{"id":2280,"date":"2012-01-14T23:30:03","date_gmt":"2012-01-15T04:30:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sistahsontheshelf.com\/blog\/?page_id=2280"},"modified":"2020-06-04T23:45:17","modified_gmt":"2020-06-05T03:45:17","slug":"sharon-bridgforth","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"http:\/\/www.sistahsontheshelf.com\/?page_id=2280","title":{"rendered":"Sharon Bridgforth"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>IN SHARON’S OWN WORDS…<\/strong>Thanks to marriages, divorces and scandals I have 6 parents.\u00a0 I love them each madly, and am really proud of the work that we have done as a family.\u00a0 Crazy as we are, hard as it\u2019s been, we each in our own way have chosen Love.\u00a0 My daughter therefore gets to have an expansive family that includes not only our chosen family, but our blood relatives.\u00a0 And she, at 29, is stronger, smarter, more gifted and Loving than all of us combined.\u00a0 Which of course is our answered Prayer.
\nI am proud to say that a lot of Artists call me Pa\/Auntie\/Mom\/mentor.\u00a0 Always, as a mentor, I grow.\u00a0 Always, the mentees swing back and help me move forward.\u00a0 I name some of the artists that I count as mentees in Experiments in a Jazz Aesthetic: Art, Activism, Academia, and the Austin Project,<\/em> University of Texas Press.\u00a0 I am one of the Editors of this book.\u00a0 It includes my Finding Voice Facilitation Manual (for Facilitators).\u00a0 Currently my focus is on making work vs. facilitating workshops.\u00a0 So I\u2019ve decided to write an Artist\u2019s Manual.\u00a0 A workbook.\u00a0 Some of the writing exercises from my upcoming Artist\u2019s Manual are featured in Wingbeats: Exercises and Practice in Poetry, <\/em>Dos Gatos Press.
\nTMI about me is on my website at: http:\/\/sharonbridgforth.com<\/a> but I do want to mention that I am a resident playwright at New Dramatists since 2009.\u00a0 I am a writer working in the Theatrical Jazz Aesthetic. My piece, blood pudding,<\/em> was produced in the 2010 New York SummerStage Festival. \u00a0I am the 2010 \u2013 2012 Visiting Multicultural Faculty member at The Theatre School at DePaul University. \u00a0And I am the proud RedBone Press author: of love conjure\/blues<\/em> and the Lambda Literary Award-winning the bull-jean stories.<\/em><\/p>\n

How long have you been writing and how did this passion begin?<\/strong>
\nI started writing when I was 15 years old.\u00a0 I remember the moment that I decided to write.\u00a0 I was really depressed.\u00a0 I turned to writing as a way to survive\/to breathe through extremely hard times.\u00a0 I have been avid reader for as long as I can remember.\u00a0 As a child I spent a lot of time in the library, so by age 15, I had discovered and fallen in love with Langston Hughes, James Baldwin, Nikki Giovanni and many other great Black writers.\u00a0 Turning to writing during crisis was an organic response.\u00a0 I remember that right before I wrote my first poem, I was reading the Song of Solomon from the King James version of the Bible.\u00a0 I found it so heartbreakingly beautiful, that I was inspired to pick up my pen.<\/p>\n

Give a brief description of your book, the bull-jean stories.<\/strong>
\nthe bull-jean stories<\/em> is a series of linked stories about one Soul\u2019s Journey through many life times trying to learn her life lesson, to Love herself.<\/p>\n

Tell us about bull-jean as a character.<\/strong>
\nbull-jean is a woman identified Southern Black butch bulldagga who lives, and speaks from her heart.\u00a0 I believe that poetry is the language of the heart, so bull-jean always speaks in poetry or song.\u00a0 It was very important to me that bull-jean was able to fully feel and articulate her feelings, and that she unlearn internalized sexism.\u00a0 I wanted her to truly treasure women.\u00a0 To know how to treat women in a way that expressed not only her desire, but her respect, admiration and support of them.<\/p>\n

Why was bull-jean always in search of love?<\/strong>
\nI believe in Earth based traditions of understanding the cycles of life.\u00a0 That our Souls come here to grow. That we return many times.\u00a0 That we each have many areas in our Soul\u2019s evolution that require growth.\u00a0 For most of us, self-Love is number one. bull-jean thought she was searching for Love.\u00a0 And she was.\u00a0 But it was The Divine Love inside of her, not love from another, that was her Soul\u2019s quest.\u00a0 By the end of the book, I believe that she learns that life lesson. To know Love, to be Love, to give Love is to embody The Divine.\u00a0 Which means that we can\u2019t fully be ourselves until we are containers for Love.\u00a0 I don\u2019t think anything is more important than this.\u00a0 Truthfully, the bottom line reason that bull-jean was always in search of love is that through bull-jean I was working on my biggest life lesson, which has been to learn to Love myself.<\/p>\n

