by Rawiyah
Every year in ritual I retell this story. I also tell it before my Bawdy Divine Workshop. It’s part of my glitter magic and as we descend into the darkest night in what seems the darkest year I cast it out again into the world as a way to reel in the light. The story goes that Amaterasu Omikami the Sun Goddess was … Read More Storytime: Solstice
by Rawiyah
(written after an interaction with an uber driver on my way home from performing at the Uptown Club in Oakland) You… You saw a happy, tipsy, fat, black woman and assumed I was a straight club girl on her way home from a night of partying. You assumed I was blowing off steam after work, caught in a revolving ritual that would go … Read More Not that kinda party.
by Rawiyah
I do not want a fashion designer I want a goddamn engineer to make the speed of my curves rival that of the autobahn I want an interior designer to mold my frame with gold lame I want a mathematician to calculate the exact type and tautness of my fabric so that when I strut I get exactly .25 rps (ripples … Read More Fashion and Design (a rant)
by Rawiyah
“My Body is not a Cage” was written for “Burlesque and Why” a stage play produced by Dottie Lux, the founder of Red Hots Burlesque. Her goal was to give the audience an insight into what is beneath the glitter and glam. A chance to see that our performances are deeper than the foundation that goes on our faces. I was incredibly honored … Read More My Body’s not a Cage
+ Adventures, Prose, Writing
by Rawiyah
It has been years… years since I’ve been in a beauty salon… let alone a black salon. The smells of hot grease and curling irons drown me in an ache, a longing for home and pink barrettes, shiny black patent leather shoes and baby blue taffeta dresses. Sade and Aretha Franklin sounds so thick that they wrap around you pulling you into a world … Read More Loc-n-Jane Out
by Rawiyah
Today is my birthday I’m looking through the pictures… trying to see if I can see my house in them. Mother calls… its a bad day a bad day for us both she cries… I don’t she apologizes… I tell her its okay to not be okay I am hesitant to ask about friends and family but I have to know. I ask her … Read More Birth
by Rawiyah
My city is drowning I turn on the tv. I want to know what is happening. I don’t know how to feel . . . what to feel. I see. My city drowning. I see my people black and bruised and begging and screaming and dying. The faces are all familiar. Voices all heard before. There is violence and desperation. “I hear they are … Read More Drowning
by Rawiyah
I was up late yet again last night. I have so much stuff to do today but I just do not feel like doing it. I feel as if things are spiraling out of control. Maybe that is why I am finding it so easy to write right now. Well here are some lyrics I thought up Creole Queen Rain kiss the street … Read More Creole Queen
by Rawiyah
I started writing something a few days back this is all that I have so far but I think that I am off to a good start the hardest thing is getting it all to come out sometimes I feel as if the words are all stuck in my head just content to lay there and rot. I have to poke and prod them … Read More me-n-jane
