Gifted $2,000 in individual writers’ grants through the Ashaki M. Jackson No Barrier Regrant and Kit Reed Travel Fund (a $500 increase from the previous year)
Returned to hybrid programming by hosting 8 public events across the city including our 10th annual SUBMIT 1 Submission drive at Pocha LA.
Announced, curated, and edited the third WWS anthology, TRANSFORMATION, to be released by the new year in partnership with Jamii Publishing
Created mentorships for 9 of our members through a special opportunity with Reyna Grande
Established new WWS chapters in Portland, ME, Bloomington, IN, Austin, TX, and San Diego, CA with a Canada chapter launching in early 2024.
A #GivingTuesday tax deductible donation from you will mean helping WWS financially support more writers in 2024, grow our in-person programming while staying committed to accessibility through virtual options, promote our writers to a wider community, and ensure marginalized writers receive the same free support.
I was coming off of a weeklong high at one of the nation’s most prolific writers’ retreats and heading home, when I found myself grounded for an extra day in Columbus, Ohio. The airline I booked my travel with had reneged on their promise to get me back to New York safely–THRICE. Everything is by divine design though, because had it not been for those canceled flights, I would not have found myself in an Uber, on a rainy Saturday afternoon, headed to the main library in downtown Columbus. It was the library’s 150th anniversary, and it culminated in the Columbus Bookfest that was packed with readers, writers, books, craft talks and coffee. A writer’s oasis. I decided to close my impromptu day perusing the bookstore the library created on the second floor, filled with all the works of the authors present for the Bookfest. In the sea of covers and spines, a book grabbed me.
Ripe by Negesti Kaudo, the cover art is an illuminous majesty of work, rich and full with dynamic colors; bold, loud, beautiful. Plump lips covered in shimmering gold and bronze lipstick with the book’s title neatly placed across the center of the mouth. The cover screamed out to me, this book is rich! It is. This collection of essays is the author’s impeccable debut that explores race from a variety of intersections that all lead to what it means to her to be a Black woman in America.
Consider the invitation into the collection–the title, Ripe. When we hear that word, instinctively, fruit comes to mind. So it is in this body of work, the exploration of what it means to take up space–to be full of such goodness and sweetness on the inside (Flesh); to have to be hard and tough externally to protect that goodness (Rind); to know the origins of how you came to be and what you can and will become (Seed). To quote Kaudo’s dedication, this book is, “…for every other Black girl who learned to bloom in the dark.”
The collection of twenty-seven essays delivered to the reader using hybrid as form in some pieces, and divided into three sections, “Rind,” “Flesh,” “Seed,” explores race and culture from a most intimate and detailed perspective. The language is sharp. The images, vibrant. Still, this collection raises questions in the reader that Kaudo makes every attempt to answer through an exploration of self. It’s a look at the author’s experiences, nuances, and emotions and how these culminated into the woman she is and the woman she will come to be. It is also a recognition that the world often does not see her in the way she sees herself; often doesn’t see any Black woman’s depth and magnificence.
The opening essay, “Marginalia,” (a title which Kaudo uses twice more in the collection in different context and content) is to prepare the reader for the ride they are about to willingly take. Should apprehension about the collection’s subject matter swell inside you, that is dispelled by the end of the first page. Kaudo’s style of posing the intellectual question and then giving both example and answer in prose is dynamic. “When do children recognize race? When do children begin to point out that another child is an other? In the second grade, a Jewish girl’s parents told her I was ghetto. Later, in fifth grade, another black girl and I read a page in our social studies textbook over and over because it said that during the Holocaust, Jewish people were forced into ghettos. We said, ‘They can’t possibly mean our ghetto.’ They didn’t.” This starting point places us in the margins with the author, with her Blackness. It is beautiful and sweeping; little morsels of her life where she began to see herself the way the world saw her.
The definition of rind is a thick and firm outer coat or covering. In this first section of the book, “Rind,” the essays explore what it really means for a Black woman to have to default to tough skin because society defaults the Black woman to a trope; angry. In “Ether,” Kaudo provokes the thought of whether or not we, Black women, play into the trope or is it that the trope creates the space for us to be apprehensive about feeling our feelings and subsequently expressing them . “A blackout rage is like an orgasm of anger–the buildup sucks, but the release is great.”She posits, “Sometimes I’m angry, sometimes I’m sad, but mostly I wish my emotions could be disconnected from the fact that I am Black and a woman.”Having to navigate white supremacy on a daily basis in macro and micro doses leaves a trail of rage that is oftentimes masked by silence for fear of laying into a stereotype that society has nursed and fed and pampered. Black women not only have to be aware of who they are but simultaneously must leather our skins in order to manage the daggers that come our way. Every day. “Some people deserve to feel the ether. But I swallow it and walk away.”