Do you embody any of bull-jean\u2019s personality?<\/strong>
\nLawd yes.\u00a0 Always, I write to understand, heal, transform my own life.\u00a0 What I know is that in Black traditions I<\/em> is always We<\/em>.\u00a0 That the artist\u2019s job is to name, lift, and express the collective.\u00a0 So I am clear that the more honest, open, vulnerable, and specific I am, the better I can serve.
\nI am 53.\u00a0 I was raised in South Central L.A. by people that migrated from the South.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t grow up with models or even words that described how I felt in my gender and sexuality.\u00a0 So when I should have outgrown being a tomboy, but was still one.\u00a0 When I had crushes on my mom\u2019s female friends.\u00a0 When I didn\u2019t have the same social and fashion aspirations as other girls.\u00a0 Being me was just wrong.\u00a0 Words like lesbian and butch did not become part of my world until I was thirty.\u00a0 Even then, those words seemed to describe white women.\u00a0 Not me.\u00a0 With the bull-jean stories<\/em> I wanted to explore what it means to be a Southern Spirited Black butch lesbian.\u00a0 I needed to understand how to Love myself.<\/p>\n

Do you think the black lesbian is a respected figure in the South?<\/strong>
\nI think this question calls for a more complicated answer than I can give here.
\nI will say that with the bull-jean stories <\/em>I wanted to imagine a Southern Black butch lesbian that was part of the community, not separate from it.\u00a0 I read a lot of biographies, autobiographies and history books related to Black blues and jazz singers and musicians.\u00a0 I know that Black lesbians have always been present, active, and out in our communities.\u00a0 I think that what the experience is like, how respected we\u2019ve been depends on a lot of factors.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s been the reaction to doing the bull-jean stories in front of an audience?<\/strong>
\nI\u2019ve had fabulous experiences in front of audiences with bull-jean. I really enjoy making people laugh, and she is a good one for that. People of all backgrounds and experiences seem to relate to her. the bull-jean stories<\/em> was published in 1998, so I don\u2019t read from it as often as I used to. The book is taught at universities all over the country, and a lot of scholars have written about it so that is of course an extreme honor. One that is a very helpful to my career and to RedBone Press.\u00a0 I am extremely proud that a young Dallas based artist named Q Ragsdale is has created, produced and is touring a multi-media adaptation of the bull-jean stories<\/em> (http:\/\/www.bull-jean.com\/content\/Home.html<\/a>). So bull-jean has new audiences and a whole new life out there on the road that people are responding beautifully to.<\/p>\n

You grew up in South Central Los Angeles, yet Southern sensibilities are the heart and soul of your works with the bull-jean stories and love conjure\/blues. Is that the influence of your Memphis, Tennessee family roots?<\/strong>
\nMy South Central L.A. was really a Black Southern village, minus the communal feel.\u00a0 Everyone for miles had migrated from the South.\u00a0 None of the kids that I knew in my neighborhood were actually born there.\u00a0 Including me.\u00a0 I was actually born in Chicago.\u00a0 A lot of the folk migrating (usually defined by train routes) went from Memphis to Chicago.\u00a0 Our ending up in L.A. was a fluke (long story).\u00a0 My mom is from Memphis, my dad is from Algiers Louisiana (Louisiana and Texas folk commonly migrated to L.A.).\u00a0 My heart voice is Southern.\u00a0 I spent a lot of time in Memphis when I was young.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t grow up with my Dad, but I have blood memories from that side of my family (which were confirmed at age 15, when I started hanging out with him).
\nMy earliest artistic influences are my family: my mother’s laughter, uncle June Bug in the kitchen singing to emphasize whatever truth he was stretching; the sounds of finger popping, bid whist, fried chicken, Bobby Blue Bland; \u00a0whispers of tears floating in from another room.\u00a0 My Auntie Bea telling me over and over and over the same stories\/which I now understand was our family history.\u00a0 I feel that I am of an age that is holding pieces of our collective story that will be forever gone if we don\u2019t tell it.\u00a0 I feel that my job is to tell it as best I can.<\/p>\n

Was being an award-winning author (Lambda, 1998) and playwright a dream you envisioned for yourself? What did you want to be growing up?<\/strong>
\nI used to think I\u2019d be a teacher.\u00a0 Two of my Great Aunts in Memphis were teachers, and you know in those days that was a highly respected vocation for a Black woman.\u00a0 However, I had no real direction growing up.\u00a0 Me and a bunch of friends picked the college we went to because the recruiter was cute.\u00a0 It took me ten years to receive my B.A.\u00a0 Like many kids raised away from the home place, I was a club kid, a street runner, a wild child.\u00a0 The Ancestors and the Angel truly watched over me.\u00a0 I was 30, had just moved to Austin, TX when I started sharing my work.\u00a0 It happened by accident.\u00a0 I was chasing after a pretty woman who happened to belong to a women\u2019s theatre group. I had two suitcases of work that I had not shared up to that point.\u00a0 Once I experienced my work in theatre, everything synched up and accelerated. That was the beginning of a lot of determination and hard work.<\/p>\n

