The HerStories Project

On Monday, February 28, from 4:00pm to 5:30pm, people are invited to the Women’s Center of Greater Lansing, 1710 E. Michigan Ave., for a hands-on session to prepare for HerStories Fest.

People are welcome to join the meeting whether or not they are able to be at the event itself. If you would like to join us online, email your interest to herstories.project @ gmail.com . Online collaboration is possible with Skype (search for the user name deyofthephoenix) or Google chat.

Laptops, cell phones, and contact information for potential partners are useful resources for our activities. Our goals for Monday include:

• designing an event flyer
• writing a press release
• soliciting donations for the silent auction
• inviting artist participation

Hope to see you there!

Call for HerStories Fest 3/18/11 – Fundraiser for the Women’s Center of Greater Lansing

Celebrate stories about women during Women’s History Month while benefiting the Women’s Center of Greater Lansing! HerStories Fest on the evening of Friday, March 18, is an opportunity to do both. Everyone is invited to come and honor women’s lives through artistic expression. Details about the event are soon to follow. We will begin at Everybody Reads Bookstore, 2019 E. Michigan Ave., Lansing, with a reception at 6:30pm.

Recently WCGL director Cindie Alwood appealed to the Greater Lansing community for financial help . See her note on Facebook “We Can Do It but we need YOUR help”. Artists, organizers, and volunteers are needed to make HerStories Fest shine and be a success for the financial needs of the WCGL.

Would you like to contribute toward this grassroots event? Here are a few ways to be a part of HerStories Fest:

* artistic performance (spoken word, poetry reading, storytelling, music)
* donations for a silent auction (original artwork, services)
* food service (organizing donations, preparing opening reception)
* promotion (flyer design printing, and/or distribution)
* media (blogging, pitching a story to news sources, creating a video story)
* presence at event (set-up, clean-up, on-site help)

Contact herstories.project @ gmail.com with your interest! Additional ideas to help with HerStories Fest also are welcome.

Please stay tuned for the announcement about a meeting next week, when people can come in person or join us online to prepare for the event.

Embodying Our Words gave us pages of inspiration, as well as laughter and tears. The varied events formed wide and intimate circles, providing a range of ways to explore embodied writing – life stories connected to the body. Co-organizer Dawn Comer and I are extremely grateful for the many contributions of sponsors, guests, and program participants. We hope to cover all our bases here but will update our list as needed, in the case we recall even the smallest manner of assistance!

Huge thanks to our sponsors for their material and promotional support: the Women’s Center of Greater Lansing, the Center for Poetry, and the MSU LGBT Resource Center.

A special shout out to WCGL director Cindie Alwood for nourishing us from breakfast to dinner during our second day of programing. You are a wonder!

Many thanks to volunteers who made EOW possible: Jasmine Smith (WCGL) for registration, flyer design, and food arrangements; Amy Dress (Defiance College, OH) for designing our program bookmark; Austin and Jen Schalliol and Steve Smith for sharing their visual art for our promotional and program use.

Thanks to local businesses for donating food: Aladdin’s Restaurant and Panera Bakery of Frandor Shopping Center; Noodles & Company of East Lansing.

Appreciation to Michigan State University instructors Katie Livingston and Madhu Narayan for inviting their service-learning students to assist with and participate in EOW. And thanks to those students for set-up and clean-up during our campus events.

Thank you, City Pulse, for covering EOW! “The power of healing words” by Gabi Moore (2/23/11) shines a clear light on the essence of the program. And we look forward to watching the video story soon to be released!

In an effort to keep expenses to a minimum, here are several online resources for events during Embodying Our Words. The evaluation form for the program also is available at the end of the post. Evaluations will be available at the program, though participants also are invited to send evaluations to herstories.project @ gmail.com.

For the opening event HerStories Circle: now let us shift, we are using the format of a talking circle. Our approach to circle talk is described online at http://www.canteach.ca/elementary/fnations30.html.