I too have had to quiet my anger and laugh off disrespect in spaces where folks absolutely deserved my full wrath. It is a bitter morsel to have to swallow. “How to Steal a Culture” looks at blackness and whiteness through a lens of intimacy while playing with form; it is a ‘how-to’. “Always make sure to remind her of her body. Chances are, you’re smaller than her in the hips or breasts, so offering to share clothes can be both a compliment and an insult–a way to spin your superiority as inferiority.”It’s an exposing of a poison that seems to be consistently sprayed on Blackness in an effort to prevent its bloom. Kaudo presents the duality of desiring to be the very thing that you oppress while actively oppressing it.
Her skill when it comes to form is apparent in “UnBothered-A Microaggression.” This has to be my favorite piece in the collection while simultaneously enraging and making me sad. It is charged and electric and dazzles. It also punches and slaps. The form in this piece takes its shape when the phrase, “And when it happens, it won’t sit right with you. You’ll feel a pang in your chest, and you won’t be sure if it’s anger or sadness. you‘ll have three options: fight, flight, or—”,precedes an instance of microaggression. These are layers of a cake filled with catastrophe, disappointment, the unimaginable, and then frosted with exhaustion. “My friend and I are discussing blackness: oppression, lack of history, no place. Our brown friend wants to join the conversation, but becomes frustrated when we say it is not his place, he has no authority. He looks at the two of us with a smirk and says: ‘Raise your hand if you’ve been to Africa.’ He puts both hands up.”The repetition of the phrase that carries through the piece is an expertly crafted catalyst for the rise of emotions that Kaudo is giving us through the multiple experiences. Thirteen to be exact. These moments occur to Black people across the globe, but specifically here in America, at an astounding rate of societal norm. It begs the question, how and what do we do to fix it? And though the question may be a reach, living it is tiring.
Flesh is defined as the soft substance of a human consisting of muscle and fatty tissue. It is the pulpy portion of a fruit. The weighted part of a being. It is typically the parts of ourselves that we pay the most attention to or otherwise, neglect. The pieces in this second section of the book, “Flesh,” promote loving ourselves; our hair, our bodies, our skin, our complexion, our tone of voice, our size, our curves, our fullness of being—in spite of society telling us that there is no value or worth in the aforementioned as it pertains to Black women.
“Black Girl Sabbath”is an homage to what caring for ourselves as practice, as ritual, should be, but still remembering and then reconciling with the ways in which something as basically human as our hair can be rooted in oppression. Kaudo gives us weighted strokes of history while coloring our minds with a kaleidoscope of beauty and wonder as it pertains to hair. “Cosmopolitan published an article about how to have kinky hair…by using a crimping iron. This is one of the moments where white audiences and black vernacular don’t mix.”Kaudo expands on the dance between cultural reference and the use of language and how it wholly negates how a specific culture and/or race of people identify with said reference. Not so much baffling as it is disheartening.
A seed is the germ or propagative source of anything. The beginning. In this final section of the book, “Seed,” we come to understand the depth and range that this body of work encompasses. It is tenderly and carefully woven to give the reader a full view of the tapestry that is Kaudo’s life, elements and pieces of her to swallow whole.
In the essay that the book is titled for, “Ripe,” we go with Kaudo as she experiences a quarter-life crisis and meets the world, in real time, when she comes to the understanding that she is wholly responsible for her own self. There is a caveat. Blackness. Blackness in America. Womanhood. Womanhood in America. Black Womanhood in America.
Kaudo’s use of lyric and prose to explore race, culture, and identity across a host of intersections, but specifically and profoundly as a Black woman in America, is compelling. If you’ve ever felt unseen, unheard, under-appreciated, or under-valued at any juncture in your life’s journey, this read is for you. But if you also want to curb your biases and understand what it means to live a life unlike your own, this read is also for you. Packed with insight, imagery, and a powerful use of language, Ripe, will leave your intellectual palette satisfied.
Tsahai Makeda is a Hudson Valley based writer with an MFA from Sarah Lawrence College. She’s received support for her work from The Kenyon Review Writers Retreat and The Center for Black Fiction Wild Seed Writers Retreat. Her work appears in Killens Review of Arts & Letters, Epiphany, Breadcrumbs, & REWRITE London.
Before I found my way to leading writing and story workshops, I’d already spent several years facilitating in the domains of personal growth and spirituality. During that time, I worked with students from a range of backgrounds but, thanks to their ability to invest time and money into their own transformation, a majority of them were affluent white women. I grew fatigued. As a mixed Latina from a historically disadvantaged community, the contexts of race, difference, and economic inequality through which I interpreted the world were mere blips in their consciousness; unless I began to augment my existing curricula with the kinds of DEI and social justice content I cared about, I knew that I’d remain unsatisfied.
When I shifted my focus to the realms of writing and storytelling, I took what felt like a huge leap of faith; I decided to work primarily with people of the Global Majority. I did this not only because I was seeking students whose perspectives and values were more closely aligned with my own, but because I wanted to create spaces which centered writers who are routinely marginalized in predominantly white classroom environments. Since then, I’ve led workshops to immigrants and first gen Americans, Black, Latina, Asian, and Indigenous women, and a growing number who, like me, identify as “mixed.” Among these writers, I’ve found a shared vocabulary of experience and perception that was lacking among my white students and, rather than drained, I feel energized from supporting the development of stories that have potential to upend the status quo.
