/ womanist/ humanist I was a Delta. I have loved Delta for as long as I can remember. When you look at the history and the work that our founders took on, it was Black Feminism by a different name. Delta taught me the value of sisterhood, the strength of a strong network, and the fact we are stronger and more stable together. Lol That tat is more of my emergent woman. I learned so much in my collegiate years from organizing and protesting to things I do now like speaking engagements and hosting women’s groups. I could go on but I doubt you want me to go through each one lol. SISTORIES LITMAG

For some, tattoos can serve as various markers of time/space—be they memorials, commemorations, symbols of having survived some past, or transitioning to a new psychic space. Do any of your tattoos have a similar function, and what is the significance of marking transitions through time and space on the body? Right at the base of my neck were it meets the spine I have “Know Thyself” I got this piece when I was coming into a deeper spiritual understanding as a black femme. It’s a reminder to stand grounded on the shoulders of those who have walked before me and who are ever present with and in me. It’s a remind to be still and know that I come from a long powerful line of black femmes who will never let me fail. What is the experience of being tattooed like for you, both mentally and physically? How would you describe your pain threshold? People are gonna hate this answer lol. I sit there staring at the needle as if staring will make the tattoo magically appear in 5 mins. It’s like getting my hair braided; I luh the results but ya girl is not the most patient person. I get a rush and feelings of release with the pain and stillness of getting a tattoo. The anxiety that flares up causing those “are we done yet feelings,” is really the energy of excitement and fulfillment. You have the idea, then someone draws it so you have the visual but once that needle begins to vibrate across your skin its finally manifesting. Each tattoo is a new story adorning my temple so it’s exciting to feel a little more like me.

SISTORIES LITMAG

The Easiest Win Afeni Grace

A missive was written for myself With Cabernet as the ink. On a mission of spiritual wealth To find the missing link. With solitude I fall a little more into my soul. With gratitude, more willing to give love control. This call from above is like a breeze in the wind So small, but never enough of the easiest win.

Describe your last winâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;big or small. What were the circumstances and feelings surrounding the event?

SISTORIES LITMAG

Seed of the Earth

A series of journal entries, personal affirmations, and quotes

“We are earthseed. The life that perceives itself Changing.” -Octavia Butler, Earthseed

1.“Certain species of trees have a fire-survival strategy that, “ allows for the complete destruction of aboveground growth. Typically, species that regenerate by re-sprouting after they’ve burned have an extensive root system. Dormant buds are protected underground, and nutrients stored in the root system allow quick sprouting after the fire.” -Natioanl Forest. 2. Embers and ashes of self floating in the ether. Picking up bits of stardust. The force/pull/power of her spiri drawing them back in. Swirling round. Creating new worlds. New selves The truth is, sometimes you get burned up. Truth is, there is no creation without destruction. Sometimes by flood and sometimes fire. But there is always an after. Truth is I finally feel the weight of it. The enormous stretching of it. The reaching out and collapsing in. 3. I’ve been on the brink of breaking for a year. Faith was an abstract concept for this southern girl who grew up unchurched. That was until this year. 4. I’ve always felt of this world and at the same time otherworldly, my attraction to the strs always balanced out by my need to be underwater or up in the trees. So, I suppose it’s no surprise that the first time I remember feeling God was on an ordinary spring day on my way to an afternoon class when a butterfly flew in front of me and the sun hit my face in a way that I never felt or never stopped to feel. I was so overcome with joy, and awe, that I wanted to cry. 5.To be Forged is to commit to walking through the fire to see what emerges from the ashes. I must commit to becoming the best version of myself, and that is hard work, but it is necessary for me and for the world. We must all commit to the hard work of becoming. I must commit to the routines that help balance me first, and the ones that sustain my physical embodiment second. I cannot stay in my head. I commit to the practices that ground me in reality and help me attend to the work needed of me in this world. This is my truth and I accept it as so. I can speak this without guilt: when I don’t tend to myself I neglect my responsibilities. I exacerbate my anxiety. I get stuck. But I always have the power to unstick myself. I am unsticking myself. 6.Surrender to the process. Everything is as it should be. You are exactly where you should be. The answers will reveal themselves. We are on an epic, time-transcending narrative of Evolution. Trust. Get quiet and feel. These are the moments. On these dreary gray days that I feel most enmeshed in the sweet spot. Something about this all feels right. I feel open. I see. “Breathe easy,” I hear. Asé. 7.Change is painful. So are tattoos. Anyone who says they aren’t is fucking lying. 8. We are here, “to lessen suffering, to know the truth, and tell it, to raise the bar of human expectation.” -Toni Morrison 9. This body, this life, this world is mine to create. Healing is not an intellectual process. It’s about being in the fire. 10. We forged a path in the overgrowth of blackberry trees and honeysuckle bushes behind Bountiful Blessings, the home daycare I went to from ages 5-11. We had the real idea that we were building a new world. There was a point where we stopped focusing on clearing the brush, and turned our attention to digging a hole to Hollywood. Florida. I don’t know where we got the map, maybe school or a buried treasure we’d unearth. Both are equally plausible. Then someone closed their eyes to pick a destination and we started digging. We really thought we were going somewhere. Turns out we were right. Whether we wound up in the sunny state or not, we created a space where we could sink through worlds and come out on the other side whole and together. We planned. We divided labor. We enjoyed the process.

