The Journey to "Becoming" featuring Rosemary Esehagu

This episode features our conversation with Rosemary Esehagu, which was live-streamed on March 14, 2026.

Rosemary Esehagu is a Nigerian-American writer and poet. Her poems have appeared in different journals, including Cool Beans Lit, Genre: Urban Arts, a little poetry, Plum Recruit, African Writer Magazine, and Elephant Journal. Her award-winning novel, The Looming Fog, was published in 2006. Her latest book is the Amazon Bestselling hybrid prose and poetry memoir titled Out of the Cocoon: The Journey to Becoming (Manhattan Book Group, February 2025).  She lives in Texas and puts her psychology degree to work to explore minds to discover that which empowers us or cripples us. Her works investigate that delicate interdependent relationship between self and society, becoming and unbecoming. She is a passionate advocate for becoming our best selves by embracing all that we are and have been, both the ugly and the beautiful parts.

During this episode, we talked about Out of the Cocoon.

How would you live your life if you understood that every scar, trauma, or suffering can make you stronger and greater?

In her memoir, Out of the Cocoon: The Journey to Becoming, Rosemary shares her story of posttraumatic growth and offers a radical perspective on abuse. Despite encountering abuse as a child and racism and trauma when she immigrated to the US as a teenager, she has found her place and is living her purpose. She uses prose and poetry to express that we can overpower and repurpose others' harmful actions.

Out of the Cocoon explores healing from trauma from someone with personal experience and expertise.

Learn more about Rosemary by visiting www.rosemaryesehagu.com.

Mentioned during the episode: The Amadou Diallo Foundation ~ https://www.amadoudiallofoundation.org/

Find Rosemary Esehagu on Instagram: @rosemaryesehagu

Find Black Writers Read on Instagram: @blackwritersread

Find Black Writers Read online: https://blackwritersread.com/

Support Black Writers Read on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/cw/blackwritersread

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:08

So the I do reader um is really somebody who's going through abuse or trauma of some kind and they're trying to process, understand, and figure out how to get to the other place. In my mind, I envision women only because they do tend to be disproportionately, you know, um victims to these, but not, you know, um not just women, but yeah, so people who are uh dealing with abuse or trauma of some kind and are trying to um overcome it and get to the other side. And my book is really there to say there is another side, um, no matter the you know extent of the trauma or the abuse or the negative challenge, they really can overcome and we really can be stronger as a a result of that. Um I think about even Amajidello, right? He didn't get to go to college, right? That's what he wanted, but out of the tragedy of his life, you know, there's a fund now, you know, that allows kids who want to go to college to be able to go to college and right. So in a sense, he's living that dream. And um, and so I think it's just important to know that we can overcome. It doesn't matter what the trauma is, it doesn't matter what the abuse is, it doesn't matter what the challenges, we can overcome, and we can even be better for it. Not that we want to go looking for it, but that we that there's light at the end of the time, hello and welcome to Black Writers Read.

