Consuelo Meux offered a session on May 27.
Consuelo Meux, Ph.D. is a Certified Creativity Coach and published author with a doctorate in Human and Organization Systems. As a former Peace Corps Volunteer in Cameroon, Africa she worked with women in food cooperatives and has traveled broadly working in education and nonprofit organizations. She studied with Patricia Schneider while attending summer sessions at the Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley, California. Consuelo is an Amherst Writers & Artists Affiliate, certified to lead workshops in the AWA method, as described in Writing Alone & With Others by Pat Schneider, Oxford University Press.
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Soliloquy of Sister Writers
by: Stephanie Curry, Iyabo Onipede, Stephanie Steele, Consuelo Meux, Iris Wells, Patricia Phillipe
“I am a woman who has many stories to tell.
I belong to that liminal space of two worlds; I belong to nuance.
I am the portal through which all human life passed,
I am proud of my magic hips and praise God that they still work.
I don’t know if my Mom wasn’t given that part of the script, is the reason why she didn’t give it to me.
It is my time, sisters. The energy is sacred.”
Ode To My Hips
by Stephanie Curry
My hips are wide. I’ve been told they are great for childbearing
I’ve been told an aircraft can land and take off without incident
My hips are free yet, they have been enslaved by pants too tight
squeezed and pushed into a space much smaller than small
like a camel moving through a needle’s eye. Impossible
They have not known the dreadful horror of enslavement
so long ago yet still haunt a people taken whose tongues go cold
at the thought of speaking stories that burn fires into souls of
generations. Not my hips, they will never know the pain of ancestors
I praise them for they carried two handsome young
men who may love the huge hips of another woman:
a wife, a partner and who may pass along those buried huge-hip
genes into other men or women.
Oh, how I wish the term ‘enslaved’ reminded me of only
my hips, and not those fallen into history’s depts
where backs were torn and sliced open, irons bound strong arms and legs
and where rape was for the relief of those who held them
Where a people still carry chains around
their necks even today as they
struggle to breathe
They still can’t breathe
A Symbol of Beauty
by Consuelo Meux
Hips, a symbol of beauty on black women. My sister had hips; my auntie’s had hips. They were
proud of those hips. And then there was me. I always said it wasn’t fair, my sister got all the
hips and left me with none. No hips, flat behind. My brother used to tease me calling me
surfboard butt. It took years for me to find that funny. At the time, I felt deprived, left behind,
can I say, deflated?
Then one day it happened. I went to live in a land of beauty. I was in Cameroon, West Africa,
living among people who reminded me of family. Though coming from America, I always felt so
at home. I saw strong hips, big hips, magic hips, but I was so proud to see hips like mine in the
mix! Small hips, flat hips, tall, beautiful hips, that carried phenomenal, strong women – for
miles, up mountains, down dusty roads, over mud, through cities and villages, wherever they
needed to go.
Cameroonian women came in all shapes and sizes, just like my family at home; our hips carried
us without fail to all destinations. Mine carried me to villages reached partly on my small
motorcycle that my hips helped to push a part of the way. Once my hips and I walked nine
hours with a small group taking supplies to a remote village. They faithfully got me there and
back.
God made these black hips, light, dark, brown, high yella’ hips. The hips of Black women don’t
quit. I’m proud of these magic hips and praise God they still work.
Thank you for joining us to Write Around the World!
For the rest of the summer, watch our blog! We are sharing writing from AWA’s yearly marathon fundraiser, which happened this year all-online throughout the month of May.
We offer this series in appreciation for the incredible community of writers and workshop leaders that sustain us. If you’re inspired and would like to be part of the fundraiser, please donate!