fabulous crowd it's so nice to see all of you here i'm kimberly nine and gail and i'm the executive director of the same palm attack and we're an organization that builds communities through sharing your stories if you're interested in getting published send your work in to us our website is w w w dot org or you can e mail us a story or at stories at st paul mn act out or we pay all of our artists we pay all of our writers our new book is coming out in and traveled widely to such places as canada england africa new york bosnia france and more teaching and performing her work that largely centers around topics of identity cultural celebration and home she it quickly grew to ten and then twelve and then fifteen and then twenty and then twenty five and i was like talking to somebody and she said well why don't you just go ahead and go for thirty and i thought when she said that i said or fifty you all here and i'm so excited to see what these beautiful prolific writers performers artists actors activists leaders teachers have come together to put together some of them as i said are performers some of them are not some of them are writers some of them are not some of them are teachers and educators so we pose one proc to everybody the black at the berry dot dot dot and this is what they pull the names in the order oh i see a hat ok so how do you guys feel about that it will keep people on their toes so we have a lot of artists we're going to do this like layers etc and what i would do is i will call the name what do you say all right color response i will call the name and i will i every woman to introduce themselves with three words and i will introduce themselves with their three words they will come up and there is a thread that ties all our pieces together and it is i remember so we're responding to the prompt the black of the berry and each piece starts with i remember i s turn to your neighbor and say i go means i may i right now what about the people that are like in the doorway are you guys are you going to stand back there it is again before like for real church like a wedding that you weren't invited to ok well it does there's still room sort of in the front so just make your way i want people to be comfortable we're going to go back to back to back and then we're going to have a quick q and a at the very end is that all right i  gender and women's sexuality at the university of minnesota for also being a partner in this event and bringing some of the classmates etc all right so excited i feel like it's like a game show when i have all of the ticke yeah you can use if you're tall you can use a short one if you're short you can use a tall one all right so the first three that will go up will be j m lewis hopes advance is and romola bio you ready wrote a piece when she called me i felt so blessed and so i immediately started to hear something in my head and so i'm going to sing you what i wro how corn chips and cheese popcorn if you shake it up altogether you would appear to have much more moe hope in that bag than in the world outside of it for a little black girl from east st louis and false hope i remember when my grandmother would cook all through the week for sunday dinner graining sweet potato pie terror key and dressing cornbread macaroni and cheese  made with the government she was serving up a place full of hope of dignity at least once a week with a concert gathering eat that so the helped us wallow the racism the sexes  the homophobia the discrimination the injustice of it all wash it all down would have a big glass of red kool aid on sundays now days i try hard not to eat my herds and just stop and feel them and take them to my yoga mat and truly embrace the blacker the berry the sweet of the juice that makes this black girl run towards justice and freedom for i remember when i was seven and my brother mohammed and i spent our summer days playing catch kicking rocks under the piercing san diego sun we cooled down by sipping on blueberry syrup on the steps of the seven eleven when we got home my mom scrunched nose directed us straight to the shower which washed away the smell of salty air and fresh cut grass but left a scent of summer fire that left me looking like toasted calm it was mid summer when our relatives from atlanta came to visit  mother me and my sisters and i where colored folks still pants and matching shirt dresses with black scarves that somewhere between our heads and our shoulders we were indeed a colorful sight to anyone but my mom at least we were in ugly solidarity together we were slouched on the plastic covered sofa when the guests finally arrived my dad introduced the couple as my uncle and his wife they approach my sister's first blurting out how beautiful they were with compliments liberally embellished with a day at day a term of endearment and so molly that means lighter fare also used to imply peer my term came and i braced myself for a storm of similar compliments that never came they asked for my name before giving me a hurried hug and moving along to the boys that had been my parents remember rest of the night when my mother found me tear faced on their bed hours later she assured me that i was her smartest daughter and that i didn't need to concern myself with superficial things like beauty but sides you're not really that dark you're just not like she explained her seemingly comforting words were a blow to my ego to me it was all the confirmation i needed that my skin denied me beauty days passed and i was still wounded from the week before one afternoon my dad his friend and i were on interstate five when we saw a car pulled over on the