SPEAKER_02 1:51

My name is Nicole Young Martin, and I'm the founder, producer, and host of this podcast. Thank you for tuning in for episode 21 of season six of the series. Launched on Juneteenth, 2020, Black Writers Read was created as a platform to showcase, celebrate, and honor the words, work, and traditions of Black writers from across the country, across genres, across experiences, and across the African diaspora. Black Writers Read is a behind-the-scenes conversation into the craft, and what it means to create is a black author in today's society. Since starting this series during the summer of 2020, we've hosted almost 100 authors representing 15 plus genres from six countries and 28 states. This episode features our conversation with Rosemary Izagu, which was live streamed on March 14, 2026. Rosemary Azagu is a Nigerian-American writer and poet. Her poems have appeared in different journals, including Cool Beans Lit, Genre, Urban Arts, A Little Poetry, Plum Recruit, African Writer, and Elephant Journal. Her award-winning novel, The Looming Fog, was published in 2006. Her latest book is the Amazon best-selling hybrid prose and poetry memoir titled Out of the Cocoon, The Journey to Becoming, which was published in 2025. She lives in Texas and puts her psychology degree to work to explore minds, to discover that which empowers us or cripples us. Her works investigate that delicate, interdependent relationship between self and society, becoming and unbecoming. She is a passionate advocate for becoming our best selves by embracing all that we are and have been, both the ugly and the beautiful parts. How would you live your life if you understood that every scar, trauma, or suffering can make you stronger and greater? In her memoir Out of the Cocoon, The Journey to Becoming, Rosemary shares her story of post-traumatic growth and offers a radical perspective on abuse. Despite encountering abuse as a child and racism and trauma, when she immigrated to the United States as a teenager, she has found her place and is living her purpose. She uses prose and poetry to express that we can overpower and repurpose others' harmful actions. Out of the Cocoon explores healing from trauma from someone with personal experience and expertise. Learn more about Rosemary by visiting her website at www.rosemaryzaku.com. That is www.r-o-s-e-m-ar-r-y e-s-e-h-a-g-u.com. As from this introduction, I would like to take note of the fact that there are some heavy things that we discussed during this episode. As it is in her book Out of the Cocoon, while we do not go into detail or have our guests disclose the things that she experienced, we do talk about PTSD and its impact on the body as it shows up in her work. So please take care of yourself as you are listening to this episode. If you need to pause it and step away, please do so. If you need to listen to it with someone else, please do that as well. Please take the time that you need to listen to this episode. I also hope that you take an opportunity to buy out of the cocoon, which is available on Amazon and wherever you purchase your books. Thank you so much, Rosemary, for writing this work and doing this work both to heal and to help others heal themselves through their own journeys of becoming. Thank you so much for listening to today's episode, and I hope that you'll enjoy our conversation as much as I did.

SPEAKER_00 6:07

It's a pleasure to be here.

SPEAKER_02 6:08

Thank you for being here, and I am so excited to hear you read. I'm so excited to hear for us to get into the questions today. And more importantly, I ooh, I cannot wait for just the breath of knowledge that is going to come out of today's conversation for our viewers. Yes. Yes. So, Rosemary, the stage is yours. I'll be back soon to chat. Happy reading.