The program’s theme of embodied writing is inspired by the essay “now let us shift . . . the path of conocimiento . . . inner work, public acts” by Gloria Anzaldúa. Copies of the essay are available at Everybody Reads Bookstore in Lansing; several copies will be on hand at the program. The essay also is available in PDF at http://likeawhisper.files.wordpress.com/2010/03/anzaldua-now-let-us-shift.pdf .

Biographies about Gloria Anzaldúa provide varied insights about her life stories as a writer-activist-scholar, as well as her social ideals and spiritual beliefs. Several include:

• a focus on feminism in About.com Women’s History section, http://womenshistory.about.com/od/feministpoetry/a/gloria_anzaldua.htm;
• an entry in glbtq, an encyclopedia of gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, and queer culture, http://www.glbtq.com/literature/anzaldua_g.html;
• and an academic perspective published by Voices From the Gap, http://voices.cla.umn.edu/artistpages/anzaldua.php.

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EVALUATION

Thank you so much for being a part of Embodying Our Words! We hope this event was meaningful to you, providing you space to work on your own writing and to engage in meaningful conversations. In an effort to help organizers with future programs, please take just a few minutes to answer the following questions. Your candid observations and insights are much appreciated!

How did you learn about the program?

What originally attracted you to the event?

Please check the days that you participated in events:
__ Friday Feb. 18 __ Saturday Feb. 19

Please check and/or indicate all items that apply:
__ I live in the Greater Lansing Area.
__ I am from out-of-town and traveled ____ ~minutes/ hours~.
__ I traveled by ~foot/ car/ bus~ for events.

Please check all items that apply:
__ I followed EOW updates on Facebook.
__ I followed EOW updates on the website http://deyofthephoenix.com/herstories.
__ I didn’t know about EOW updates before the program.

EOW is sponsored by the Center for Poetry, the Women’s Center of Greater Lansing, and the MSU LGBT Resource Center. Please check all items that apply:
__ I knew in advance of the program that it was being sponsored.
Because of EOW, I learned for the first time about:
__ Center for Poetry __ WCGL __ LGBTRC
Because of EOW, I visited for the first time:
__ Greater Lansing Area __ Michigan State University
__ MSU LGBTRC __ WCGL
__ MSU Residential College in the Arts & Humanities (Snyder-Phillips Halls)

EOW is part of The HerStories Project, celebrating stories about women and gender expression. HerStories began in 2010. Please check all items that apply:
__ Before hearing of EOW, I knew about The HerStories Project.
__ As a result of EOW, I am interested in future HerStories events.

EOW is inspired by the essay “now let us shift . . . the path of conocimiento . . . inner work, public acts” by Gloria Anzaldúa. Please check all items that apply:
__ I learned about the essay for the first time because of EOW.
__ I learned about Gloria Anzaldúa for the first time because of EOW.
__ In anticipation of EOW, I read the essay in part or entirety.
__ As a result of EOW, I plan to read the essay for the first time.

EOW’s theme is embodied writing, which draws upon life stories connected to the body. Please check all items that apply:
__ I learned about embodied writing for the first time because of EOW.
__ Before attending the program, I knew EOW had this theme.
__ I came to EOW because of this theme.
__ EOW events I attended explored this theme.
__ As a result of EOW, I am inspired to continue exploring embodied writing.

For each of the following, please write the first thing that comes to mind regarding your EOW experience:

Most surprising

Most disappointing

Most valuable

Most embodied

Most encouraging

Please feel free to provide additional feedback! We welcome your stories, questions, and suggestions.

For the first HerStories program of 2011, there are new and returning faces! Dawn Comer and Mary Catherine Harper gave workshops last year and do so again at Embodying Our Words. Joining us for the first time are Lauren Spencer, Jerri Courtney, and Cindie Alwood! Please read on to learn more about EOW organizers and guests.