shoulder of the highway two african american women were standing beside a stark stalled car with no help in sight it was san diego  the ninety's and we knew that if we didn't pull over they'd be hard pressed to get any help for hours when the car finally fail to start after repeated attempts my dad offered to drive the women to their home in santa embarrassed by my dry lips i kept looking them to restore moisture and seal the dreaded one of the women finally said it's ok you don't have to do that your lips are dark like mine and they're beautiful her words stunned me into silence and had never heard the words dark and beautiful uttered in the same sentence and i examined her face and observed her beauty it was then that i realized that beauty isn't contingent upon pink lips or light brown skin with me with hints of that was the year when summer kissed my face and a lot showed me the beauty of all shades through a stranger i didn't know the vernacular of black consciousness those days but it was but it was all too familiar with the cold chatter of not being a light enough my mother like many other immigrants of her generation had refuses to let go but the common thread across generations is the intersectionality between colorism and patriarchy what is left to say and what is left to say when so many of our mothers and sisters fall prey to skin lightening creams and other hazardous interventions while their male counterparts are free from the chains of such pressure t the black berry is an edible fruit produced by many species and the rubes family what distinguishes black berries from its raspberry relatives is whether the taur receptacle picks with the fruit a black berry or remains on the plants when picked leaving a hole in the fruit a rest bury the term bramble a word meaning any impenetrable scrub has traditionally been applied specifically to the black berry or its products though in the us it applies to all members of the root family next up hope s playful feisty a dream i remember i remember my hailey jackson's voice floating through her apartment the smell of glory grains and sweet potato pie hanging in the air the countless colorful pills that had to be ingested every few hours and the rhythmic hissing of the oxygen tank that made me think of the ocean waves in love and repulsed by the sand all at the same time baby but you scratch my back yes man i secretly love doing this as it made me feel useful and the thought of pleasing my granny made me all the more eager to her baby the baby will you pass me my pills yes ma'am that too excited me knowing i was helping in some way little did i know how vital they really were i catch whispers here and there about the past of this beautiful black woman i call granny years of physical and mental abuse raising six children all on her own for a long time i thought to be a black woman meant to struggle to be abused to be mistreated and under appreciated it was until i got older that i saw my granny for the woman she really was a warrior not a victim to smile in the face of racism to defy all limitations to create something beautiful with what she was given it wasn't until she left this world that i really understood why she was so joyful it was doing things for others her compassion that kept her in this world long after the doctors had given given up on her she was planting the seeds of service in her own granddaughter it's when i'm at my lowest and i want to give that i hear her whisper in my spirit baby think of all the people you can be of service to everyone is waiting for hope and i look up at the heavens and i say yes ma next three nicole smith's soul and susie chang nicole smith former pre teen beauty queen balloon phobic early ninety's it's either i remember ancestral secretive societal stories say my father raped my mother immaculate conception conceived by greed and power once he tasted her he couldn't get enough consumed by the notion of this unchartered territory her black and berry became his obsession like a virgin she was to him my down to his judas how i mean intact he pushed into her torn it into her made no love to her she bled bred bastard babies who were memory daddy took care of all that sitting securely in his lap he held on tight making sure we didn't need to worry bout where we came from mother did her deed for filth that need force to breed forced to be free trapped wrapped in the constraints of submissive societal impulse sobering carry in the stench of daddy's residual stank as he lays plays in the pungent wet spots of these sexual acts repeatedly being in them breaking mother's back with no concern for her humanity objectified beyond believe played by a minute's grief she continues to we grieve holding close to her heart the vacant x marked spot where her children would've could've should've sucked gold instead they were malnourished by strange fruit of the foreign land force fed by the hand of man that declared and how soon these men came to forget that proclamation declaration of independence must repented this no number of hell marys full of grace will forgive these for daddy's still staggers and sways mother i recall i remoteness i remember and i will never forget thank you v i hate censorship but just a reminder yeah we gotta keep it clean for the babies no you you find just moving forward this is some beautiful w sure when we start it's funny because somebody was asking me about art the other day and she really she really didn't understand she understood art as like visual artist and and i wasn't offended with her ignorance but she she couldn't grasp grasp around the fact that i'm an artist and she's like