Jessica Hairston

Writing

Power of our Wombs

POWER OF OUR WOMBS is an ode, a tribute, and honor work. It’s my mirror work to go back and fetch- infant me. It’s my ‘personal responsibility’ towards Sankofa. I hope these poems elucidate or better yet sing both the gospel and the blues of my entrance and when I’m gone, my legacy. Knowing the power of our wombs, the homes I’ve had, has finally made me proud of my origin story. These stories are turning the loss and grief, the abandonment and isolation, the distrust, the shame, from dirty pain to clean pain. I’ve come to accept these experiences as the other face, the agreement of love and for love. This book is for youth of rage, the parent, the social worker and even the lawmaker. It’s for the long awaited conversation at the dining table, it’s for families reuniting.

 

buy it!

 

More On My Writing

Growing up, I was smitten for my music loving-and-playing uncles which led me to fall in love with the art they adored; expressions such as: Ragtime/Jazz, Country, and Funk music. This rhythmic upbringing led me to songwriting and composition, as well as a healthy indulgence in drum set, percussion, guitar, and flute. Evermore, my pleasure of R&B and my need for Hip-Hop/Rap and Metal/Heavy Metal reinvigorated my own focus on where love and tragedy meet rage and protest, meet rhythm. One of my greatest compliments is that my writing translates like music. I find this could not be more true because the impact that music has had on my self expression is incalculable. As it pertains to my writing influences, my earliest aspirational canonized literary writers and thinkers were Maya Angelou, Langston Hughes, Zora Neale-Hurston, Toni Morrison, Phyllis Wheatley, Claude McKay, and James Baldwin. But to truly become the writer I am today, four + years ago, around 2019, when I redirected my focus towards a professional writing career, I knew I needed a deeper dive into the written arts to find authors with writing styles and voices akin to mine. Throughout this journey, I have found myself to be most influenced by Fatimah Asghar, Warsan Shire, Danez Smith, Mahogany L. Browne, Alok Vaid-Menon, June Jordan, Gwendolyn Brooks, Claudia Rankine, Wanda Coleman, Truong Tran, Mimi Tempestt, and many more. Aside from penning personal narratives, I value creating solidarity and protest poems, ode, obit, and elegy/eulogy poems, and other prose pieces for lengthier narratives. My writing style seeks to have no limits so I implore freeform and canonized poetry styles from mainstream and undervalued cultures. I have played with sonnets, ballads, epics, pantoums, decimas, to ghazals, to playing with/no punctuation and many other impactful crafting techniques. Writing is as much about the internal experience, the product which exists like a keepsake or memento for me- the writer, but also the communal experience which is the self expression, the witnessing by others (and even better the uplift of others) and their testimonials. 

I frequently, read my poetry at open mics and book readings! In the future, I hope to republish my book as a full length collection. I hope to have my book discussed in book clubs, in college classes, and be on more bookstore and libraries shelves. Finally, I aim to explore biographical writing, memoir writing, historical fiction, plays, screenplays, flash fiction, short fiction, and journalism.

 

Testimonials

“This is a work of raw & undeniable force. A kali-encoded reclamation of personal narrative, familial histories & mythologies. Jessica Hairston, in her journey of harnessing power & potency through a myriad of timelines, writes us into a symphony of no boundaries. nesting in the chasm of death & birth, purgatory & heaven, intimacy & trauma, we are submerged in an amniotic sac of truth; that holds for only so long before the membranes of survival & memory are destined to break. Power of Our Wombs is a delivery of reckoning. Measuring Black womanhood against the expectancy of state violence & institutional righteousness. This collection labors against these injustices. it cracks silences. it sweats. it pushes. it screams. it cries. It kinetically positions itself & ushers forth a new paradigm of how Black women seek balance for our collective consciousness & for our bodies.
Mimi Tempestt
Mimi TempesttAuthor of The Delicacy of Embracing Spirals & The Monumental Misrememberings
“‘Power of Our Wombs’ pulled at me, not away from myself, but ever towards Jessica’s story, it served as a space for me to dive inward with her words as a guide. It rode the waves of grief, joy, sadness, and self discovery both expansively and intimately, and felt like a conversation between myself and a close friend. ”
Maud Alcorn
Maud AlcornRapper, Author of Black Girl Flesh
“Once in a lifetime a book and a writer comes along and changes literature as we know it. Power of Our Wombs is that book and Jessica Hairston is that writer. Having read this challenging book, I am, myself, changed as a writer and more importantly, a human being. What are we if not human and what is poetry if not a fight to the death for the sake of humanity? Read this book and know that you will be forever changed.”
Truong Tran
Truong TranEducator, Author of Book of Perceptions & Book of The Other
“When reading "Power of Our Wombs" by Jessica Hairston, I see the book from multiple perspectives. At first glance I see a quiet, intense, 14 year old, young woman, wise beyond her years with a unique gift for writing, here I see her through the eyes of a caring teacher. My second set of eyes sees an emerging intellectual with a deeper, more passionate desire to purge demons who have been haunting a loving, caring creative writer with a growing set of experiences, gifts and a very compelling story to tell. My final set of eyes sees Jessica and the story of her wombs from the perspective of an educator who teaches Advanced Placement African American Studies and recognizes the historical time period and the tale of drama, passion, hurt and survival driven home by Jessica's story. "Power of Our Wombs" fits well in a literature classroom as well as part of history curriculum and is intense, passionate and real. It tells a story of life, death and the rebirth of a soul but above all, it is a beautiful story by a beautiful author,”
Anthony GreenEducator, African American History & AP African American History
“Hairston’s exquisite book, Power of Our Wombs is a powerful, unrelenting truth-telling.  Her poetry weaves multiple, complex narratives of what it is to be a Black, adopted woman in America. As an adoptee, I felt her words like a wave of visceral emotion.  This book taps into the heart of both adoption trauma and white supremacy in America. Hairston is the embodiment of raw, loud courage and we all need to be listening to her words.”
Rebecca WellingtonEducator & Author of Who Is a Worthy Mother? An Intimate History of Adoption
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