Guest Cindie Alwood (Feb. 18, 19) is co-founder and director of the Women’s Center of Greater Lansing, a sponsor of EOW. She has over 20 years of experience working with women and women’s issues in a variety of settings as a counselor, director and advocate. Cindie holds a master’s degree in Rehabilitation Counseling from Michigan State University and a bachelor degree in Speech Pathology & Audiology from Western Michigan University. She provides personal and career counseling to women who are going through all types of life transitions including career changes and job loss. She also works with many women who have experienced domestic violence or sexual assault. Cindie is an active member on a number of local boards and committees that address women’s issues.

Co-organizer Dawn Comer received her MFA in Creative Writing from The University of Notre Dame. She currently teaches part-time at Defiance College and is writing two books: Raised in a Corn Palace: Stories from the National Association of Tourist Attraction Survivors, and Fella With an Umbrella: Discovering Joy on the Autism Spectrum. The Society for the Study of Midwestern Literature (SSML) has awarded her with The Paul Somers Prize for Creative Prose for the story “Raised in a Corn Palace” (2008) and the memoir “Fella with an Umbrella: Finding Joy on the Autism Spectrum” (2009).

Guest Lauren Spencer (Feb. 18) is an activist and scholar who focuses on intersecting identities, the connections among systems of oppression, and LGBTQ communities of color. A self-described “Radical Anti-Racist Anti-Imperialist/Colonial Queer Lesbian Socialist Eco-Womanist Vegetarian,” Lauren is especially passionate about racial, economic and environmental justice and eradicating sexual violence. A proud alumnus of Michigan State University, having earned her Bachelor’s degree in Social Relations & Policy from MSU’s James Madison College in 2010, Lauren currently serves as the Program Coordinator in MSU’s LBGT Resource Center. In this capacity, she leads the resource center’s efforts in engaging marginalized populations within the LGBTQ community, including LGBTQ students of color, international students and students of faith.

Guest Mary Catherine Harper (Feb. 18, 19) is a professor at Defiance College in Ohio. Her poetry has been published in The New England Review, WomenWriters.net, The Bozeman Er, and Masque. She also has published articles on women’s science fiction in Science Fiction Studies, Extrapolation, and FemSpec. She has completed a cross-media epistolary novel Letters to Christian Duval, which is set in Ohio and Iraq. Her interests in language arts, cultural studies, poetics, and social justice issues have taken her to Cambodia to work on a language arts and ethnography project, so she is currently writing poetry about her experiences in Cambodia.

Guest Jerri Courtney (Feb. 18, 19) – nee Geromina Catherine Ferrara – was born in Washington, D.C. and grew up in that politically charged city and its nearby suburbs. She earned a B. A. in Social Work from Defiance College (Ohio) with special emphasis on interdisciplinary studies in Humanities and a Master of Liberal Studies Degree at the University of Toledo. Since 1991, Jerri has served as Adjunct Professor of Humanities at Defiance, teaching interdisciplinary courses. In addition to travel and photography, Jerri enjoys writing, studies in religion and spirituality, art, music, ,theater, and experimenting with new technologies. She is a member of SSML; advises Defiance College Stand, a chapter of the national student-led anti-genocide group; and also volunteers with Truth Academy, a reading and writing group for young girls.

Co-organizer Melissa Dey Hasbrook is a writer based in Lansing, Michigan. She began The HerStories Project in 2010 to celebrate stories about women, and in 2011 expands its scope to celebrate gender expression. Her poetry is significantly inspired by her homeland in the Great Lakes and North America, ancestral legacies, and the personal-political of everyday life. She is an alumnus of Michigan State University with studies in linguistics, community literacies, and pedagogy. Melissa’s community-based work focuses on creating spaces to explore word art and healing. Drawing upon past teaching experiences in literacy programs, college classrooms, and tutoring offices, she strives to celebrate the lives of everyone participating in her events.

Hear about The HerStories Project this Tuesday, February 15, on IMPACT 89FM, student radio from Michigan State University! I will visit the nightly show Exposure and talk about the 2011 HerStories kick-off event Embodying Our Words. I also will read new poetry! Exposure starts at 7pm, and my slot closes out the program around 7:45pm.