well what is it that you do and why is it it is so important and why wouldn't you just get a job you know like a piper jaffrey and etc to make ends meet i mean the struggling thing and it was a really interesting conversation and what it did is it it helped me to sort of reem braze just those times in our lives that we're we're made to re why we do the art and how we can't imagine life without it i can't imagine life without the art but i also can't imagine it without the community yeah and i never ever thought that i would be able to find a community like people there are right now this is awesome you all are so beautiful but what does that even mean i mean don't get me wrong i'm sure the little old white woman didn't mean anything negative but i definitely had to do a mental double take i mean it's not every day that i'm reminded of the color of my skin right what are you well i am an eighteen year old female going to the u of them i am a barista at a coffee shop in the seward neighborhood i like to oh oh you meant what ethnicity am i one cambodian chinese what are you america oh right so what am i am i american am i asian why why can't i be both she said we could be like the other people in our neighborhood because we lived in a trailer in plymouth i was like ok so my parents tell me that i shouldn't forget the language i should forget to bawl my head to my elders i shouldn't forget to thank buddha for the life i have because if i do who's going to continue with the i am an artist i am an artist because i can't afford to forget who i am i want to write stories about how i couldn't fully have a conversation with someone to talk i was five because i kept going back and forth between english and cambodian because i want to write about the genocide that happened between the upper class and lower class cambodian people not because i have to because my parents told me to but because i want to i was purely how our society talks about how race isn't that big of a deal anymore yet we like to point out racial stereotypes and foreign behaviors and so many ways it says it's repetitive and never ending conversation history repeats itself maybe not in the same way but manipulated and because i'm in a relationship with a white male people like to make jokes about oh he has yellow fever and you're a submissive school the school girl that wants power from the white man right and because i'm an artist i'm not a doctor i'm the black sheep of the family because i sound like a white girl i'm treated differently oh she could be a gang banger people don't have to ask me to repeat what i have to say because i live on my own  with my parents a lot of cambodians families thinks that i'm disrespecting the culture i'm currently in a lifelong identity crisis no matter if i'm american if i'm asian or simply because i'm su trying to be respected by the people who share the same blood with me and china not to be alienated because the color of my skin  our leader little it's made me think about times in my life when the umbrella has come close to or crossed my path i remember when i was twelve years old i went to visit my father at his home and across and his house had a wide yar and a fence around it and he had hired a young man named john to help with the yard but you know in gon a there's a wide variety of snakes including cobras so he said to john if you see any snakes in the yard kill them so one day my father and i were  just leaving the house and john comes up to my father and he says mr little i just want you to know there's a snake in the yard and my father said john did you see the snake and john said well yes i saw the snake and so my father looked at him in front and he said well john if you saw the snake why didn't you kill it machete and kill it but when i stood up the snake stood up to so i sat back down he knew  the next three christina been signee hair day and wisdom i will see christina binns educator artist and sister to many turn to your neighbor while she comes here the neighbor that you didn't turn to the first time and say what you think i remember there were times in my life that made an impression on me when it came to my beauty a woman's figure and how it should look and be as i grow into my skin and i understand my figures like a berry as a changes and matures put always brought us together for celebrations and holidays but sometimes it tore me apart because this food was always around me so were comments about how i needed to lose ten or fifteen pounds i always i always carried my weight around my hips and thighs and as a young woman i had a hard time with this advice there was always a time another time in my life that stuck out with me even more when i was a young person in junior high and my peer told me i should play a different instrument because my lips were too big to play the flute her comment stuck with me but i must have done something right because i can still play read i can still play music so play the flute and read music i am turning thirty this year and i feel like i am more comfortable with my figure more than ever it is like a barre maturing and more sweet with age i am ok with the fullness of my hips my lips and my thighs and i have come to peace with the roundness of my figure i am blessed that i have many strong women women and sisters in my life that i can relate to they have shown me new ways to appreciate and love my figure and be myself as a strong woman so peace and blessings be upon you i thought at the time myself because this topic was kind of hard for me to come up with something so i thought i'll just you know whatever comes to me when i got here is what i