Woman. Warrior. Writer. 2-2023
Nana-Ama Danquah Vol. 4 no.2 February 1, 2023
Aloha,
Meet Woman. Warrior. Writer. Nana-Ama Danquah!
How did you come to author your life?
I was a freelance writer for a newspaper. My editor and I would talk from time to time and somehow he would always manage to find a jewel of a story in the personal anecdotes I shared with him. He’d tell me to write it, then he’d publish it. Until one time when, after struggling to write, at his urging, about something deeply painful and personal, he killed the article. “This should be a book,” he told me. “Keep writing.” But I didn’t. I didn’t believe anyone wanted to know about the challenges I’d faced. So my editor sent the pages to an agent, who also encouraged me to keep writing. She then sold those pages that I’d written as an article to a publisher, and then I thought that maybe some people really did care about a Black woman’s journey through depression, so I committed myself to writing the memoir. And that experience taught me the importance of telling one’s story—because, first and foremost, it will free you; and, also, you never know what impact your story, and the power you hold as a free person, will have on others.
Nana-Ama Danquah, a native of Ghana, is author of the groundbreaking memoir, Willow Weep for Me: A Black Woman’s Journey Through Depression (W.W. Norton & Co.) and editor of four anthologies: Becoming American: Personal Essays by First Generation Immigrant Women (Hyperion); Shaking the Tree: New Fiction and Memoir by Black Women (W.W. Norton & Co.); The Black Body (Seven Stories Press); and, Accra Noir, which is part of Akashic’s popular noir series. Ms Danquah has also worked as a celebrity ghostwriter, political speechwriter, and creative writing instructor. She lives in Southern California.
NOTE: I put Willow Weep for Me on my class reading list—everyone loved it!
REGISTER FOR SPRING 2023 CLASSES
BREAK: Write Your Divorce Story Workshop SATURDAY FEBRUARY 18 7-9AM (HST). Learn the Divorce Story Structure suitable for your legal/personal file. If you enroll you have the opportunity for a 10% discount on writing coaching sessions. For a preview check out this Scarlet Society article and this podcast interview on How to Write Your Divorce Story.
Women’s Creative Writing Workshop SATURDAYS March 11- April 1 7-9AM (HST) This mixed-level class emphasizes voice and narrative and comes with the opportunity to have a one-on-one session. I guarantee that you will leave class with more confidence about what you are writing. You will become familiar with your own creative process and learn what you need to do to write the work that you were meant to write.
Open gender WRITING COACHING private sessions for manuscripts, applications, teaching strategies/syllabi, divorce stories, and more.
Contact writer@drstephaniehan.com
10% discount for previous students and kama’aina. Please enter the code LOCAL.
Asian/Asian American Women’s Creative Writing Workshop SATURDAYS June 3-July 22 7-9AM (HST)
NEWS
Women’s Creative Writing Workshop visiting guest writer MariviSoliven! interviewed in From Story to Film: a Fireside Adventure and in Lit Hub! Soliven’s film adaptations have strong representations of women, and pass the Bechdel test with flying colors!
Guest writer Camille Wanliss finished a stay at the Macdowell Colony. Check out an amazing resource she puts out— GALLEYWAY and subscribe to her newsletter!
Lilly Nguyen (WCWW, Intersectionality) has work in the Southern Review and River Teeth.
Gerie Ventura (Asian/American WCWW) said she wrote her best “sob story” and got a scholarship to attend AWP.
Marisa Lin’s (WCWW) poetry chapbook was accepted by Kernpunkt press.
If I forgot anyone lmk! Syllabus Authors/Guest Writers/Workshop Alum, send in your writing news/links for inclusion in the next WWW newsletter!
KOREAN IMMIGRATION 1903-2023 and HPR
I filed a story on the 120th anniversary of Korean Immigration to the Territory of Hawai’i that includes a short speech by Marie Ann Han Yoo.
Her photography exhibit runs through 2/10 at Honolulu City Hall. I also interviewed Abraham Kim of the Council of Korean Americans. We’re doing that K-pop heart sign. He told me how to do this after we threw a shaka!
Time to brush up on your Korean American history? Click thru to history videos I did for CKA Part 1 1800s to Korean War and Part 2 Korean War to present. If you want a different future, you must understand the past.
RESOURCES
Identity questions? I recast the definition of Asian American—please remember to cite your source!
Read my Scarlet Society article and listen to my interview on How to Write Your Divorce Story. I teach divorce story writing class because divorce is a social fact that needs to be dragged out of the Shame Closet. Divorce is hard, but staying in a marriage you want out of is worse. Divorce, for me, was a way to freedom and happiness.
For educators and families here in HI—go to Popolo Project for resources. This organization explores and defines what it means to be Black in Hawai’i. Go to the 12th annual African American film festival for Black History Month at the Honolulu Museum of Art. I spoke with Akiemi Glenn on HPR about this event and the intersection of Black and Hawaiian identities.
EXERCISE
I have started jumping on a trampoline! I highly recommend this.
THOUGHTS
Listen: you are not imagining things. It will take 132 years to close the gender gap.
Iranian women and men are dying to protest the absence of basic human rights for women. In Afghanistan, women are denied healthcare and banned from university. And here in the US, the federal government claims we cannot determine our physical destiny—we have no reproductive freedom.
I remind women of these facts, because we often feel that we can’t do something. There’s a perfectly LOGICAL and historical reason we feel this because the truth is, we live in a state of inequality. And we have been, for a long time. In China, women’s feet were bound for nearly 1000 years—for many, up until 1949. It took until 1974 before American women were allowed to have a credit card. And so it goes. Let’s get real. To succeed—we adapt and live and become adept at navigating a patriarchy. We do not live in a world that centers women’s needs or bodies.
What to do? Empower ourselves by writing, telling, moving, and living a story that is true to who we are. Not easy. But you got this! My mission is to help you through writing, become the self that you want to be. See you in class! Aloha, Stephanie