Updated February 17, 2011.

The online “form” follows this information about Embodying Our Words. Just copy the form onto email and send the completed version to herstories.project @ gmail.com . See here for the program schedule.

Inclusive Program
EOW is open to all genders. While the HerStories Project is committed to celebrate stories about women, its programs welcome everyone to participate. And Embodying Our Words builds upon this commitment by celebrating gender expression.

Flexible Participation
Participants are welcome to join the program in part or whole. While the registration form doesn’t itemize every event, it provides us overall information for preparations.

About Registration
The program is open to walk-ins, as long as space accommodates at each event. For the most part, sessions are set in spacious settings for greater flexibility. An exception is Saturday’s workshop,which only offers 10 spots. Also, advanced notice about participants helps preparation of materials and food service. Thanks for your assistance to make the program run smoothly!

Accessibility
All locations are accessible. In the case of the Women’s Center, this entrance and a ramp are available at the rear of the building. If accessibility is a concern, please contact event venues and/or organizers at herstories.project@gmail.com .

Fragrances
In an effort to create a healthy environment for all potential participants, we encourage people to consider not using fragrances – natural or chemical – during the program. Items include essential oils, perfumes, colognes, and cleaning products with fragrances. Individuals with respiratory conditions and fragrance sensitivities are made ill by their use.

Parking and Transportation
All events are scheduled along a main bus route, the #1 line that connects program venues at MSU and Lansing’s Eastside. For Feb. 19, free parking is available behind the Women’s Center of Greater Lansing, as well as on Michigan Avenue and nearby side streets.

Metered parking is available but in limited access for Feb. 18 locations on the MSU campus: the Residential College in the Arts and Humanities at Snyder and Phillips Halls; and the Student Services Building, just west of Mason Hall. Here is an interactive map of campus to find these locations.

Additional parking options for Feb. 18 near campus include
– a surface lot operated by the City of East Lansing on Bailey Street within one block of Grand River Avenue (Parking Lot 11, listed on Albert Street);
– a parking garage across from this lot;
– carpooling at Frandor Shopping Center — free parking just west of campus, or taking the #1 bus from the Center to campus.

**If you are interested to car pool, please indicate this on your registration form.

Accommodations
If you are traveling to EOW from out of town and are looking for free lodging, we may be able to find you a bed. Some hospitable supporters are opening their homes. We will do our best to find you a spot, but cannot guarantee a space. Please indicate your interest on the registration form.

Also many hotels are available in the Lansing area. Organizer Dawn Comer recommends the Red Roof Inn at 3615 Dunckel Road, Lansing. Reservations can be made by phone at 517-332-2575 or online.

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REGISTRATION

Complete this form and send it to herstories.project @ gmail.com.

Name: _________________________________

Please check items that apply for parking and/or accommodations:

__ I would like to car pool for parking near MSU campus on Fri., Feb. 18.
__ I am coming from out of town and would like to stay with a local resident, if possible.
__ I am willing to share a room with another participant.

Please check which applies for program participation:

__ Both days (whether in part each day or for the whole program): Friday and Saturday, February 18 – 19

OR 1 of the following…

__ Friday, February 18 (whether in part or entirely) – MSU campus, East Lansing
__ Saturday, February 19 (whether in part or entirely) – WCGL, Lansing

If coming Saturday, February 19, please check if this applies:

__10:00 a.m. Workshop “Spirit and Hand of the Same Body: A Communal Palm Reading Workshop” **Limited to 10. A waiting list will be created in the case of cancellations.

Updated February 16, 2011.

Embodying Our Words Schedule, February 18-19, 2011
**Learn how to register.

February 18
Opening Day at Michigan State University

12:30 p.m.
“HerStories Circle: now let us shift.” Residential College in the Arts and Humanities, C202 Snyder Hall.