SPEAKER_00 6:38

Okay, so I am going to read just uh from different parts of uh the book here. Um I'm gonna read from the introduction and then talk a little bit about you know trauma itself, and then uh read a poem about four poems total from the book. Um so the way the book is organized is uh you have a prose section where I talk a little bit about my life, my childhood, teenage years, and the challenges and you know abuses, and then I transition to the poetry section, uh, which uh follows the life cycle of a butterfly. It's my metaphor for my own metamorphosis like a butterfly. And so we'll just start, okay? So this is a book about my life at certain points in time. It is a book about self-love, but it's also about trauma and overcoming trauma, both sexual and non-sexual. Although this is my unique story of trauma, trauma is common in people's lives. Sexual abuse is a particular type of trauma that has become too commonplace, yet people don't understand that it can have negative and undesirable effects on the victim long after the incident. Victims of sexual abuse can try to forget the incident. They're often reluctant to talk about it because it is so personal. Part of the reluctance is also because the perpetrators are too often people they know. I write my story primarily to show that trauma, including sexual abuse like molestation, is not trivial, but it also doesn't have to have the last word. The process of healing from trauma is individual. How you heal or what helps and doesn't help you heal is variable, but the important thing is to heal. I hope that by opening up about my experiences with trauma, gives other people permission to explore their trauma, to process and heal from it, and find wholeness and freedom. I also hope that my story encourages those who have no experience with trauma to become more cognizant of the potential effects of trauma, which will hopefully allow them to be more understanding and supportive of those healing from trauma. Okay. So in my efforts to pursue myself, I have discovered that myself is expandable, adaptable, yet grounded, changing, but still true to my core nature. This knowledge of me as an expandable self, capable of unlimited growth, unlimited changes, is in line with my understanding of my creator's intention for me to be an unlimited being, a reflection of him. I am not one thing, and my purposes are many. I am not a statue that remains frozen in time, frozen in a purpose. I evolve. I used to find my inevitable evolution. I misinterpreted the challenges in my life, the seemingly endless and frequent stop signs as omens that I was on the wrong path. I saw each emotional scar as evidence of my flaws instead of proof of my beauty, my growing wisdom, and my earned maturity that has paid, that has been paid for with experience. I have learned that my journey mirrors that of a butterfly, a butterfly's life cycle. A butterfly, an exquisite flying beauty, begins as an egg, a random being. It develops into a lava, a time characterized by immense growth or change. Then it becomes a chrysalis, which is characterized by a time of apparent stillness or death, but is really a period of immense inward change and protection. Finally, the fully matured, radically different apparent butterfly emerges. It can do amazing things that its predecessors could not. It can fly and make new versions of itself. I will have many opportunities to reinvent myself, to mature, or to grow into a better version of myself. I use poetry in this book to depict my metamorphosis. I chose poetry as my medium because poetry is a love affair between reality and imagination. And then I'm gonna read uh the chapter on who am I. To understand who I am and I'm becoming, I must understand who I was and have been. To be my mature self, I must understand the necessity of my past self. No matter how much I may be tempted to dislike her or wish she had an alternate experience. Again, I'm I'm skipping parts here just to kind of um keep things focused here. If your hurt self never existed, then your huge self would never exist either. Maturity is learning to embrace the past while keeping it at a distance. You must acknowledge the past and use it to empower the person you want to become. In my life, there were two critical events that shaped who I am today. The first was the sexual abuse I experienced as a child in my native country of Nigeria, the destruction of my innocence. I learned rather early in life to I learned rather early in life the trend to steal my body's control from me, the tried to subject me to a certain slavery where I lose my autonomy. I fought an uphill battle to have full authority over my body, even as I had to display it to the world as part of social interaction. I learned how to express myself physically and still have a do not touch sign on my body. Do not touch, not because it is fragile, but do not touch because my body is mine, not yours, even if it is constantly in public view. The second event was my immigration to the United States, where I experienced emotional abuse that threatened my identity and security. I found myself caught in the tension between who I aspire to be and who society told me I could be. I had to learn to value my mind, to ignore and defy expectations. I had to learn that I am an important part of my society, even if it does not see me. And uh goes on to talk about the specific details of um of uh those particular abuses, which will cover up quite here. Um and then um the next chapter I'm gonna read from is a section, uh a chapter on what is trauma. And again, I'm just gonna read a little bit from this part. The power of trauma. The destructive power of trauma over us is amplified when we ignore it or refuse to acknowledge it and the effect it has on us. We become robots who respond in the same stereotypical way whenever we experience triggers, whenever an experience triggers our unhealed wound or trauma. We lash out in anger or we shut down. We think we're in control, even though the reality is that we have no choice but to respond in that stereotyped way to a triggering experience. When we are triggered, our behaviors are controlled by regions of the brain that direct our survival responses in cases of threat. When we are triggered, the amygdala, the emotional brain, is in control. Its decisions bypass the prefrontal cortex or thinking brain, and boom, we react to a threat or a perceived threat. When we are triggered, the perceived threat is a misassociation with a threat from our past that had not been addressed or processed. The response, therefore, tends to be maladaptive or excessive for the current situation. True control is the ability to override our automatic responses or learned behaviors so that we are responding from a place of reason of through and of time awareness, a place where the prefrontal context is in charge. Until we have processed our wounds, we often make decisions to soothe our wounds in ways that are not authentic to who we really are, that is the self before the trauma. We instead act from the state of survival and coping, which leads to behaviors and decisions that can be short-sighted, rash, or maladaptive for long-term health. And so that's um that, and then uh moving on on that section. To truly heal, I had to accept that although my trust had been shattered by others in my past, the current safe people in my life could help rebuild my trust. And it is okay if my trust doesn't look like it used to, or if it's not as generous as it used to be. The important thing is that I exercise my trust. I realized and acknowledged that the abused child had done her job. She had brought me to a place of safety. I had to let her go. She no longer had to be vigilant and protective. I could take care of myself in this new vision of my world and my place in it. She could have peace because now I was at peace. My trauma has allowed me to better understand the complexities of our world and of human interactions, that the world is not black or white. It has many patches of gray and other indescribable colors. I discovered that I am strong, that I am resilient, and that I can be anything, even in the face of the threat of destruction of myself and my world as I knew it. My trauma taught me and is teaching me that I am adaptable, that I can evolve, I can overcome or overpower any negative experience. I have done it before in the face of my abuses, and I certainly can do it again if need be. I don't go looking for abuse or trauma, but if it crosses my path, I will not be destroyed. The aftermath of trauma does not have to be destructive. In the post-trauma period, trauma has the power to cause growth and maturity, a change not from where we were, but to an entirely new place, a more