Transcending the Barriers
Summary: |
Nicole Moore writes about the role of the Black Women's writers' group in reclaiming and expanding culture and community.
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Posted: |
16 Nov 2005 |
Education Group: |
Lifelong Learning |
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I am a published writer, poet and creative writing tutor with a particular interest in black women’s literature and the promotion of black and mixed-race women’s creative writing. In my work as a writing tutor, my aim is initially to encourage participants to be creative, dispelling the ‘I’m not talented enough’ conditioning that holds many of them back. Secondly, my aim is to promote creative writing skills among participants to enable their work to be published and/or performed.
This article has evolved out of my participation in the NAWE ‘Gender and Writing in Education’ Conference this summer held at The Women’s Library in June 2005. My presentation’s aim was to address how creative writing is particularly empowering for black women and how important and essential it is to have writing groups and classes exclusively for black women.
As a writer, I have attended many various workshops and courses over the past ten years, which is important for my own writing career development and they have in most cases been satisfactory. However, I have attended two courses for black women as a student and have successfully delivered writing courses for black women in London and the East Midlands, and can honestly say that it is foremost about the learning experience. Secondly it is about being able to share personal testimonies relating to race, class and gender issues within the context of black women’s literature and without having to justify explanations and without having to keep silent in a wider framework.
Let me explain. In 1995, I attended a six-month Black Women Writers course run by Birkbeck College, University of London. This was a rare and wonderful opportunity for me to delve along with other participants into the world of black women’s literature. This was a turning point in my life and empowered me so much that I made a conscious decision to pursue writing seriously as a career.
Apart from the much-needed exposure to black women’s literature, it was the sessions that covered the politics of black women’s literature, in particular the issues of getting published, which encouraged me to seek funding to run Shangwe Creative Writing Workshops for women of African & Caribbean descent.
The first Shangwe writing workshop I designed and delivered was a Millennium ‘Leaders for London’ Award funded through The Peabody Trust and was held in May-June 1999. Sixteen women enrolled on the course with a further fourteen on the waiting list. The course was designed as an 8-week (x 2 hours) racially and culturally sensitive Creative Writing workshop for women of African and African-Caribbean descent. Workshop sessions included Confidence in Writing, Writing Techniques/Exercises and Keeping a Journal.
The facilitation methods included the use of a flipchart and audiocassettes, small group work, large group discussions, readings to inform and support the writing experience, and practical writing exercises. Handouts and a booklist of recommended readings were provided together with writing materials, a journal, folders, session outline, and tutor profile.
Course participants were able to work together to explore their race, culture and identity through the expression of writing/literature. They were able to tap into their own creative strengths in a relaxed, safe and confidential atmosphere. Participants gained confidence and expressed and developed creative writing skills using different writing forms, e.g. poetry and prose. This led to a final Celebration Session and the Black female community poet Shirley Mason (aka Cuban Redd) rounded the evening off by presenting Award Certificates to all the participants and provided a 15-minute poetry performance.
As part of the workshop, a visit to XPress, a Black publishing company, was arranged. Steve Pope, publisher, hosted this event which covered:
• Xpress Publishers’ background
• What publishers want
• Presentation of final product
• Importance of research to your story
• Black women writers/readers
• Questions & answers session
In October/November 2004, I ran another Shangwe Creative Writing Workshop in Wellingborough, Northamptonshire, this time funded by the Community Champions Fund. This was the first ever creative writing group held in Wellingborough for black women and I sensed that the workshop participants felt that the learning experience was a breath of fresh air. Funding for this workshop included a budget for books, which the participants felt was a luxury as all too often they had found it difficult to locate black women’s literature in the local mainstream bookshops. Of course, books are much more readily available on the internet, e.g. www.amazon.co.uk but some readers prefer to actually view the books before they buy them.
The workshop brought together women who had never experienced being able to express themselves in a creative setting in this racially and culturally sensitive way and on their own agenda. As a result, three participants successfully submitted their poems to my recently published anthology, ‘Brown Eyes’. This is a unique anthology in the UK that brings together a collection of poetry and autobiographical writing from a diverse group of black and mixed-race women – everyday women expressing themselves in their own unique style. It provides an insight into their perspectives of living in the UK by sharing their views relating to gender, race, culture, heritage, ethnicity and identity. I am thankful to the Arts Council England (East Midlands) who under their Grants for the Arts programme awarded me the funding to develop, edit and publish the anthology.
It is important to say at this point that over the past five years, my experience of working as a creative writing tutor has been wide and has included teaching adults and children from diverse backgrounds and communities within schools, college settings and community groups. For example, I have worked as a writer in residence in Islington Primary Schools, as an Associate Lecturer for the Open University on the ‘Living Arts’ Openings Programme and as a creative writing tutor for Centerprise’s Black Literature Development Agency in Hackney, East London. As a tutor it is vital for me to continue to work in the wider community and I always find these experiences fulfilling and positively challenging.
The challenges of working with single sex groups and groups exclusively for black women mostly come from the wider community and society. Often there is a lack of understanding as I hear comments from the general public made to me about providing writing groups for black women in this way. “Aren’t you discriminating by excluding white people?” is the most common question. I always respond by qualifying the reasons for the need for courses such as these by trying to emphasize that I am working in a socially inclusive way rather than excluding others. If more mainstream writing groups were to include black women’s literature then of course more black women would feel that their needs were being addressed and met. However, this is not the case although I sincerely hope that this trend will change in the future with more black women being published and therefore given more authority as relevant literary references.
Writing groups for black women fulfil a social, racial and cultural need for individual women as well as a context for their own self-esteem and personal development. Participants speak of having a shared voice that has been silent for so long. Many wish to focus on their writing without compromising their racial identity, which often can happen in a more mainstream learning environment. Many have never had such a rare opportunity to write creatively in these settings. Role models, such as black women tutors and writers, often enhance and empower black women in writers’ groups so as to make them feel more socially included. The personal and political is dealt with as women embrace their race and culture through the writing experience.
Furthermore, writing groups for black women can provide a method for critical awareness and understanding of race, gender and class perspectives, particularly relating to the production and reception of black women’s writing in the UK. In the UK, it is about being informed not just of how we may approach our writing but of understanding the realities, the politics of writing and getting published, of how best to choose contexts and genres to write in and practical ways of transcending social, economic and racial barriers.
Definition of Terms
‘Black’ is defined to mean people who descend from the African continent and includes first generation African-Caribbean people and African-Caribbean people throughout the Diaspora.
Nicole Moore is a freelance writer, published poet and creative writing tutor. She is the founder of Shangwe and the co-founder of Words of Colour Productions. She is the Editor of Brown Eyes, an anthology of black and mixed-race women’s creative expressions, published in September 2005 by Troubador Publishing Ltd.
This article was first published in Writing in Education No. 37, Autumn 2005.
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