Inspired by Gloria Anzaldúa’s essay “now let us shift . . . the path of conocimiento . . . inner work, public acts” (This Bridge We Call Home: Radical Visions for Transformation 2002), participants read aloud a selected quote and share a reflection about the theme “Embodying Our Words”. All are welcome to take part in this exchange. Guest: Lauren Spencer, Program Coordinator of the MSU LGBT Resource Center.

2:00 p.m.
Social Break. C202 Snyder Hall.

Guest: Cindie Alwood, Director of the Women’s Center of Greater Lansing.

3:00 p.m.
Workshop with Dawn Comer. “Vocabularies of Sight and Touch, Sound and Movement, Texture and Taste: Embodying Our Words in Writing, Art, and Life” LGBT Resource Center, 302 Student Services Building.

Writing in clay is different than writing on paper.  Opening our mouths and voicing a wordless song stirs up something deeper than words.

Embodying our words is about more than just writing; it is about how we live and move in the world, and how that movement can find expression through a variety of creative vocabularies. If Gloria Anzaldúa’s “nepantla” is about a space beyond categories and labels, then nepantla can also dissolve seemingly fixed (and therefore false) boundaries between forms of art.

This workshop will explore the theme of embodied writing through the work of artists in mediums beyond the written page, and will provide opportunities to play with various creative vocabularies in writing, art, and life. The session takes place surrounded by the visual arts exhibit “Transitions”, which opened November 2010.

Evening Suggestions

• $ MSU Vagina Monologues, Wharton Center. This annual production is a fundraiser for the MSU Sexual Assault Program. Tickets are available online.
• Free Full Moon Ceremony, Triple Goddess Bookstore, Okemos.  Group blessing and tarot reading. Neighbor to Traveler’s Club, International Restaurant and Tuba Museum.

February 19
A Day of Writing at the Women’s Center of Greater Lansing
1710 E. Michigan Ave., Lansing

9:00 a.m.
Doors open. Drinks and snacks.

9:30 a.m.
The day starts with “Composing with Voice and Movement, Introduction” facilitated by Melissa Dey Hasbrook.

In this first of four segments, Melissa introduces the body as a tool for writing. Her approach bridges the inner world – thought, emotion, spirit – with outer expression. By using voice and movement, she explores how to expand the composition process. These techniques are playful and serve as keys to unlock the written word.

10:00 a.m.
Open Writing: Quiet space and an open-ended time to write something new or develop a current piece.

or

Workshop with Mary Catherine Harper. “Spirit and Hand of the Same Body: A Communal Palm Reading Workshop”. **This session offers 10 spots.

Drawing upon Gloria E. Anzaldúa’s call to recognize that spirit and matter exist together in the body, the communal palm reading (actually, hand reading) workshop stresses the convergences between the personality fashioned into the hand of an individual and the larger communal “personality.” This workshop explores and celebrates the forces called Life, Heart, Head, Destiny, and other forces that are inscribed on a person’s hands. These physical forces are given full play. . . and fullness of expression . . . in a community of accepting individuals.

12:15 p.m.
“Composing with Voice and Movement, Part 2”

12:45 p.m.
Lunch. **Free with advanced registration.

2:00 p.m.
“Composing with Voice and Movement, Part 3.”

2:30 p.m.
Open Writing: Quiet space and an open-ended time to write something new or develop a current piece.

4:45 p.m.
“Composing with Voice and Movement, Closing.”

5:15 p.m.
Dinner. **Free with advanced registration.

6:00 p.m.
Celebratory Reading and Performance. Participants from the two-day program are invited to read, perform, and listen to work in a relaxed and supportive circle.

Updated February 16, 2011.

Here’s a preview of what’s to come at Embodying Our Words!

The program starts on Friday, February 18, at 12:30pm at Michigan State University’s Residential College in the Arts and Humanities. The opening session is titled “HerStories Circle: now let us shift.” Joining us is Lauren Spencer, Program Coordinator from the MSU LGBT Resource Center, one of EOW’s sponsors.