psychologically mature baseline. Modern researchers have coined the term post-traumatic growth to describe the observation that trauma can bring about positive transformative changes in our thoughts, emotions, and behaviors. Although I could see that my previously effective coping mechanisms were now maladaptive, I felt powerless to change. This was um, you know, um before kind of working through things. This is me, I would say, resigned to this destiny that I did not consent to, but that I constantly, unquestionably followed. It wasn't until I yearned for a different way of being that I became different in my mindset. It wasn't until I was sick and tired of reactionary rosemary that I could finally make the change. All right. Um, and then the last thing I'm gonna say before I go to the poetry section, there's power and strength in knowing you're resilient, that nothing can keep you down, that you're better because of these bitter experiences, because you know the boundaries of yourself and that you're a survivor. When you know you're a survivor, you approach every single event that happens now in the future with this lens. You tell your mind and heart, I will not be limited. This will be for my benefit. I will not tolerate this, I will rise despite this and because of this. My peace will not be shaken because I am whole and I evolve. I am at peace with myself. I am more than my challenges. I have a purpose that this challenge or pain will not chart. Our mindset is critical to the hearing process. Okay. All right, and so now let's get to the poems, okay? Um, from the egg um section, the egg represents the seeming randomness of being, the basic excesses of our being. And this poem is called Unbearable Silence. I have asked God several times, why did you create this brown skin? In the history of your white people, black skin is trash in your infinite knowledge. You knew you allowed it. Why must I carry the pain of my ancestors as a reminder of blood within blood? Why can I not run free anywhere in this beauty you created, this earth? Why must I struggle to stand? Why must I carry always this ton of expectations of failure, defeat, and inferiority are on my shoulders? Why must my failure mean the failure of all my people? Why is my success an anomaly, a freakish occurrence, a rarity? Bullish fees of poverty and undereducation are my nourishment? Why is it all in my hand? The beauty of this ebony skin that glistens in the sun, like all the stars have descended just to touch it. Why must I hide my wonder at the playfulness of my hair, its ability to be firm, unyielding, holding a shape yet malleable, transforming into different shapes? Why must I believe these lies about my people? Lazy, violent, stupid. This mantra I am taught daily, yet no one will claim its origins, as if the story developed in my own mind, irrefutable proof of the truth or a delusion. Why, Lord, is there no curiosity about why my body is the color it is? Why no assumption that it must serve a good purpose? A platform I first saw filled me with laughter at your humor and creative experimentation. Why does my body not bring joyful laughter? Why did you create black people knowing their fate? Why did you allow such suffering? Your silence was unacceptable, unbearable, but silent you remained until one day I sat by my window, watching the rain in a rage, beating down on houses, the sky moody and thunderous, the hell threatening to like hell threatening to fall through. You asked me, Why does man disown me? Why do the ones I created deny the truth of their lineage? Why does man deny my existence, my rules, my authority over their beings? And I felt silent. The weight of the answer was too much to bear. The second part of this one goes, Silence is not Switzerland. It does not approve or participate in atrocities in exchange for modern courage, of course. Silence is the keeper of secrets. It's bottomless chest, it's a bottomless chest that hides nightmares in the shadows of playfulness, innocence. Silence always speaks, but its words are inaudible to foes, like the silence of the nerds as they protest the cacothinous laughter of the popular kids about the new kid's accent. It's the same silence that speaks when another kid suffocates her consciousness to bear the weight of a friend on her while she sleep, his body provoking friction with hers as she lies there, feeling his flesh on her as she wishes for sleep to escape the miasmic presence. Sleep, the kind that erases all nightmares, so you're Wake to bliss, to a friend you always knew, not a vulture who preys on lifeless bodies. Silence is a mirror. It's lo it shows things as they are. It lies only when we forget the truth. Okay. So the second poem is from the lava section. It's from the lava section of the book. And it will be the way we write. And that's and the lava section of the book, uh, this is the um the section that talks about the expandable mode, the blueprint for who we are. Okay. It sells, it always tells, even when it hurts or causes pain. It has many audiences in different segments. Talking about it can be erotic, even during therapeutic discussions. And so it. What is a sexual abuse victim to do? What is an author to do when even the language, the diction, the description of the trauma, the conceptualization and the processing require words that are borrowed from the perpetrator's dictionary? Where's the victim vactionary, a book for the understanding of female life, with descriptions that are disturbing to the voyeurs, to the defilers of innocence? The trauma of writing, the trauma of not writing, the trauma of writing about what was done, with care not to feed those whose appetite is a black hole that angles for all things trash, the doing, the seeing, the reading, how not to bury the crime, how not to be muted, muteness which falsely proclaims the villain's innocence and inflicts the survivor with shame, guilt, self-doubt. How to speak without provoking the abuse all over again, without finding those who must be named, imagining one's horror with pleasure, or their hands down where they do not belong. Snap out of it. Imagine an anvil falls in your finger and severs your left pinky, which reattaches absolutely back functions. It even plays masterfully on a piano. So you almost forget, except when others elucidate a buffered finger with no scar to the third charm is coming from the crystal section, which is growth in stillness, protection in stillness. And this one. When bad dreams come true. When bad dreams come true, when a heart cries in mourning, it's daily recycling and redistributing. That was its purpose, a source of life, no longer nourishing or refreshing. The body languishes, no energy to make it care to be, except a rest inner restlessness, infecting the body, which flays about, begging for rest. The mind turns into a courtroom where all thoughts get their day. When bad dreams come true, you wonder if it is better to have not dreamt at all or to have forgotten them, willing them into non-existence, or is foreknowledge power. Either way, that woman that was nigh enough, that woman whose feverishness about many things commands the body to move in concert, for the heart to beat after every stream of teardrops, for the mind to dream again, to bring today's troubled thoughts to a past. I started, I stared at her and I started to fall in love with her. And then the last woman, well my god, um is from the butterfly, maturity and fruitfulness. It's called A Child Conquers the Beast. Like a cranky, turbulent sea, I am not what I seem. On the surface, my waves are like whips. To the surface nearby, I draw blood. Courage must be paid to look deeper, to experience the serene stillness, to view treasures and capture elusive secrets. Children are the wisest. They play in the face of brokenness. Junkyard becomes treasure land. A discarded car becomes a well car to explore the deep sea or a roller coaster that has no height restrictions. Even the snake-like bees come to play, they become harmless catfolds. Puberty comes and knowledge increases. The beasts no longer play, but entangle in chaos and stings. So the lady rising silent agony, decaying from the inside. Even an evergreen, gorgeous gown cannot hide it. The skeleton of many regrets pokes its head as an omnipresent shadow. Childhood is short, but good students remember to treasure it. They know the boundaries and trappings of knowledge. So when pivotity parades, the colorful, joyful blues and yellows of childhood can be retained as cheerful greens. The beasts may no longer play, but they're no longer frightened. They're new to the state, now a delight and a hilarity in a castle made of glass, not like a coffin never to be viewed again, but in a castle made of glass. That's it.

