Wombfulness Gathering #5 Program

IMAHKÜS Njinga Okofu Ababio

nialla rose

        Wanda Sabir

Here is the program for Wombfulness Gathering #5. It was a wonderful conclusion to our first year. We look forward to continuing January and March 2022 this first year cycle. 

Introductions --

Wanda Sabir, host, and presenters: nialla rose & IMAHKÜS Njinga Okofu Ababio 

Libation-- IMAHKÜS Njinga Okofu Ababio 

Theme this final Gathering for 2021 -- Being Free

Soundtrack:

"I'm Coming Out" - Diana Ross (Ase)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zbYcte4ZEgQ&t=1s

Lizzo's "Good As Hell"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SmbmeOgWsqE&t=6s

"No Scrubs" -- TLC

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FrLequ6dUdM&t=14s

"Brown Skin Girl"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RXrhqhW2kiU

"Blk Girl Soldier" - Jamila Woods

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=asVhafDASjo&t=3s

"Just Fine" -- Mary J. Blidge

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G6ZjBPXSmnE

Resources:

the first free women: poems of the early Buddhist Nuns, trans., Matty Weigast. The idea was to choose a poem and respond in writing or a drawing or even a movement. 

Poems:
Another Uttama (39)

Uttama -- Great Woman (37-38)

Jenta-- Conqueror (24-25)

Dhira--Self-Reliant (9)

Vira-- Hero (10)

Other translations of the Therigatha, the earliest known collection of women's religious poetry, by Charles Hallisey (2015)

Susan Murcott (1991): The First Buddhist Women

Other work:

Life, I Swear: Intimate Stories from Black Women on Identity, Healing and Self-Trust (2021) by Chloe Dulce Louvouwzo. There are great essays and writing prompts in the collection -- 25 Black women. 

Wanda's Picks Radio Interview with Chloe Dulce Louvouwzo on Wed., Nov. 17, 2021

Lastly, we were going to use this poem by Derek Walcott, "Love after Love," as a prompt; however, we ran out of time: https://allpoetry.com/love-after-love

Love after Love

The time will come
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other's welcome,

and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.