fumble. falter. fall. fly

i have had to mispronounce myself (1). meet myself in new ways to get to the place where shaking hands with where i am and where i’ve been doesn’t feel misplaced. to carefully sit on the sidelines of my life trying to pinpoint the exact moment where i can reach out. sending my hand through the fabric of space and time to reach out and reach you.

we have finally arrived at this moment, the beginning of a wishful payoff and distant dream. something that has brewed in the bottomlessness of my stomach; a deep, guttural churning of a desire to create and reconnect — has finally come to fruition. i’ve thought deep and hard about writing again. i’ve had a visceral fear about putting the pen to paper, about typing words on a blank page because i haven’t done it for so long. or i haven’t done it in a way that fulfills and ignites me. A.S I AM is something that has shapeshifted as much as I have. i’ve changed the way its formatted and its focus several times now — and honestly, i’ll probably change it several times more. but, just as i decided to take the brilliant risk of starting this journey i will continue to take the brilliant risk to maintain it. i’m glad we finally get to meet each other. allow me to introduce myself:

I’m Aysha, though i also like to call myself omi, which is Yoruba for water. i am a shapeshifter, a storyteller, an artist, and a lover in all its multitudes and forms.

i am lots of things to lots of people. a friend, a daughter, a niece, an enemy, the villain, a monster….etc. etc. but i like to follow in the path of the women who walked the ground i walk now — to sustain the tradition of radical self definition and continue to both embrace past definitions and create new ones. as nina simone once said, “I have to constantly re-identify myself to myself; reactivate my own standards, my own convictions about what I’m doing and why.” this is a key innovation in my work, as you will see — that the primary purpose of my writing is discovery and self-definition; something that also aligns with my political and ethical praxis of womanism. i am self-proclaimed womanist/black feminist who bridges the political and personal through storytelling, personal narrative, fiction, and critical analysis. this utilization of the personal, spiritual, and critical praxis is a crucial and notable feature of Black and African-American women's literary work (something that i will explore with you all soon). in my own work, from previous iterations of this project and its sisters, i've utilized a combination of cultural lessons and symbolism, personal experience, and theory to weave a web of understanding my position in the world and the world's positioning of me within it.

although, this tradition in Black/African-American women's literature has been longwithstanding — i was younger when i had first attempted to bridge all of these complex pieces together: a pinnacle of transition from my teenager years to young adulthood. now that i have more experience (and continue to build such experiences) as well as an increased capacity to explore difficult and complex topics, i find myself at the threshold again — stepping through to take a seat at the table of the many versions of me and you. sitting across from the past and the future, asking questions, gathering answers, and conjuring up a new definition of myself and others everyday. this is a part of my radical subjectivity and the subjectivity of my work.

i have defined myself as a gardener. possessing the deep drive and desire to plant seeds, water them, and watch them grow into the people that i hope to empower. i don’t seek to change the way to flowers grow, how long they take or what they look like before, during, and after they bloom. i seek to write them in the history of the soil, to document and experience the seasons that they move through, and to love and care for them all the same.

I am often not the most desirable parts of my identity, but I am the entirety of my humanity. multudinous and soulful. I do not define myself in boundaries, but rather by my spaciousness, roundness, and expansion (which for a long time, i had mistaken as emptiness). there is a me inside of me inside of me inside of me inside of me. I am all of the phases and fragments that come with personhood, and I actively work to make a soft place for all of them to land. That has been a part of my work and my practice. Learning and unlearing. Defining and deconstructing. Creating, collecting, and conjuring.

i see myself as the culmination of the journey i’ve been on. someone who has put in careful cultivation and consideration into the person that they want to be and the relationships that they want to have. i am someone that has constantly strived and completed reinventing and redefining themselves over and over again.

to all that and more, i want to welcome you to my space. and i want to thank you for trusting me with your time.

there are a few housekeeping matters to go over before i set you free and allow time to bridge us together again:

with that being said my friends, i welcome you to my journey and step into yours. i hope that together through the tradition of self-actualizing, curiosity and exploration, reimagining and envisioning the absurd and radical, and creating places for us to exist and expand — that you find what you need here. if you don't know what that is yet, honestly — neither do i. but its okay because we can find out together, one mispronouciation at a time.

come. fumble, falter, fall apart and down, and sew your wings to fly with me.

yours truly,

AS

(1) mispronounciation is an idea that i was inspired by from Dr. Bayo Akomolafe. i first heard about it in a newsletter entitled Grief Spells by the grief worker Mara June, whom is the creator of Motherwort and Rose (check it out Grief Spells here and support their other work if you are interested: here ). you can read Dr. Akomolafe's piece on mispronunciation here and consider some of his other work here.