SPEAKER_02 27:01

Thank you so much, Rosemary, for reading the poems and the excerpts from the essays that you did. And more importantly, thank you so much for writing. And I hope that folks that are joining us today will find the purpose of this book through our conversation today and actually purchase the book, which is available for purchase on Amazon. So today I'm actually going to start off a little bit differently. So I usually like to pose this question towards the end. I actually want to ask this question at the very beginning because I think this is going to help really shape today's conversation. So prior to having our guests on Black Writers Read, we asked each of them why they write. Here's what you, Rosemary, offer. I write as a way to connect with myself and the people around me. It's a way to unload my burden and to carry someone else's. Being a writer at this time means continuing to speak even when no one listens, when the topics are too ugly, too controversial, or uncomfortable, because our discarded words today may be tomorrow's sustenance. The interesting thing is that sometimes that person from tomorrow who needs to listen to today's words is me. So I would like to start off by asking, when and why did you become a writer?

SPEAKER_00 28:32

Well, I actually um started writing uh as a necessity because I couldn't oral arts was really more what I was into, storytelling, um, to just oral arts. I grew up in Nigeria and we did a lot of storytelling. Writing wasn't really um a part of kind of what I did, but then when I immigrated to the United States, that's not really something that people did. So I I needed an outlet. And so it became writing. So it took the form of writing. Um, but I really um uh enjoyed writing and I appreciated how again, like I talked about why I write, I can sort of, you know, delve into my own pain, my own issues, my own challenges, and take on somebody else's, like kind of see life to somebody else's perspective, imagine, you know, their world and make it mine in a way and present it to others. And so um, but yeah, that's how I started writing, just needing to tell the story of our lives in one way or another.

