TheAyeshaSite

I am taking a course in Writing for Children and Teenagers this coming January of 2016 with the Institute of Children’s Literature in Connecticut. I will probably take a year to complete the course but I have up to two years to complete my coursework. I have an idea for a story about a little girl as the main character who has some problem  or illness that she will solve at the end of the book. I have always wanted to write children’s books. I took ENG 222 Children’s Literature at Mercer at the James Kerney campus with Dr. Hazel Cooper and I remember loving the class. I took Children’s and Young Adult Lit with Professors Kelley and Fisch at NJCU too but I never got credit for the course! My goal is to have a manuscript that I can submit to a publisher by next January 2017 and hopefully I will publish my first children’s book by May 2017.  I’m hoping my idea for my children’s book centered around a little girl character will inspire readers both girls and boys. Girls rule! Women rock!

I applied to Cave Canem for the third time for a poetry workshop. I am going to turn 35 right before the poetry workshop starts in February 2016.  This will be the second Cave Canem poetry workshop I have attended. It has 8 sessions that begin in February and end in April. We will meet every Wednesday starting on February 17, 2016. Our Final Reading is on April 13, 2016. I’m excited and I don’t plan to miss one session. I’m taking the train by myself again like I did this Fall ’15. I’m planning on  inviting my parents to the Final Reading in April. April is National Poetry Month.

I want to write children’s books. I want to write a children’s book with a black female character as the center of the story. I am going to be taking a course at the Institute of Children’s Literature in Writing for Children and Teenagers. It may take me a year or it may take me two years to complete the course. I’m interested in writing poems for children.

I listened to current Memoir students share from their memoirs. I asked Edi if I could share from my memoir. She told me only current students could share from their memoirs but I was there. I am planning on going to Memoirfest again in May of 2016. Thomas was my ride there and back from Journal Square! The night ended at 11:30pm. I will ask Thomas again to be my ride this coming May ’16 if he’s going to Memoirfest.  May 2016 will be my last time going to Memoirfest. I cannot get a ride to Memoirfest in the future from anybody and I cannot ask my mom.

I am going to Memoirfest this coming Saturday December 19, 2015. I am bringing mozzarella sticks. I am going to share a journal entry from my Process Journal about the time when I was going through puberty and my great aunt Sybil tried to bleach my dark chocolate skin. I am looking forward to the party, Thomas is picking me up at 3pm at Journal Sqaure. After I turned thirty I learned to accept myself and my dark complexion and my body and all my imperfections.

I wrote an almost twenty page memoir in Advanced Memoir. I wrote a fifteen page memoir in Memoir Workshop. Both memoirs are the start of my writing of my Schizophrenia autobiography.  I will call the book I am writing about my life from about age thirteen to my  30s living with Schizophrenia: Memories of Me a memoir. I have almost filled out two process journals too!

I took Memoir Workshop and Advanced Memoir with Edi Giunta my last two semesters at NJCU. I am so happy I took Memoir Writing with Edi Giunta. I wrote an almost 20 page memoir in Advanced Memoir. I started a ten page memoir I call Memories of Me in Memoir Workshop. I sort of wrote two memoirs without realizing that was what I was doing. I just wrote! Oh and I could have gotten As in both courses. Edi invited me to Memoirfest on December 19, 2015 at 5:30pm. I have to decide what I will share this year maybe a long Process Journal entry. Memoirfest is always nice. Thomas is my ride but he has to pick me up early because he’s planning the party. I’m bringing mozzarella sticks from Wegmans to the party.

 

I became a part of the NJCU community during my last two semesters there. I took Memoir Workshop in the Fall of 2014 and Advanced Memoir in the Spring of 2015 with Dr.. Edi Giunta and my whole life changed. I became a Memoir writer and an African American woman writer. Edi focused on my memoir Memories of Me both semesters I took Memoir with her. This Christmas I thank God for Edi Giunta for believing in my ability as a memoir writer and for saying she’d be my editor and all I had to do is write and use The Art of Slow Writing by Louise DeSalvo. Amazing teacher! Oh and I got an A in Advanced Memoir.

I have been doing so much better these past four or five years. I’d say my greatest strength is understanding my race and having Insight into my (mental) illness. Even though I have Schizophrenia I always check my race/ethnicity on college/grad school/job applications. I often say “Yes I am African American or Black” when asked. I am very proud of my accomplishments and my race. I don’t apologize for being Black. I always remember this older Italian man named Lou who would call me Black Beauty. I loved being called Black Beauty! It describes me so nicely. Thank God my schizophrenia did not take my racial consciousness and pride in my ethnicity away from me.

I wrote two memoirs in my last two semesters of college that are a part of what I like to call my Schizophrenia autobiography.  My teacher was Edi Giunta. I took her Memoir Workshop and Advanced Memoir in the Fall of 2014 and the Spring of 2015. Once when I went to discuss some trouble I was having with the memoir I was working in her office Edi told me about a former student of hers that had published a memoir piece in a Memoir anthology called “Cracked” about her past crack addiction. I remember thinking now that is cool. Here I was writing about my experience with mental illness and my three half sisters who did not want me in their lives and the onset of my mental illness and my parents and family and this woman had written something just as personal as I did: her experience with crack addiction.