Junior Varsity (A Reading and a Workshop)

Song: Mad (feat. Lil' Wayne) by Solange


A few months back, I participated in a reading created and run by three (now-graduates) fellow Columbia Nonfiction candidate fellows. The reading series, appropriately named "Chimera" is for writers to share hybrid work: essays, poetry, redacted poetry, fiction-ish things, prose poems, etc. It was my first reading outside of a conference setting (the Sigma Tau Delta conferences I presented at in 2014 and 2015) and I read a hybrid prose poem and an in-progress essay on the idea of God as a black woman. I drank a glass of tequila (Jose Cuervo) beforehand and pulled a Hemingway, throwing my papers to the floor as I went through them. Overall, it went really well and then I forgot about how mortifying it was to read in front of a packed room.

While I was on my short vacation two weeks ago, I was contacted by a woman who had seen me read at Chimera and enjoyed my piece about God. She asked me if I'd like to participate in her monthly "performance workshop" called Junior Varsity. Since I'm done with classes and preparing to write my thesis, I figured I should probably start getting used to reading my work aloud. (As of right now [yes, even after this reading] I don't really breathe when I read my work...I might take two or three breaths and talk very fast, trying to get finished.) The theme for the upcoming workshop was "Myth and Magic in Everyday Life," which made her think about my black woman as God piece and contacting me.

At Junior Varsity, the reader brings in an in-progress piece to be read in front of the audience and briefly workshopped afterwards. The piece I really wanted to read was an essay I'd begun about the Angry Black Woman stereotype, Beyonce and Solange, and my own anger issues. There was only one problem: I couldn't find the essay anywhere.

Let me tell you about the drama of finding this essay. I knew I'd written it because it had a very particular structure that made me hate it, so I decided not to turn it into to workshop and write an entirely new piece. I could find the 1000 word version of the essay, which I hated even more than the longer one because it seemed to have no real subject. So anyways, I can't find the essay on my OneDrive or my Google Drive, I figure it's on my actual laptop. I email the woman, how I'd like to read the essay and I'd be cutting it close, but I get back on Sunday night (the reading is on Tuesday) and I'll email it to her as soon as I find it. I get home Sunday and scour my laptop for this essay, searching my entire hard drive for key words like "Solange" "cornrows" "#BoycottBeyonce" and I'm not finding it anywhere and I'm just like 😓😟. After a couple hours, I'm like, okay, it's missing, I must have deleted it, and I'm mad AF at my past self because I wanted to revise that essay for my thesis. Like I said, I had just gotten back from my vacation, so I'm cleaning off my bed, getting ready to go to sleep and find this thick packet of paper--IT IS THE ESSAY, STAPLED AND PRINTED. So then, I'm excited and frustrated at my past self for printing out a single copy of this essay, the only thing that exists. I email the woman that I found the essay and I'll get it to her the next day. I scan it at work, that doesn't work, so I scan it using my phone and it looks terrible, but I send it to her anyways the day before the workshop.

The day of the workshop, I revise and revise and revise as I walk to and from getting my lunch, and while I wait for Panera to make it. For the performance workshop, we're supposed to read for 3-10 minutes and two hours beforehand, I still haven't read the essay aloud. *upside down smiley face*

Junior Varsity is a performance workshop held at Joie DeVine, a small neighborhood bar in Andersonville (north side of Chicago). In exchange for hosting the reading, the hosts tell the owners of the bar that we will come, read and drink merrily. I arrived to the reading with one of the hosts of Chimera, who had shared my info with the hosts of Junior Varsity. Of course, I'm nervous AF--I'm about to read an essay about black women and anger to a predominantly white audience, an essay I haven't practiced, and am not very proud of. I order a Moscow Mule and talk to the few people that came to hear me read/perform/workshop.

I'm a writing nerd, so, of course, I love workshops. I love the cone of silence. I love receiving criticism. It turns out that I'm going to be the last reader at Junior Varsity. There are four readers: myself, a man reading a fiction piece, a woman reading poetry and a woman who reads a poetics piece. I read my piece last, getting up onstage and forgetting to breathe as I breezed through ten pages of nonfiction separated into sections with hashtag headers. I was the only reader who was a first-time reader. What's great about Junior Varsity is that the hosts take notes and facilitate the workshop with the audience, following their three Ps: point, prune and ponder. A lot of people commented on my structure and ways that I could expand the essay, building on things I'd briefly mentioned: mental health, relationship to anger and the history of  stereotypes (i.e. Sapphire). The workshop got me very excited about my essay and I feel a lot better about its current state than I did before the performance workshop. I am officially a Junior Varsity alumna! Which means I can return whenever I feel like I need to be workshopped on a specific piece and I can attend workshops and help listen and workshop other JV participants (while enjoying moscow mules and popcorn)!

Junior Varsity was a wonderful and eye-opening experience. Good vibes all around, even better people, and a community I can return to and trust with my work.

Now to get back into the groove of writing and revising...