ABOUT THE POEM
The following poetic piece is representative of my sojourn in an emotional distress of four decades. That distress is parallel to the treatment and pain experienced by ancestors first enslaved on these shores to those who had to swallow jim crow. The piece spotlights an enslaved ancestor illustrating the parallel. Also, there is a blues metaphor that illustrates the roughness of the journey.
Art by poetry has always been my avenue to healing. The piece is called blues into green.
QUESTION FOR OUR ARTISTS: How can we address the roots of stereotypes based in racism, sexism, ableism, queerphobia and more, through creative means, to change our perception of ourselves and each other?
I believe in “normalizing” talking about emotional distress, to remove the stigma and its barriers to accessing care, especially in the Black community. I believe doing this by storytelling/ is a form of social justice advocacy. So, I invite other peers to do the same.
It could change the trajectory of the colonized care we receive/ and be a cathartic experience/ for the person telling the story that is rooted in healing and personal growth.
Because our collective trauma is intergenerational, we must direct ourselves toward riverways of healing. Our creative roots can anchor us along the way.
ABOUT JACQUESE ARMSTRONG
Based in Jackson, MS, Jacquese Armstrong focuses poetically on the healing journey of Black Americans, as it relates to her own. A graduate of University of Toledo in OH, with a B.A. in Journalism, Jacquese chooses to focus on creating self-care and emotional wellness workshops, using the arts as raw materials.
Author of birthing yourself naturally: motivational reflections on a mental health journey (2022) and blues legacy (Broadside Lotus Press, 2019), she was the recipient of the 2019 Naomi Long Madgett Poetry Award and a 2015 Ambassador Award from the State of New Jersey Governor’s Council on Mental Health Stigma for promoting wellness and recovery and reducing stigma through the arts.
Jacquese was a 2022 Black Fire—This Time Anthology Summer Fellow with Aquarius Press. She has been a cast member of TMI Project’s storytelling performances Black Stories Matter: Every Word Spoken and Alone Together stories of COVID-19 in quarantine.