We’ll explore Gloria Anzaldúa‘s essay “now let us shift . . . the path of conocimiento . . . inner work, public acts” (This Bridge We Call Home: Radical Visions for Transformation 2002). In celebration of Anzaldúa’s own story, participants are invited to read aloud quotes of personal interest. Additionally, we’ll share our own life stories that resonate with those words. These reflections are welcome in general conversation and creative forms, like poetry and storytelling. A web of potential topics include gender expression, cultural survival, healing from violence, dis/abilities, spiritual activism, and more.

Anzaldúa’s essay “now let us shift” provides a common place for the dialogue about embodied writing to begin. Also, activities throughout the program draw upon the essay for inspiration. The text isn’t required reading by any means, though participants are encouraged to take a look at it. A PDF version of the essay is available here: http://likeawhisper.files.wordpress.com/2010/03/anzaldua-now-let-us-shift.pdf.  And several locations will have the essay available, most likely by next week:

*Everybody Reads Bookstore (Lansing): Copies available for $1.50.
*MSU LGBT Resource Center: Free copies.
*Women’s Center of Greater Lansing: In-house use of the book containing the essay.

This post is from a Facebook discussion started by EOW co-organizer Dawn Comer, a writer based in Defiance, Ohio, and recipient of the Paul Somers Prize for Creative Prose (2008 & 2009). The essay referenced is titled “now let us shift . . . the path of conocimiento . . . inner works, public acts”. Your replies are most welcome!

Anzaldua’s essay from the collection This Bridge We Call Home is the touchstone for Embodying Our Words, and a good place to start thinking and talking and writing about what it means to embody our words as individuals and as a larger community. So I’ll take a stab at it 🙂

For me, I keep coming back to Anzaldua’s notion of nepantla:

We stand at a major threshold in the extension of consciousness, caught in the remolinos (vortices) of systemic change across all fields of knowledge. The binaries of colored/white, female/male, mind/body are collapsing. Living in nepantla, the overlapping space between different perceptions and belief systems, you are aware of the changeability of racial, gender, sexual, and other categories rending the conventional labellings obsolete. Though these markings are outworn and inaccurate, those in power continue using them to single out and negate those who are ‘different’ because of color, language, notions of reality, or other diversity. You know that the new paradigm must come from outside as well as within the system.

“Nepantla” gives me a word for something I have long known to be true, that there are not enough labels or categories in the world to contain even one person. I have found that in my creative and personal life, in my spirituality, in my relationships, and very specifically in my role as a mother to a child on the autism spectrum (for which there are an overwhelming abundance of labels and categories), any time I try to explain myself or others to myself using conventional binaries or categories, things fall apart. I lose sight of persons and begin artificially boxing myself or others into labels that don’t fit, that don’t flex, that inevitably must be torn down again. But how to use language, how to use even the vocabulary people use to explain themselves and each other, in a way that can be understood as a starting point and then moved beyond? This is what drives me.

Conocimiento, being the way that “questions conventional knowledge’s current categories, classifications, and contents” is becoming that for me, and it always and forever comes back to stories. Stories don’t classify–they just are. Sharing our stories–both telling and listening–with honesty, boldness, and compassion in a spirit of hospitality (but always with the awareness and caution that even our stories can trick us, that our ego is always with us) opens us up to ourselves, each other, and the world as we change (ourselves, each other, the world) from the inside.

“Nepantla,” writes Anzuldua, “is the site of transformation, the place where different perspectives come into conflict and where you question the basic ideas, tenets, and identities inherited from your family, your education, and your different cultures. Nepantla is the zone between changes where you struggle to find equilibrium between the outer expression of change and your inner relationship to it.”

How do we live in that space when we find ourselves there? How do we write/create from it? How can we foster a way of writing that values and welcomes the richness of nepantla on an ongoing basis?

Pursuing these questions is for me an ongoing process more important than any fixed (and therefore false) answer.