SPEAKER_02 29:37

And what stages of your life are represented in out of the cocoon, the journey to beginning, to becoming. I keep pronouncing things wrong, but I just want to also name it's been a really stressful day. I took my car into the shop earlier today, and they gave me a pretty huge bill in terms of what needs to be fixed. And I may have to buy a new car, and I'm like, ah, so the whole the whole day today has been a mess. So my apologies if I'm tripping over stuff. That's one of the reasons why, not the the nature of the conversation. But what stages of your life are represented in the book out of the cocoon, the journey to beginning?

SPEAKER_00 30:13

It's so it's been teenage years and then um early adulthood.

SPEAKER_02 30:21

And why was it important to you to set the stage of your book through the essays?

SPEAKER_00 30:32

Because I think you know, you need a kind of a story. The essay parts are, you know, the story of you know, the trauma and you know, the things that have happened, and it's important to kind of um, you know, have more of a chronological explanation of how what has happened and the details of the things that happened in a way that I wouldn't really maybe be able to explore in poetry. Um, and it I think it helps to give a context to even some of the poems and um understand them better and see where I'm coming from.

SPEAKER_02 31:10

I love, and and and I hope that this makes sense to folks. I love that you included, I say at the beginning of your book, defining trauma. And trauma is something, I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna lie, trauma is something that encourages and fuels a lot of creatives to create. Um, I myself, as a writer, I started writing as a way to kind of process trauma. So, as someone with training and expertise in psychology and medicine, how do both inform your writing and why was it important to include the essay on trauma?

SPEAKER_00 31:52

Right. So I think sometimes when we go through challenges, it's easy to kind of just dismiss them as this is just this thing that happened, or this is just, you know, and you just move on and deal with it. But the truth is that these experiences that we're having, they affect the way we think about future events, and this is where psychology comes in. They affect our brain, the way we process information, uh, including past information and future information. Um, they affect the way that we respond to our environment. And so learning about psychology and also um having a medical degree really helped me to kind of understand a little bit of the uh pathophysiology of not just the event, but you know, the the consequence of it and the continuing effect it can have if we don't address it, if we don't acknowledge it, um, and if we don't take um intentional steps to kind of you know retrain the brain or retrain our mind. And so it was really important uh for me to not just come at this from the point of view of somebody who's gone through trauma, but also from the point of view of somebody who's um seen other people experience trauma, if seeing the consequences of it when it's not dealt with, of not understanding the mind and our thoughts and our behavior. Um I feel really fortunate to be able to bring that perspective.

SPEAKER_02 33:22

And speaking of trauma and traumatic events, I just want to give folks who are joining us today and who will be listening to the audio podcast a content warning um about the next question. The next question um is talking about um Amadou Diallo. Um so out of the cocoon, The Journey to Becoming features 41 poems, which you write in the short essay titled The Poems, you share that the number 41 is informed by the 41 bullets that were shot at Amadou Diallo, who was killed by police with 19 of the 41 bullets hitting his body. He was murdered in 1999 at the age of 23. I would love to know what drew you to the story and why was it important for you to make this connection in your memoir?

SPEAKER_00 34:19

Right. So the context is that I recently moved to the US from Nigeria. It's been just a little over a year as an immigrant to Bronx, New York. And it's it was a cultural shock in terms of uh people's expectations or view of me as a black woman and my capabilities, just on the basis of what I look like, which was in stark contrast to Nigeria, where um education is key. So, you know, being uh smart, being intelligent, pursuing education, these were things that people was expected. It was the expectation, but then coming to the US and hearing a different message that because I'm in this body, you know, um educational goals are not something that I was either capable of or should even pursue. So that is kind of, you know, so that kind of um identity crisis, if you will, is kind of going on in the background. And then um this incident with um happened, you know, while I was in Bronx, New York, and and it was really jarring because it it was like a a crazy, a crazy scene from a movie, like just a horror, horror movie, but this was reality. This was somebody like me from West Africa, a young person trying to go to college and for like no reason just brutalized and killed. And it just sent the message that this is how important I am in this society. It sent the message that I needed to be careful because this might be me. I mean, it's it's it was it was uh a pretty uh significant event in my life and something that I think really kind of started shaping my awareness of society's view of me and what statement I was gonna make in return.

