So We Can Know: A Generative Writing Workshop with Dr. Maria Hamilton Abegunde

This generative writing workshop, inspired by the forthcoming anthology So We Can Know: Writers of Color on Pregnancy, Loss, Abortion, and Birth, and presented by the ISGRJ-Camden Occasions for Gathering Series, brings together women and birthing people to share their reproductive health stories in a supportive environment.

The workshop is in-person at Rutgers-Camden and will be led by writer and experienced facilitator Dr. Maria Hamilton Abegunde.

*Event location will be provided upon registration

Workshop title: Ritual for Getting Free and Staying Free

We have all had things happen to us that we can’t change. But, what if we could change how we interpret and make meaning of what happened to us? What if we could (re)make that story so that we see our strength and power? What if doing so could give us an opportunity to heal what has wounded us most without denying our histories? This workshop is for anyone who wants to get free and stay free from old stories that bind them to pasts and ideas of themselves that no longer serve them. It is for anyone who wants to pay tribute to that part of themselves that chose life and love out of instinct but didn’t know it at the time. As Lucille Clifton would say: “Won’t you celebrate with me.”

Dr. Maria E. Hamilton Abegunde is a Memory Keeper, poet, ancestral priest, healing facilitator, and doula. Her research and creative works have appeared in numerous journals, books, exhibitions, and anthologies. All her work is grounded in contemplative, community, and African-based ritual practices, and respectfully approach the Earth and human bodies as sites of memory, and always with the understanding that memory never dies, is subversive, and can be recovered to transform and heal transgenerational trauma and pain. She is a Cave Canem and Black Earth Institute Fellow. She is a faculty member in the Department of African American and African Diaspora Studies at Indiana University Bloomington.