HEALING TRADITIONS IN BLACK WOMEN’S WRITING
Dr. Stephanie Y. Evans | www.professorevans.net
Foremothers: 54 Black Women Writers
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Memoirists
Ali, Laila
Reach!: Finding Strength, Spirit, and Personal Power (2002)
Angelou, Maya
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969)
Armstrong, Stephanie
Not All Black Girls Know How to Eat: A Story of Bulimia (2009)
Assegid, Yene
Butterflies Over Africa (2011)
Cameron, Theresa
Foster Care Odyssey: A Black Girl’s Story (2002)
Collier, Darlene
Married to Sin (2013)
Dee, Ruby
My One Good Nerve (2008)
Easton, Kamala
Autobiography of a Yogini: A Black Woman's Love Affair with Her Guru (2012)
Evans, Stephanie
Black Passports: Travel Memoirs as a Tool for Youth Empowerment (2014)
Johnson-Sirleaf, Ellen
This Child Will Be Great: Memoir of a Remarkable Life by Africa's First Woman President (2009)
Maathai, Wangari
Unbowed: A Memoir (2008)
Mire, Saraya
The Girl with Three Legs: A Memoir (2011)
Maparyan, Layli
The Womanist Idea (2012)
Oufkir, Malika
Stolen Lives: Twenty Years in a Desert Jail (2001)
Roundtree, Dovey
Justice Older Than the Law: the Life of Dovey Johnson Roundtree (2012)
Santanta, Deborah
Space Between the Stars: My Journey to an Open Heart (2009)
Shabazz, IIyasah
Growing Up X (2009)
Walker, Alice
The Cushion in the Road: Meditation and Wandering as the Whole World Awakens to Being in Harm’s Way (2014)
Willis, Jan
Dreaming Me: Black, Baptist, and Buddhist, One Woman's Spiritual Journey (2012)
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Phillis Wheatley
Frances E. W. Harper
Georgia D. Johnson
Margaret Walker
Gwendolyn Brooks
Mari Evans
Naomi Long Madgett
Maya Angelou
Sonia Sanchez
Audre Lorde
Colleen McElroy
Lucille Clifton
June Jordan
Jayne Cortez
Toi Derricotte
Nikki Giovanni
Alice Walker
Marilyn Nelson
Wanda Coleman
Ntozake Shange
Rita Dove
Harryette Mullen
Elizabeth Alexander
Claudia Rankine
Jessica Care Moore
Staceyann Chin
1753
1825
1886
1915
1917
1923
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1928
1934
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1941
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1952
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1962
1963
1971
1972
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Yolanda Adams
Mary J. Blige
Mariah Carey
Shirley Caesar
Aretha Franklin
Chaka Khan
Angelique Kidjo
Janet Jackson
Patti Labelle
Meshell Ndegeocello
Nina Simone
Song Writers
Be Still (2011)
Therapy (2014)
Art of Letting Go (2013)
Fighting the Good Fight (2013)
Think (1968)
Soul Survivor (2009)
Djin Djin (2007)
Control (1986)
New Day (2004)
Hot Night (2002)
Four Women (1966)
Poets
On Being Brought from Africa to America (1773)
Bury Me in a Free Land (1854)
The Heart of a Woman (1918)
For My People (1937)
We Real Cool (1960)
I am a Black Woman (1970)
Renewal (2004)
Still I Rise (1978)
Haikuography (2010) Improvisation (1995)
Litany for Survival (1995)
Sidewalk Games (1990)
Homage to My Hips (1987)
…Intelligence for My Brothers & Sisters (2005)
Talking about New Orleans (2009)
Christmas Eve: My Mother Dressing (1989)
Nikki-Rosa (1969) We are Virginia Tech (2007)
Once (1968)
Family (2012)
About God & Things
My Father is a Retired Magician (1972)
I Have Been a Stranger in a Strange Land (2002)
Sleeping with the Dictionary (2002)
Today’s News (1996) Praise Song for the Day
There was a Time (2004)
The Missing Project: Pieces of the D (2012)
Three Frenzied Days (2005)
HEALING TRADITIONS IN BLACK WOMEN’S WRITING
Dr. Stephanie Y. Evans | www.professorevans.net
“Right to Grow”
This RIGHT TO GROW is sacred and inviolable, based on the solidarity and undeniable value of
humanity itself and linked with the universal value and inalienable rights of all individuals.