SPEAKER_02 36:18

And I also wanted to know it's really sad that many of us are most formative memories and formative events are crimes and violence that were done against our own people. In what yeah, was it 1982? I remember when the Rodney King beating by police happened, I was what, like 12, 13. Then we have um this incident. I remember I remember hearing about it, but again, like the Rodney King incident, there was a lot of distance because I heard about it on the news. Whereas as we talked um offline before coming on, you lived in the area where where this happened, and so I bet it hits a lot differently. Yes, for sure. Yeah, as because you're hearing about it in more real time, you're hearing about it local news, people are talking about it in your neighborhood. And then lastly, at some point, you may walk the land and the part of the land and the part of the city where it happened and where Amadou took his last breath. So that had it's so interesting and it's sad that that is a not only a formative experience for you, but also it happened so soon after you immigrated to the United States. And also, too, the other, the biggest reason why I love um that you write is, and you mentioned it a little bit here, where it's like blackness in West Africa and in a lot of particular countries. And this is why many of us, like last week's guest, she recently traveled back to Ghana, we call, of course, West Africa the motherland, and she talked about like how affirming the experience was for her. And so in many West African countries, blackness and the expectations of black people and the richness of our lives is so different. Whereas in the United States, in many places in the West, we're seen as waste, we're seen as like people who take up space, we're seen as people who need to be disciplined, and all of these other very negative things, of course, due to a lot of things that happen in history, and also due to others, like people of like more, I'm just gonna say it, a lot of white supremacist-based cultures. And I like to say white supremacists because there are also people of color who operate under that lens. So I love that's one of the reasons why I love that you are writing and writing about your experience as a teenager because very important formative years happen in the United States for you. And with that said, who is the ideal reader for your work and why?

SPEAKER_00 39:25

So the ideal reader um is really somebody who's going through abuse or trauma of some kind and they're trying to process, understand, and figure out how to get to the other place. In my mind, I envisioned women only because they do tend to be disproportionately uh, you know, um victims to these, but not, you know, um not just women, but yes, so people who are uh dealing with abuse or trauma of some kind and are trying to um overcome it and get to the other side. And my book is really there to say there is another side, um, no matter the extent of the trauma or the abuse or the negative challenge, they really can overcome and we really can be stronger as a result of that. Um I think about Ibn Amajidello, right? He didn't get to go to college, right? That's why he wanted, but out of the tragedy of his life, you know, there's a fund now, you know, that allows kids who want to go to college to be able to go to college and right. So in a sense, he's living that dream. And um, and so I think it's just important to know that we can overcome. It doesn't matter what the trauma is, it doesn't matter what the abuse is, it doesn't matter what the challenge is, we can overcome, and we can even be better for it. Not that we want to go looking for it, but that we there's light at the end of the time.

SPEAKER_02 40:57

Yeah, thank you so much for that. And as Black Writers Read is about the craft of writing, I've two questions to you about writing. I would love to know, given especially that this book is hybrid, it is prose and poetry. I would love to know for you what are some advantages of hybrid forms of writing, and then what are some challenges and limitations to this type of writing?

SPEAKER_00 41:26

Right. So the I especially for this book, the the hybrid form was really helpful because one, it did allow me to talk about um it allowed me to talk about the details of the trauma and the abuses and kind of you know my uh understanding of it, my responses to it, um, and how the specific things I did to get to the other side. Um and so the prose was helpful in that. Um, I wanted to explore more with poetry because some of because some of the concepts are uncomfortable and they're challenging. I think poetry allows me to talk about some of the concepts in a way that is more digestible, in a way that's more approachable, uh, in a way that maybe somebody would have a harder time, especially depending on where they are in their own personal trauma experience. The the poetry may allow them to kind of engage it with a little more dissonance and then really be able to dig deeper into the issues. Um, and so the poetry section was, I think, helpful because I'm able to kind of blend reality and um imagination. Poetry allows you to do that. And so for this book, I think it was really helpful to have that. Um disadvantage of using the hybrid uh and poetry, um, some people may want more details. You know, some people who prefer prose may just want, like just give me the the full detail and girl, and you know, if they're not uh as into poetry, that might be a turn-off. Although I I feel like I do try to write in a way that's still it's prose poetry, so it still engages uh in a prose uh like way, but yes.