How did coming out after being married and having a child change your perspective on love and relationships?<\/strong>
\nI married my best friend because that was the best I thought life would give me.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t know I was a lesbian because I had no context for what I felt about women.\u00a0 We were \u201cborn again\u201d at the time, and were just trying to do our best to be good Christians.\u00a0 When I found out I was pregnant I felt that the only thing I could truly give my child was the gift of knowing that she could make her dreams come true.\u00a0 That meant that I had to figure out what my dreams were, and get to work on them.\u00a0 I still didn\u2019t have context for loving women, but I was able to articulate that I wanted to be with a woman not a man.\u00a0 It took a minute but I got a divorce, fell away from church, went back to college, finally got my degree and began focusing on writing (though I didn\u2019t share my work right away). My daughter has only known me to be a lesbian. Her father and I and our families raised her together.\u00a0 Two of my parents that I mentioned earlier are his blood parents. When I came out my mom went nuts.\u00a0 It took us ten years to work through it.\u00a0 In retrospect I learned the power of forgiveness.\u00a0 Kindness.\u00a0 Patience.\u00a0 Boundaries.\u00a0 Self-Love.\u00a0 Truth.\u00a0 Risk.\u00a0 Freedom.\u00a0 I learned to look at my part in things. And that physical, mental, emotional and Spiritual wellness is an essential daily practice.\u00a0 It\u2019s all a process.\u00a0 I feel like a warrior\/have scars from the Journey.\u00a0 But I value the fight.<\/p>\n

As a poet, how does your inspiration to write find you?<\/strong>
\nI write from my heart.\u00a0 As one of my mentors, Laurie Carlos says, \u201ceverything is already in the room.\u201d\u00a0 Basically as long as I am paying attention, inspiration is infinite.<\/p>\n

Explain what being a writer in the theatrical jazz aesthetic entails.<\/strong>
\nthe bull-jean stories<\/em> is a blues text.\u00a0 It does not live in a Jazz Aesthetic.\u00a0 Blues is the base of jazz, so blues is key in my work.\u00a0 Blues is my heart voice.\u00a0 I am a theatre artist that works in a Jazz Aesthetic.\u00a0 I think of the page as a musical score.\u00a0 The text is the music. My work cycles in African concepts of time.\u00a0 The past-the present-the future-the living-the dead-and the unborn co-exist.\u00a0 Dissonance and layering of time creates the rhythms that move the story. Like jazz music, the audience\/the reader function as witness-participants. Has to work.\u00a0 Is responsible for the outcome\/the experience. Dr. Omi Osun Joni L. Jones is the leading scholar (and is a practitioner) of the Theatrical Jazz Aesthetic. She is lead editor of Experiments In A Jazz Aesthetic<\/em>.\u00a0 I posted an excerpt from her forthcoming book, Jazz Ase and the Power of the Present Moment, <\/em>on my website http:\/\/sharonbridgforth.com\/content\/theatrical-jazz-aesthetic\/theatrical-jazz-aesthetic. I usually call on her to talk about the Theatrical Jazz Aesthetic (she wrote the forward to love conjure\/blues) <\/em>but what I\u2019ll say here is that the aesthetic assumes that virtuosity, improvisation, innovation, the art of being present, listening, the fluidity of time and space, witnessing, breath, contrasting rhythms, synchronicity, circular forms, polyphony,\u00a0transformation and rigorous practice are a given.\u00a0 That the process is as important as the outcome.\u00a0 That work is made of\u00a0 Prayer.\u00a0Life.\u00a0Spirit. Blood Memory. Revolution. Birthed in African-American culture.\u00a0 It is inter-disciplinary.\u00a0 It is ritual.\u00a0 It is service.\u00a0 Like jazz music, The Theatrical Jazz Aesthetic documents, builds, nurtures, extends and celebrates humanity\/liberation and dignity of all people globally.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s obvious teaching and mentoring are your passions. What knowledge do you share with your students as the Visiting Multicultural Faculty member at the Theatre School at DePaul University? <\/strong>
\nI have had the Divine opportunity to develop long-term ongoing relationships with individuals, communities, organizations and institutions around the country since 1993. Formally I\u2019ve focused on helping people develop a practice of being present. This begins with the work of walking participants through a process of giving voice to identity-culture-memory-family histories-dreams to articulate and examine the socio-political realities of their lives.\u00a0 I feel that artistic voice expands in the examination of the personal.\u00a0 That the personal is political and that it is the site of our greatest power.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s a typical day like for you?<\/strong>
\nI have been a touring artist since 1993.\u00a0 I\u2019ve been a self-employed artist since 1998.\u00a0 I do work in different cities, for varying lengths of time.\u00a0 No matter where I am or what the focus of my service\/more or less on a typical day….
\nI wake two hours before I need to jump into work.\u00a0 I sit with my strong strong coffee and read Spiritual texts (I\u2019m Transdenominational so I am wide open in my interpretation of what that means). I Pray, meditate.\u00a0 I drink fresh juice (that I juice myself if possible), and take all my various supplements and special wellness products. I give email, Face Book and Twitter a once over.\u00a0 Shower, dress (TMI I\u2019m sure).\u00a0 I talk to my partner (we\u2019ve been long distance for three years), I call my Mom.\u00a0 Then, I\u2019m ready to get into the day.\u00a0 At some point in the afternoon I talk to my daughter (she lives in L.A.).\u00a0 Every day I devote some time to my administrate work: grant writing, work related correspondence, loading web context, returning phones calls, etc.\u00a0 Some days I teach classes, visit classes, do readings, and\/or facilitate creative circles.\u00a0 Some days I\u2019m in rehearsals or production related work.\u00a0 Though I don\u2019t write everyday, I am always in process.\u00a0 Everyday I feed my writing by reading, listening to music & podcasts, having conversations with art-family members (like Daniel Alexander Jones), and looking at images that relate to whatever might stir my work.\u00a0 It takes me a LONG time to complete a text.\u00a0 Since I am a theatre artist I need the work to be embodied a few times before I can complete it.\u00a0 For instance, once I have a working draft I seek opportunities for table readings, workshop productions, and productions.\u00a0 I am usually working on at least two pieces in different stages of development.\u00a0 At the end of each day, I talk to my partner, read, watch a bit of bad TV, read and pray.<\/p>\n

