Niama Williams

BODY OF WORK


Given the strange crux I find myself in, Black woman academic with traumatic childhood and psychiatric diagnoses, I cannot help but believe that my experience, my record of how I continue to cope, and strive, and achieve, could save someone else from darkness, could provide light and a way out to another troubled soul. My work is not solely my own; it comes across an invisible transom from a source which believes in shrouding the ordinary—ordinary people, ordinary events—with the glint of majesty, the light of understanding. It is a spiritual process. Many times a piece begins with a yearning to write about someone who would never imagine themself center stage in a creative work. Then the listening begins, the tuning of my inner ear to my soul’s voice.

The soul’s voice, however, can be chaotic, so I’ve become comfortable with my work’s home between forms. I’ve become more fluid in my writing, more apt to let the words come as they are, flow as they want, wander and startle where they may. I have learned when and where and how to let go of control, and the proper place of editing. I let the initial spark carry everything forward, I write it all down as it streams in, and then I let it sit for three or four days so I can edit ruthlessly. If I can be patient, I let it sit a month, or at least three weeks, and edit again. After that revision, I try to put it somewhere and forget about it so that I can do that last edit with a no longer in mad love with it eye. That unforgiving eye is so important to honing the true beauty of the original inspiration.

Teasing out hidden beauty in the ordinary is always my goal, so my work is primarily for women. We think ourselves so commonplace, so ugly, so unfit. I write for women who’ve been abused, for women who have survived trauma, for women who have survived trauma and yet do some of the most complex, complicated jobs of the twenty-first century. Women who feed babies, who love husbands or partners while fighting the memory of an intrusion at four a.m. when they were three. Women who have to go to work in the midst of all this; women who face up to the demands and somehow, some way, keep from crumbling. My work is for these women so that they don’t crumble. It is my way of saying I’ve been there, I am there, I know, don’t give up, don’t throw in the towel, not today. Women can’t work, can’t change, can’t nurture or survive if they don’t want to get out of bed, if their trauma or struggles keep them from functioning.

I start with work if you ask me about artistic goals. An adjunct professor of English since 1993, I want the freedom an adjunct can only dream about. No scrambling for classes. No praying for enough assignments from enough colleges so that I can pay the bills. I am single with no husband or partner to provide a second income. Both of my parents are deceased; the only one who can support me now is me. The more classes I am forced by economics to teach, the less time I have to write poems, edit prose, submit essays, compile manuscripts; the less time I have to network, to create opportunities to read and present at conferences. I want time to focus on my writing, a gift any woman artist in this day and age would kill for.

You may ask about my audience, and I’ll tell you that I am a middle-aged Black woman with many female friends. My friends are in their twenties, thirties, forties, fifties, sixties and seventies. I think there is even an octogenarian in the mix. My friends are white, Black, Latino, Asian, Jewish and biracial. I have friends from college, and friends that I inherited from my deceased mother, women she had known since she was in junior high school.

These women and I talk about many things, and one discussion we have often circles around race and class and culture. We don’t step around the tension; we know that honest review of our experiences of each means that sometimes the white folks will be scared, and sometimes we will be scared. These women are my community; my Black femaleness only matters to them when it cements the authenticity with which I discuss whatever is pushing my pen forward at the moment. They know that as a self-aware and committed Black woman I cannot afford to add to the lies and half-truths we tell each other about race and class and culture in this country. To do so would be to do violence to my deepest and most profound sense of self.

My trauma was about secrets and pretending there was nothing wrong. To do so as an adult would betray the three and five and eight year old that I was. It would also do unspeakable violence to my community. My audience does not read me because I’m Black; they read me because I tell truths, because I put the unmentionable down on paper. One of my closest Black friends, who is also a writer, when she hears some of my pieces laughingly comments, “Niama, will you please stop scaring the white people?” She knows.

My community is unafraid of my boldness, my discussion of what lies beneath. They encourage that element of my work because they too are tired of walking on societal and cultural eggshells. They are relieved when I speak out on something they have held in for far too long.

I speak from my experience. My wide and varied community hears me. And that is the deepest and most profound connection.

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Dr. Niama L. Williams

+1562/343-1052

niama@drniamawilliams.com

http://www.d iamawilliams.com

http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/d ibubebiz

There are several ways to begin to find out who the illustrious Dr. Ni really is behind closed doors:

Website: http://www.d iamawilliams.com

The Blog: http://www.d iamawilliams.com/category/blog/

ATTAINING THE FULLY IMAGINED LIFE

Dr. Niama L. Williams, Workshop Facilitator

What isolates many artists from their deepest, innermost selves is the absence of play in their lives, downtime in which they can be silly, can stumble and fall, can try and fail with no consequences, can create something not perfect and still love themselves and the work. This course focuses on "drawing your way to freedom," on coming to understand what holds you back, what stems your creativity, what keeps you in fear, and then demolishing it. Most of all, it allows you to play as you work your way towards fighting whatever it is that keeps you from attaining your dreams.

We will laugh, have fun, and bond as we share with each other what keeps us stuck, discuss and practice the rudiments of poetry, prose, and the essay, and draw with colored pencils and markers the new vistas we want to achieve in our work or the dragons we have to defeat.

The first series of workshops, Series A: “Killing the Muckraker,” is eight weeks in length, and is followed by Series B: “Soul Work: Breaking the Chains of Earlier Dreams,” also eight weeks in length. The third series, Series C: “Grunt Work: Creating The Path To A Fully Imagined Life,” is thirteen weeks.

The tuition for each eight-week series, Series A and Series B, is $275/participant.

The tuition for the thirteen-week series, Series C, is $450/participant.

Tuition for the entire 29-week program, Series A, B, & C, is $900/participant.

The workshop facilitator will provide all course materials.

Fees for sponsoring organizations are on a different scale; please contact Mr. Robbie Brown, her manager, for more information. If workshops are held at a sponsoring organization’s physical site, the organization must pay travel and accommodations for the workshop facilitator. In exchange for travel and accommodations, the facilitator provides all supplies for the course (sketchbook/jou als, colored pencils, pens, etc.). In addition, the sponsoring organization is responsible for providing the following equipment needs: chalkboard/dry erase board, access to computer/printer, table (to gather around), chairs (must be comfy), and podium (desktop podium is fine).

To enroll as an individual or to hire Dr. Williams as a consultant, please contact Mr. Robbie Brown at 310/221-2543.

About the instructor: Dr. Niama Leslie Williams is a published writer who possesses degrees in comparative literature, creative writing, and African American literature. Through workshops at the University of Pennsylvania and the African American Museum, and her eighteen years as an adjunct instructor of English and literature, Dr. Williams has practiced bringing writers to a new depth of honesty in their work, and seeks to bring that quality to others stifled by their everyday lives.

IT'S OKAY TO WANT: EROTICISM AND THE SURVIVAL OF SEXUAL TRAUMA

WORKSHOP FACILITATOR: DR. Niama L. Williams