—OF BLACK WOMBHOOD: A GATHERING—
Project Notes, Pictures & Recommended Reading
April 5, 2025 | Museum of Black Joy | Philadelphia | A Celebration of Black Womb-Bearing Persons | In collaboration with:
With generous funding from Writers Room: UnMapping Project via Mellon Foundation
A Collective Practice:
Workshop participants shared womb words and demarcations between girlhood and womanhood, piecing them together to create a visual map from which to write.
Breathe. Create. Embody.
We gathered to share a wholesome meal with red raspberry and nettle teas, known female tonics.
Misty Sol led us in an embodied breath exercise.
We Wrote—Considering our womb-words, remembering ourselves on either side of the womanly divide: before & after the blood.
Who was I as a girl?
Who am I as a woman?
Val Ifill led us in an embodied dance, centered in a deep awareness of our wombs and hands and how they move from our spirits into the world.
A Shared Experience
Photos by Tanya Latortue
A Reflective Response:
^^^ A poem inspired by the collective energy of Black women who gathered to remember and imagine a woman’s womb-work as a source of joy. ^^^
Intentional Writing, Reflections, Gratitude & Impact
Recommended Reading
Lucille Clifton
Audre Lorde: Uses of the Erotic
June Jordan: Poem About My Rights
Gwendolyn Brooks: The Mother
Saidiya hartman: The Belly of the World
Alice Walker and her daughter. Photo by Gordan Parks
“American women are now to be pregnant because their government demands they be.”
Karintha, from Cane, by Jean Toomer