For the Women, an Afternoon of Poetry, Drama and Dialogue

For the Women
an Afternoon of Poetry, Drama and Dialogue
at the Joyce Gordon Gallery
Saturday, March 19, 3-6pm
406 14th Street, Oakland

MC Hunia Bradley

On Saturday afternoon, March 19, 3-6pm, the Bay Area will experience a collection of powerful women authors, poets and actors. Bay Area Black Authors present the women poets featured in the Journal of Pan African Studies Poetry Issue, guest edited by Marvin X, the godfather of the West Coast Black Arts Movement.

Bay Area poets in the JPAS include Phavia Kujichagulia, Ayodele Nzingha, Tureadah Mikell, Aries Jordan, devorah major.


Tureadah Mikell



Phavia Kujichagulia



devorah major








Ayodele Nzingha

The afternoon includes drama, including Opal Palmer Adisa's Bathroom Graffiti Queen, produced, directed and performed by Ayodele Nzinga of West Oakland's Lower Bottom Playaz.
Aside from her own plays, Ayo recently produced August Wilson's Gem of the Ocean. A long time associate and former student of Marvin X, she's directed his In the Name of Love, 1981, One Day in the Life, 1997-2002, and a production of his 60s classic Flowers for the Trashman. Ayodele is considered the Bay Area's consummate black actress.

There will be a scene from Vagina Monologues performed by Aries Jordan, actress and poet, For Colored Girls by Jasmin Conner, poet, actress, novelist, and Parable of the Woman on the Cell Phone, enacted by singer, actress Mechelle LaChaux.


Mechelle LaChaux

The event concludes with a dialogue on Womanhood Rites of Passage, facilitated by media living legend and author Jerri Lange. Panelists include Ayodele Nzingha, Aries Jordan, Jasmin Conner, and Phavia Kujichuglia.



Jerri Lange

Sponsors include Bay Area Black Authors, Academy of da Corner Reader's Theatre, Post Newspaper Group, San Francisco Recovery Theatre, Lower Bottom Playaz, Black Bird Press.

This event is part of the Post Newspaper Group and Black Chauncey Bailey Project to donate books from local authors to persons incarcerated at juvenile hall, county jail and prisons.
The public is encouraged to attend and purchase books for donation to the incarcerated.
For more information: www.blackbirdpressnews.blogspot.com, jmarvinx@yahoo.com.


An Afternoon of Poetry, Drama and Dialogue

Program

Welcome
Libations
Journal of Pan African Studies Women Poets
Aries Jordan
Phavia Kujichagulia
Tureada MIkell
Ayodele Nzingha
devorah major
Jasmin Conner

Drama
Parable of Woman on Cell Phone, Mechelle LaChaux
Vagina Monologue, Aries Jordan
For Colored Girls, Jasmin Conner
Bathroom Graffiti Queen, Ayodele Nzingha

Panel Discussion on Womanhood Rites of Passage:
Jerri Lange, Phavia Kujichagulia, Ayodele Nzingha,
Aries Jordan, Jasmin Conner

Joyce Gordon Gallery, 406 14th Street, downtown Oakland.
jmarvinx@yahoo.com

For the Women

For the women

Who bear children and nurture them with truth

Who cook and clean behind thankless men

For the women

Who love so hard so true so pure

For the women

With faith in God and men

For the women

Alone with beer and rum

Searching for a man

At the club college church party

For the women

Independent of men

Searching their souls

Who smoke crack and freak

Who love only women

Who play and run and never show

Who rise in revolt in hand with men

Who say never never, never again

For the women who suffer abuse and cry for justice

For the women happy and free of maternal madness

For the women who study and write

For the women who sell their love to starving men

For the women who love to make love and be loved by men

For the women of Afrika who work so hard

For the women of American who suffer the master

For the women who turn to God in prayer and patience

For the women who are mothers of children and mothers of men

For the women who suffer inflation recession abortion recession

For the women who understand the rituals of men and women

For the women who share

For the women who are greedy

For the women with power

For the women with nothing

For the women locked down

For the women down town

For the women who break horses

For the women in the fields

For the women who rob banks

For the women who kill

For the women of history

For the women of now

I salute you. A MAN.

--Marvin X

Circa 1981