SISTORIES LITMAG

11. “Interdependence requires being seen, as much as possible, as your true self.” -adrienne maree brown. 12. You have to trust all of what you know. You have to see past the pain you that is here and coming and believe in what always follows—healing, renewal, the birth of something new entirely. Leave the past behind. 13. But, if time is a construct then there is no such thing as the past. Everything is connected. If time is a construct then we are simultaneously existing in past/present/future. It doesn’t matter whether or not I am conscious of the multiple worlds in which I am existing/shaping. They are inevitably. There is a point which leads to a point which leads to a world we have yet to envision. We just have to trust all of what we know. The thing that started it all, the glitch in the system, was my realization that nothing has changed. I felt helpless in these systems of oppression until I realized the people have the power, and I am the people, so anything is possible. 14. This is slow work. Sometimes I get frustrated with how slowly I come into the language to articulate what I know and feel. Sometimes I speak before I know, and have to deal with the discomfort of being misunderstood, but it is all for a purpose. This is slow work. Because when I do have the language to parse out my understanding of the world, when I do finally share, people feel me. Deeply. Enough to move things. Trust what comes next. It is already happening. This is personal work. Spiritual work. Political work. 15. I am committed to practicing vulnerability in my daily life. I am committed to the rigorous practice of Black feminism in my daily life. My commitments don’t align with everyone’s walk and that is ok. I am committed to shedding the skins that have allowed me to move through the world likable but incomplete. I am committed to the collapsing of selves. 16. “I am not turning against myself, I am multitudes. The tide to be turned is a process of inner alignment, those who wish to support me need me to be vulnerable with that inner contradiction.” -adrienne maree brown. 17. Mind-body-spirit work is all the same. It is all connected. When there is one element out of whack they all are. Reading this entry back may be confusing because I keep doing that thing where one thought connects to another, and then another in such a rapid fire of succession that I’ve gone from point A to U before allowing my hand to catch up. But see, even that shows how I arrived here. There is a connection in everything. When my mind is disconnected from my body, when I don’t take the time to process and release, the connection is disrupted. I keep trying to skip over the part where I allow myself to feel. To not be perfect. And when I do those thoughts go nowhere. They wind and wind in a whirlwind that picks up other worries and spins them round and drops them somewhere else still unresolved. Then it has no choice but to come through my body. I need to move my body now. To shake, shake this energy out. My hands are trying to catch up. To what? The answer to the question I’ve been looking for. It is here in the pocket, always in the sweet spot, where mind and body and spirit have connected again, and I’ve slowed down just enough to speed up. And the balance is perfect. 18. “My career is a cure for my past mistakes, mishaps, and misdirected energy. I am here to give all that I have to the world. I am here to empty myself of all the excess love, creative energy, and life lessons.” -Chani Nicholas 19. Black girls with anxiety get to chase their dreams too. Karmic lesson number 6—allow yourself to love and be loved. I hold people to a ridiculously high standard because it’s what I hold myself to. And I push people away when relationships aren’t perfect because I struggle to accept the imperfection in myself...but people are inherently valuable and deserving of love. I am inherently valuable and deserving

Use the writing pages following the next reading list to journal, reflect, doodle, or respond to The Forged Woman.

SISTORIES LITMAG

READING LIST

THE FORGED WOMAN Parable of the Sower- Octavia Butler Parable of the Talents- Octavia Butler Redefining Realness- Janet Mock Pleasure Activism-adrienne maree brown The Sisters are Alright-Tamara Winfrey Harris Funk the Erotic-LaMonda Horton-Stallings Ethical Slut- Dossie Easton, Janet Hardy How We Get Free-Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor The Fire This Time- Jesmyn Ward *When I Get Home, Solange *Homecoming- BeyoncÃ© *A Little Juju Podcast

SISTORIES LITMAG