Prior to making this shift, I’d already sought to create workshop settings that supported diversity and individuality but, when I added creative writing to the mix, I began to think about this more intentionally.
Thinking deeply about what had been missing from my learning experiences, I set out to design the kind of environment I’d yearned for but never had: one in which a white male mindset wasn’t the default, white male aesthetics weren’t the ideal, and explorations of gender equity weren’t limited to white feminism.
Growing up Puerto Rican and Jewish in the Bronx, all the teachers I’d ever had, with the exception of my 11th grade trigonometry teacher, were white. Nevertheless, I was always on the lookout for creative role models whose backgrounds reflected my own and I was always disappointed; just as I was disappointed in my desire for books and films, which affirmed my identity and my community. With little else to choose from, as a teenager I sought to emulate the work and craft of mostly white men. Later, at college, I worked closely with my advisor who was a kindhearted Henry Fonda type from Kansas. Though he encouraged my attempts as a playwright and screenwriter, he couldn’t provide the guidance. I longed for.
My challenges were so unlike the ones he’d faced that he could sympathize with me but couldn’t advise me. By the time I graduated, I’d decided not only to become a filmmaker whose work would validate the experiences of other little girls from marginalized communities, but one they could turn to as a mentor and role model.
Once in Hollywood, I honed my craft in screenwriting programs, eager to write the kinds of stories I dreamed of seeing. I wrote a magical realist coming of age story, a Sci-Fi adventure with a biracial heroine, and a noir script about Caribbean colonization. While both peers and instructors recognized their potential, my continued lack of guidance left those stories underdeveloped. And though those same readers regarded my background and settings as colorful, none could help me unravel their complexities or embed them meaningfully into my work. Despite my best intentions, I’d fully absorbed the message that my viewpoint didn’t matter in a white-centered world, and I found myself stuck, my capacity to develop an authentic authorial voice stunted.
Despite these difficulties, I still enjoyed the writing process and valued the emphasis my instructors put on narrative structure. Hoping that technical excellence would compensate for my struggles to be authentic, I devoted myself to mastering it. As had been true in my entire life, my instructors were all white men and, like my college advisor, they were generally kind. To quote Joy Castro’s “Racial and Ethnic Justice in the Creative Writing Course essay, “I was never mistreated,” but I remained unmentored.
During this period, I didn’t meet a single Latina screenwriter, never mind a Jewish-Latina one. Finally– creatively and mentally spent – I hit rock bottom. Burnt out after eight years, I broke down in my therapist’s office; I’d forgotten what, and why, I’d wanted to write in the first place. It was not long after that tearful confession that I stopped writing, let go of my dreams, and began considering a different future.
When a friend recommended that the local Arts High School hire me as a creative writing teacher, I found myself standing in front of a classroom.
Now on the other side of the divide, I knew what was at stake for my students from marginalized backgrounds. I decided that my classroom would not only be a place for learning craft but a place where writers could develop a strong sense of self and the confidence to tell the truth.
In his essay “On Teaching Writers of Color,” Bill Cheng writes that the best workshop leaders make their students feel that they are invested in their work; “they don’t just nurture nascent talent,” he says of such teachers, “they build relationships…they are open and honest not only about their hopes and ambitions but also their failures and their insecurities.” As an instructor who took a long and winding road to teaching, that is the only thing I can do.
After five years, the classroom environment I create is informed by a range of influences that go beyond the places where I learned to write and includes sacred spaces in which I experienced personal transformation and healing from my writing trauma. In the classroom, I make the following promises to myself:
To see my students as three-dimensional human beings whose genius lies in the fullness of who they are, whatever their background or experience,
To act as “the wall,” a guide whose steadfast belief in another person never wavers,
To address each student and their work with curiosity rather than critique,
To acknowledge and celebrate the fundamental desire which inspires each writer to tell their specific story, and
To support them in writing for the readers who matter to them: not for me, not for their teachers, and not for the generic (white) reader who, for so many years, they’d been taught to write for.
I welcome each person who crosses the threshold as an already beloved community member,
To act as “the wall,” a guide whose steadfast belief in another person never wavers,
To trust the unexpected and potent associations that arise spontaneously in creative spaces.
Imbued through all of this is respect for the writer’s vulnerability and faith that mindful support and mentorship can transform writing that is adequate into writing that sings with its author’s true voice.
Jesi Vega is a Puerto Rican-Jew, a Bronx native, and a graduate of the University of Chicago Divinity School. Based in Tacoma, WA, she leads storytelling workshops and provides editorial support for traditionally underrepresented writers. Her work draws on extensive knowledge of personal development modalities, film, theater, nonfiction, and tarot.