was whatever i was going to share thinking about this i thought about how my name has changed since coming to america and where i come from i saw in my journey my name has changed four times right and so i thought about it in the four seasons and how my skin color so my mom was really sick and my dad was in america at the time so he thought we were going to be ok so each have a back and then it turned out they were both ok so i was the only child i have eleven siblings and i'm the tenth child so i was the only child of my family old my mom decided to teach me how to read and write so she taught me how to read my writing with my last inning which was have and if it had i can trace it all the way back to my clan and i didn't realize how important this was until two years ago when i went back to somalia and it became my address and my social security so whatever i got last i was like i'm in the right because if i can you tell me where d which she taught me how to be swede in exchanges i would say yes to a grandma and i was like that i was her favorite child because she would always call my name when she needed anything fast forward right or before i started school this huge explosion happen in somebody and there was a civil war so we ended up in a refugee camp and my name sort of changed because my whole family i displaced in the displacement what happened is we last my dad and bunch of the boys in my family and we ended up in a refugee camp with my mom and so nobody knew where anybody was and so ended up happening is my dad went back to he's a village and ended up getting married to his like distant cousin or whatever and they had a child there for his daughter became a net which was my name at the time so when we find out i was i was so i changed i asked to have my name changed to name our which is the so my version of emo americans have a hard time saying this i have to say like the fish are two older people it's like like the captain and movie character that i don't know i see the movie but it's a captain in a movie a nobody you know stranger wants to really know your name and it's like this whole story so i just call myself and whatever i travel if people inquire but it made me think about names and how you know it kind of changes with who we are and  i remember the morning mrs olivia jones was born her afro made angela davis jealous of her newborn copper skin on her mother's smile ms a libya jones brings to mind a story of my mother my mother would lie on the day bed reading true love and true confessions fantasy feeding her mind while i stood swinging bare feet in the doorway hunger making my stomach touch my back saying mom i'm hungry intil she looked up wondering who i was and where i came from children didn't exist in true love only man who rescued women from hard lives and desperate situations my mother's hunger was greater than mine her cupboards more bare than our kitchen i just didn't know it at the time she put the magazine on her chest saw me three years tall dust covered legs bare feet on brushed hair my pre treating stomach touching my back she sighed and said the choke cherries are ripe go pick some chopped cherries the black is berries are the sweetest and then she went back to reading i ate child cherries until my stomach bloated and then ate some more spitting the hard round seeds at birds that flittered by years later after a fasting ceremony elders gave me choked cherry juice to drink saying drink medicine comes from the black berries the sweetness of the fruit at four years old ms olivia jones still rivals angela davis is hairdo her beauty stop strangers on the street she has a secret smile only she can decipher with her sweetness she feeds your mama's hunger for life and loving her is medicine for a week which i remember a time when i was complaining to my friend may about how i would never meet a man in minnesota nope madness frozen tundra where the men expect you to approach them to get down on one knee and say would you do me the honor of lying to me for six months while you focus on other women in the city that you can scale see me i'm a had just came out from a salsa dancing as one of us also dancing excursions and i was tired and she was tired and i was just like that's it i am never going to meet a guy here i mean it's just not going to happen i am destine it appears to be single unless i pick up and move someplace awesome like chicago the sea you know someplace where there are prospects anyway i kept on with this great complaint and may says to me listen listen listen to me growing up in malaysia i had this friend susan and she was so sweet and smart and just a great girl but she was the friend that never had a boyfriend she was always the single girl so when our group of guys our season when our group of friends would want to go out with our guys we would always feel bad about leaving susan out mae continues my friends and i would plan special dates that would include hang time with susan and  then date night with our guys ok long story short a few years passed and we are all getting ready and going to head out to the university and susan comes to a party that one of my friends is throwing and she introduces us to her boyfriend frank and we're like susan got a boyfriend that was incredibly frank anyway long story short again susan and frank end up getting married and my friend may she says to me seem susan's dark too she found somebody so there's always hope thank you like everybody else i mean you get to this point it's like how do you choose which story do i choose which story choose i have millions so anyway mine is short and sweet i remember realizing