Anna Julia Cooper, Howard University (1925)
Sample Key Words
Memoirs
Angelou, Maya
Johnson-Sirleaf, Ellen
Willis, Jan
Silence
Humanization
Choice
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969)
This Child Will Be Great (2009)
Dreaming Me: Black, Baptist, and Buddhist (2012)
Poems
Sonia Sanchez
Nikki Giovanni
Staceyann Chin
Memory
Prevail
Conviction
Haikuography (2010)
Nikki-Rosa (1969) We are Virginia Tech (2007)
Three Frenzied Days (2005)
Songs
Nina Simone
Mary J. Blige
Angelique Kidjo
Skin Color
Bitterness
Time
Four Women (1966)
Therapy (2014)
Djin Djin (2007)
Southern Memoirists, Poets, and Lyricists
Memoirists
Maya Angelou (Missouri/Arkansas)
Darlene Collier (Mississippi)
Dovey Roundtree (North Carolina)
Jan Willis (Alabama)
Alice Walker (Georgia)
Poets
Margaret Walker (Alabama)
Maya Angelou (Arkansas)
Sonia Sanchez (Alabama)
Nikki Giovanni (Tennessee)
Alice Walker (Georgia)
Lyricists
Yolanda Adams (Texas)
Shirley Caesar (North Carolina)
Aretha Franklin (Tennessee)
Nina Simone (North Carolina)
Revolutionary Petunias: Southern Black Women’s Poetry Curriculum
Walker, M
Angelou
Sanchez
Giovanni
Walker, A
Name
Home
Public
Private
Violence
Survival
Birmingham, AL
St. Louis, MO/Stamps, AK
Birmingham, AL
Knoxville, TN
Putnam County, GA
Walker, M
Birmingham
For My People
Lineage
Kissie Lee
Solace
Angelou
My Arkansas
Pulse of the
Morning
Remembering
Born that Way
Still I Rise
This is My Century, New & Collected (1989)
Complete Collected Poems (1994)
Shake Loose My Skin (1999)/Morning Haiku (2010)
Collected Poetry, 1968-1998 (2003)/Best 100 (2010)
Her Blue Body, Everything We Know (1991/2005)
Sanchez
Poem for
Margaret Walker
Haikuography
Memory Haiku
Poem For Some
Women
Song No. 2
Giovanni
Knoxville,
Tennessee
We are Virginia
Tech
Nikki-Rosa
Linkage
Ego Tripping
Walker, A
Once
Democratic
Womanism
I Keep Broken
Things
From Kigali
Revolutionary
Petunia
HEALING TRADITIONS ~ POETRY WORKSHOP
Dr. Stephanie Y. Evans | www.professorevans.net
Workshop Outline
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Introduction
Petunia Poems
Structure
Writing
Open Mic
Resources
Resource Websites
Dr. Evans, Research and teaching portfolio
www.professorevans.net
Database of 500 Black women’s narratives
www.sesheta.net
Microwriting and poetry workshop resources
www.utenzi.works
Poetry and resources for survivors of sexual violence
www.purplepens.net
Revolutionary Petunia, Alice Walker
Remembering, Maya Angelou
The Nature of This Flower Is to Bloom.
Rebellious. Living.
Against the Elemental Crush.
A Song of Color
Blooming
For Deserving Eyes.
Blooming Gloriously
For its Self.
Soft grey ghosts crawl up my sleeve
to peer into my eyes
while I within deny their threats
and answer them with lies.
Mushlike memories perform
a ritual on my lips
I lie in stolid hopelessness
and they lay my soul in strips.
Song No. 2, Sonia Sanchez
i say. all you young girls waiting to live
i say. all you young girls taking yo pill
i say. all you sisters tired of standing still
i say. all you sisters thinkin you won’t, but you will.
don’t let them kill you with their stare
don’t let them closet you with no air
don’t let them feed you sex piecemeal
don’t let them offer you any old deal.
i say. step back sisters. we’re rising from the dead
i say. step back johnnies. we’re dancing on our heads
i say. step back man. no mo hangin by a thread
i say. step back world. can’t let it all go unsaid.
i say. all you young girls molested at ten
i say. all you young girls giving it up again & again
i say. all you sisters hanging out in every den
i say. all you sisters needing your own oxygen.
don’t let them trap you with their coke
don’t let them treat you like one fat joke
don’t let them bleed you till you broke
don’t let them blind you in masculine smoke.
[repeat chorus]
Solace, Margaret Walker
Now must I grieve and fret my little way
into death’s darkness, ending all my day
in bitterness and pain, in striving and in stress;
go on unendingly again
to mock the sun with death
and mask all light with fear?
Oh no, I will not cease to lift my eyes
beyond those resurrecting hills;
a Fighter still, I will not cease to strive
and see beyond this thorny path a light.
I will not darken all my days
with bitterness and fear,
but lift my heart with faith and hope
and dream, as always, of a brighter place.
HEALING TRADITIONS ~ POETRY WORKSHOP
Dr. Stephanie Y. Evans | www.professorevans.net
We are Virginia Tech, Nikki Giovanni
We are Virginia Tech.
We are sad today, and we will be sad for quite a while. We are not moving on, we are embracing our mourning.
We are Virginia Tech.
We are strong enough to stand tall tearlessly, we are brave enough to bend to cry, and we are sad enough to
know that we must laugh again.
We are Virginia Tech.
We do not understand this tragedy. We know we did nothing to deserve it, but neither does a child in Africa dying
of AIDS, neither do the invisible children walking the night away to avoid being captured by the rogue army,
neither does the baby elephant watching his community being devastated for ivory, neither does the Mexican
child looking for fresh water, neither does the Appalachian infant killed in the middle of the night in his crib in the
home his father built with his own hands being run over by a boulder because the land was destabilized. No one
deserves a tragedy.
We are Virginia Tech.
The Hokie Nation embraces our own and reaches out with open heart and hands to those who offer their hearts
and minds. We are strong, and brave, and innocent, and unafraid. We are better than we think and not quite what
we want to be. We are alive to the imaginations and the possibilities. We will continue to invent the future
through our blood and tears and through all our sadness.
We are the Hokies.
We will prevail.
We will prevail.
We will prevail.
We are Virginia Tech.
Three Words
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