“I am a Woman…Who Writes” 

By: Chamara Jewel Kwakye

For the last 6 years I have been writing a book. It started as a book about the experiences of Black women faculty at predominantly white colleges and universities. It was the book I planned to get tenure with. Unsatisfied with telling those difficult and painful stories, I decided to write about the creative arts space I helped co-create with Black girls and women in Lexington, called SOLHOTLex. SOLHOTLex was a satellite program of Saving Our Lives, Hear Our Truths (SOLHOT) a creative arts space that centers Black girls and women founded by my mentor, Dr. Ruth Nicole Brown. SOLHOT and SOLHOTLex is a soul anchoring practice for me, but as much as I love doing SOLHOT and being with other Black girls and women in the name of creativity and freedom, I found it difficult to capture all the beauty and nuance of our time together. I was stuck. Nothing seemed to fit or make sense.

Throughout my life writing was a constant. Writing was never easy. I never felt like I was great or even really good at it, but it was the thing I went back to constantly, because I could give myself over to it completely without any expectation. I could say all the things I needed to say and wanted to say and was content with just getting my thoughts out. No one ever had to read it. No one ever had to critique it. My writing stood on its own because it was mine. It wasn’t until recently that I realized that’s what was making it so hard. I had forgotten to write for me. For so long in my life I had been doing things the way other people wanted me to. My thinking was simple, I will do this for them now and later I will do what I want to do. The giving here and the giving there often never led me back to doing what I really wanted to do. I compromised so much that I compromised my voice. I compromised myself.

Now, six years later, I’ve decided to write for me and I can say without a doubt this is some of the best writing I have ever done in my life. I’m less concerned with the product and in love with the process. It doesn’t mean it’s not hard and it doesn’t mean I still don’t look at the cursor as it blinks or watch as the seconds turn into minutes on my wall clock. Instead, it means I’m not waiting for tenure, approval from colleagues, or reviewers to approve of how or what I’m writing about. Below is an excerpt from my book, tentatively titled, Black Girl Lullabies. It’s one of the first pieces I wrote when asked directly, “Who is your writing accountable to? Who do you belong to?” by a student. I purposely chose it to include in THE My Warrior Life Community™ blog because it’s the piece that I read whenever I want to go back to doing what others expect of me. It reminds me that, while I am writing for me, I come from courageous stock and belong to other powerful women that have always made things happen for themselves, without permission.

Who I Belong to…

I belong to Black Migrant Women

Women that packed light but brought everything and everyone with them

That knew what was important to keep

What was important to throw away

And sometimes confused the two

I belong to the ones that never let grass grow under their feet

But always knew when to plant

I belong to the women who were always looking and searching

For home and had to create it in themselves.

Chamara Jewel Kwakye is a Lecturer at Georgia State University in The Institute for Women’s, Gender & Sexuality Studies and is the program director for The Initiative for Creative Arts. She co-edited, Wish to Live: The Hip-hop Feminism Pedagogy Reader and has also co-written, starred, and produced several ethnographic performances based on the lives of Black women and girls. She has published works on qualitative methods, hip-hop feminist pedagogy and is currently working on a monograph that examines Black women and girls’ pedagogy and praxis of love and labor. She received her PhD from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign in 2011. She is a native of Los Angeles and misses home everyday.

She can be found on social media at the following:

@cjkwakye & @TheInitiativeForCreativeArts @jewelsdaughter  @TheInitiativeForCreativeArts