that the idea of me called from a bullet point bio divorced from my physical presence was open to interpretation i had an interview for an assistant to the audio books program manager position at simon and schuster in new york i met the program manager oh she said when i heard your name i just thought you know scandinavian girl from minnesota it was only awkward for a moment and we warmed to one another quickly it was a great interview i never thought of morris as a white sounding name i mean it comes attached just like my skin and hair a bit when that name on paper is followed by minnesota and duke university and over the phone this voice i can see how some people might be confused i didn't get the job initially a month later they called me back and said the guy we hired he didn't really work out do you want the job i turned him down be like from poetic justice part of him with double stranded twist and grease dripping down my neck like beads of sweat that brought the still get when they're stopped by the cops i remember my second cousin with long locks telling stories of when she was married at fourteen and living life having the finer things i still don't know what her husband did for a living but her stories were fascinating so i sat close to her feet and listened i remember peace love and something like toast to oklahoma i remember folks getting shot so mama had a metal box glad i never saw the inside i remember talking drums in my spirit leaving my body and sellin back in after dancing african i remember i never seen so many black men from the continent but i asked beautiful educated and looking i wanted to curse out the make up teacher after going home and put my hair into the stuff she said my hair oh oh oh i remember i remember feeling like there is no place in the world for a black girl i remember feeling like there is no place in the world for a black girl i've been raped and all my life i have been raped in all my life i've been raped and all my life i've been raped in all my life i remember why the caged bird sings wings clipped i remember running running because that was the only way to regain my wings i remember i remember everything exists because of me all right so some loser this is how it's going to go down we're going to show as much love as we did for these last five as we did for the beginning ones the last five i'm going to ask you to weave your way towards the front so they can go back to back to back  charlotte memory bailey sexy real and charming i remember when i was a little girl i wanted to be light skinned like my mama because i thought she was so pretty then i heard tupac say that subset the black but some often tried dark skinned women early amine because they so dark you pretty for dark skinned girl but anyway let's talk about those sweet roots my granny was the sweetest person i knew now she was in my mama's complection or man but somewhere in the middle now i get this there are so many shades of black there's brown blue  berries i remember the fade a photograph of my grandfather whom i have never met my grandfather is a little short or was a little short you know he's not afraid tall men but looking at him in my shirt and a longi my grandfather smile from year to year for the camera as a child i would look at this photograph and be mesmerized by the different shades my grandfather's white shirt his dark brown skin against his white shirt his white teeth his white teeth against his dark brown skin his woolly black hair his woolly black hair against the light backdrop that day when i first met my father i thought he was my grandfather leaping out of that photograph coming back to life and really looking at all my family photos i've always wondered how can an apple be fallen so far from the tree my father's skin is that of black coffee strong dark and deep mother's milky light soft and smooth becomes kind of caramel i look nothing like my parents how can i be so different from them we are not from the same apple tree at least not from the outside so what makes us along together how can i be from the womb that bore me and the seed that planted me as much as i want to think about it because they're my parents after all but i really have to think hard and deep i needed to really think hard and deep so i can validate my own existence when my why do i look like this how did i get here i had to think about the sea inside the apple that's how the tree becomes the tree in the first place right the apple seed anyway if an apple seed was transplanted half way across the ocean and raised on a different soil what it tastes like the apple as we know it well years later after our first meeting greet when my father became more stable and significant in my life i was ta that even though the apple land far from the tree but the seed the seat that the apple grew out of is still part of that i remember when being black was exotic my first college roommate lived in a town where there were no black people from the first time we met and throughout the semester she was star being from a community nigeria where we do not think of ourselves has been black you're either you're about evil allows or many other tribes one makes one special is what one can do one skills whether you're a good so good at sewing a crafting or the fastest runner things there really matter like you abilities now you're not the color of your skin for this roommate of my she has never come in contact with a black person before in her life her experience of black people is  why she has seen on t v or in movies when her family come to visit they will stare out just looking at me i used to think am no longer