What is your favorite book? Favorite author?<\/strong>
\nCurrently my favorite book is, The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of American\u2019s Great Migration<\/em>, by Isabel Wilkerson.\u00a0 It really hard to name only one book, so I want to throw in that I loved reading:\u00a0 Always Wear Joy: My Mother Bold and Beautiful<\/em>, by Susan Fales-Hill.\u00a0 Loving In The War Years<\/em>, by Cherrie Moraga saved my life.\u00a0 I thought Staceyann Chin\u2019s, The Other Side of Paradise<\/em>, was perfection. And I am a serious fan of all the RedBone Press authors.\u00a0 If I had to pick only one author to say is my favorite, always, it\u2019s Walter Mosley.\u00a0 I am passionately in love with his Easy Rawlins, Leonid McGill, Fearless Jones, Ptolemy Grey, and Socrates Fortlow Series.\u00a0 Also his book, 47<\/em>, is simply brilliant.\u00a0 I feel that Mr. Mosley writes with precision and grace about people like those that raised me.\u00a0 Hard living, big hearted, Soulful, working people.\u00a0 Smart, worldly Black Southerns giving their all for a better life.\u00a0 Honestly, I get teary just thinking about it.\u00a0 lol…<\/p>\n

What piece of advice can you share with aspiring writers?<\/strong>
\nFocus on the work.\u00a0 The work is your road map. Surround yourself with like-minded individuals that support and \u201csee\u201d you.\u00a0 Work rigorously on your craft.\u00a0 However, be careful where you place yourself (with your work). It is really important to be in writing circles, to share and exchange work, but you must make sure that you are not casting your pearls before swine. Create the life you want to live.\u00a0 Learn how to manage your money.\u00a0 Take care of yourself, you are the instrument that the work happens through.\u00a0 Be clear about what your creative process is, so that you can facilitate your work effectively.\u00a0 I.E. for many of us, cleaning the house is part of our creative process.\u00a0 If that is true for you, clean that house!\u00a0 Mindfully. Mostly, our job is to dream. Ultimately, everything you need is already inside you.\u00a0 Gather the tools, support, and experiences you need to get out of your own way.\u00a0 Remember, at the end of the day, it\u2019s not about you.<\/p>\n

Why do you feel it\u2019s important for black lesbian to tell their own stories, as you did with the bull-jean stories<\/em>?\u00a0<\/strong>
\nWe must name ourselves.\u00a0 It is up to us to leave an accurate blueprint of what our lives are like.\u00a0 We must be the mirror we seek.\u00a0 As the Hopi said, \u201cwe are the ones we are waiting for.\u201d\u00a0 Your story just might save some body\u2019s life.\u00a0 It really is that important.<\/p>\n

Interviewed January 2012<\/strong><\/p>\n

Sharon Bridgforth’s Reviews<\/strong><\/p>\n