SPEAKER_02 43:18

And also, too, what I love about the hybrid form, this really taps into many of our um ancestors as writers, Audrey Lord and James Baldwin are two that come to mind. Yes, because they wrote like poetry essays, things that were very prolific. And the act of bearing witness, especially given that, yeah, that most of this was reflective of your teenagers. And I say this a lot, and as a college professor, I say this a lot too, is that I I hate this whole thing like kids and teenagers are are meant to be seen and not heard. I'm like, and then also too, like people like to. Know flower up things for children and teenagers. I understand that there's a limit to what they need to know because of their capacity, but at the same time, you can't hide anything because they know. Yeah, and they're very observant. And so what I love about poetry in this book is that especially with how you flip to using like symbolism and metaphor to speaking directly about your experience, it really shows the power that poetry can have and that poetry can reach multiple people because it's not things that are hitting you directly. Because I know talking directly about sexual assault and possibly like citing the actual incident not only maybe traumatizing to the reader, but it also may be traumatizing to the person that's writing.

unknown 44:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 44:58

Yeah, and the poetry is definitely, I think, in this context, I think it works really well. It really, again, allows you to engage with the material, create some distance, but enough safety to engage with the material in a way that maybe you wouldn't otherwise.

SPEAKER_02 45:15

And so given that your writing explores healing through trauma through writing, I would love to know if you could recommend a writing prompt or process for folks who are looking to heal through writing to start with.

SPEAKER_00 45:33

Right. So the the framework that I like to go to is to identify, it's important to identify the feelings. Um, what are the things that you're feeling and kind of exploring that in writing, no censorship, whatever it is that comes up. Um looking into actions, exploring what what actions am I doing? Do I find myself keep doing that I either don't want to do or I can't seem to stop? You know, kind of, you know, asking those questions. Um you know, and then along with that, thinking about thoughts again on the same, what are the thoughts that I'm having when I'm feeling these things? What are the thoughts that I'm having when I'm having these, when I'm doing these actions, you know. So I think those three uh it's really core um part of exploring the trauma because one of the things that you'll realize is that there is a trend. There is a a, you know, you notice a trend in terms of thoughts, pattern, feelings. And then once you see that trend, there's a self-awareness comes in. And self-awareness is a critical part of getting to the other side of trauma processing. Um, and so I think the first step is developing that self-awareness, and that involves asking those questions about feelings, thoughts, and actions. And then the the the other part that I hope to encourage with this book is to look at evolution. Like, where am I in my evolution as a butterfly? Am I an egg? You know, am I still just stuck in this is where I am? This is I'm just being, you know, am I love or am I kind of seeing some changes, but not quite sure where it's going or why, you know, those kind of things? Or am I a crystalist? Do I just find myself just kind of still? Do I, you know, am I do I feel like uh, you know, I'm just you know stuck or uh still, you know, just just not making progress, not go, you know, like what where are you on the stage? And then of course we we all want to get to the butterfly section. Um so I think it's asking those questions, looking internally. Um, so that would be the the writing prompts I would recommend because it it that's what helped me.

SPEAKER_02 47:52

And lastly, Rosemary, what is next for you and how can the Black Redersary community support you on this journey?

SPEAKER_00 47:59

So I keep writing. I've written a bunch of poems and working on you know another book uh of poetry. Um I am thinking about potentially going into diving into fiction again. Um my first book was uh a fiction looking at intersex um life in rural Nigeria. So I'm trying to kind of you know embody other people's other people's um challenges and kind of give sight um you know through that. So um and just keep following my writing, support, you know, buy the book, read the book. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 48:41

And definitely find Rosemary online. Her website is here. It's www.rosemary isaggy.com, which is r-o-s-e-m-ar-r-y, e-s-e-h a g u dot com.

SPEAKER_01 48:55

So rosemary, thank you so much for being here this afternoon. Thank you so much for writing. I very much look forward to your next book.

SPEAKER_00 49:04

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for having me.

SPEAKER_02 49:10

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