a human being i am an object to be touched that part of me was sad knowing that there are people in this world that do not understand different cultures just because i don't look like you does not mean that people like me do not exist there are people in this world that i have never come in contact with and i know that if i come in contact with them i'll be open to understand them their culture not just the color of their scheme it was an interesting experience with my roommate and i hope that she got something out of our many conversations other than i was the black person she had never seen before and what a mystery that i i remember criminal and dipped in heavy start inch and hung over the bath tub to drip dry then worn under a circle hudl skirt a cinch waist belt angora sweater bobby socks and saddle shoes it took courage to go against the style and fashion of the day but when i tried it i liked it it was the coral colored straight skirt with qik pleat and dyed to match sweater set that set me apart i felt owned her and more sophisticated in my flower told ballet flats and imitation pearls when i switched hairstyles from ponytail to pageboy i knew i was on my way i remember changing out of school shoes and clothes and into the rolls for play which bore the most evidence of mending and being handed down from older bigger siblings and relatives or from the children in the families white children in the families she worked for sunday clothes were the best they were usually bought for easter from j c penney or sears and roebuck in good times there would be a spring coat straw hat  patent leather mary janes and purse socks with ruffled lace cuffs and bright white gloves the selection process began in february with looking through the catalogs choosing the items and beginning the weekly label lay by plan payments usually everything fit but sometimes shoes had to be stuffed with cotton or clean necks and two big coat sleeves him at two small dress sure made for some miserable spring and summer sunday mornings my white crochet gloves or a gift from my godmother lucio i felt so fancy and beautiful and grown up and special and brand new just like easter i remember street car riding black women traveling from two flower pots on the front porch rail to rose gardens and wide lawns their starched and ironed uniforms neatly folded in brown paper bags they'd sit a wrecked and dignified speaking quietly and with pride of this daughter's good marks in school that grandson's first communion a husband who had finally landed a job and the perfectly good except for a small gravy staying linen tablecloth that miss and was going to throw out but then offhand much jones a new humbled old creation here we belong here to we deserve education black is beautiful one nine hundred sixty i remember and when i write in alabama barry barely seventeen at the time was sentenced to rot on a popular tree for pinning thoughts of being free to the local paper she and the seed is survived by me eight years old legs folded beneath me like bird wings i watched my grandmother like a movie studied the squint of her eyes the feather of her hair the been there and her tone and the weight she wore above furrowed brow lines that red the blues of blacks in bold appearances i lived for these moments for words i didn't know and god name i was her witness wide eyed and interested innocent and brown not yet trained to bite my tongue looking at her i saw something broken in her smile and hungered for what done it so i asked her how we got here why she quivers when ever near a flame what lights the fire in her throat whenever someone tries to choke mind how come she's never hushed me i ask her and she quickly trips back to this pressure on back to react and respond to the wrong imposed on her people to the night she was visited by a cloak to make ghosts of brown men to win king was prince becoming a martyr too when she authored the letter that would shape the way she spoke forever to her sweater soaked in spit  sweat her skull split open scalp ripped severed hip teeth falling from her lips parades of sweaty white fish stampeding her person and her family's blood pooling at the feet of the offenders i was eight the day my grandmother's dentures spoke centuries on to my stand when they slipped ate the day the pieces of my past were first presented ate the day i began to read member myself their dark blue colors black berries have one of the highest antioxidant levels of fruits regularly tested black berries are also rich in vitamin c and fiber which have been shown to help reduce the risk of certain cancers black berries are low in calories carbohydrates and have no fat which makes them popular and low carb and low calorie diets black berries are good for you days when you fall down trip over yourself get twisted up remind yourself of your beauty but find in your sisters your sistren your family your community look to them to be renewed yes shay shay shay j n t kyle new mother fighter activist i want to sing so many songs for you tonight but i'm just going to sing to i punched him in the chin mom can she come over and played with me we'd have so much  what why not why not oh oh i see me some nurturing and there's something here there's something here that's precious so stay posted i'm going to try to do something like network everybody together like on facebook that i'm horribly delinquent on but what i'll do is post everybody's name that performed here today and you guys just like go to my facebook and connect with them and be like oh i saw you and you said this and what do you do with cetera to quba has been sketching artwork oh my lord