Heroine Tracks

By Aisha Raison

Aisha Raison's recent book is, according to her, "Me, standing in the desert buck naked for the world...I'm getting a great tan, but still scared of getting burned."

Heroine Tracks is a book that had been created since the release of Speaking in Cursive and Other Adventures of Little Girl Blue in 2012. This book a personal diary, a few pages from her life : revealing, honest and sincere. Ms. Raison tells tales of womanhood and its friendships (or sometimes the lack of), domestic violence, rising again after a fall, cheating, coping with the end of a marriage and more. As a Womanist, poet and mother of one, she wanted to reveal more than just the poetry and to remind women that they are not alone, whether it is getting out of a relationship, reintroducing herself to the woman that she is or getting over the hurt that she has endured.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Aisha Raison
• Release date: Jan 29, 2015
• ISBN: 9781311972156

Aisha Raison

Aisha Raison has proven to be one of the strong, young Womanist poets, producers and speakers of our time. Creative and outspoken, her poetry will move you and create new food for thought for the mind, body and soul. Aisha has written and recorded poetry throughout the south since 1997, creating Afrodeesiack Press and working in radio in cities such as Winston-Salem and Memphis. With her feminist image and words, she won and toured several southern poetry slams and readings and performs in coffee shops and college stages, retelling stories that influence and inspire those that have yet to have a voice. She has recently published a book of poetry (Speaking in Cursive and Other Adventures of Little Girl Blue, Afrodeesiack Press/Createspace IPP, 2012) as well as essays (Heroine Tracks: Essays and Poetry by a Superwoman, Afrodeesiack Press/Createspace IPP, 2015) and has done two short documentaries, one of which was based on her experience at Southern Fried Poetry Slam (Southern Girl, Epifani 9 Productions, 2013). She is also a motivational speaker and domestic violence advocate who occasionally works with programs such as the YWCA of Greater Memphis as well as a midday on air personality at 88.5 WQOX-FM in Memphis.

Book preview

Introduction

When I was around 8 years old, my mother gave me my first diary: a white book made like a small bible with a lock and key. Inside that book of magic, I told truths that I kept to myself, with fears that if I shared my thoughts and my opinions with the world, I would be ostracized or ridiculed by so-called friends or foes that would use my own words against me.

And trust me, it happened.

During a visit at my grandparent's house when I was an awkward yet dreamy 11 year old, one of my play cousins found my diary...the idiot opened the supposedly locked and secured book and read a wish that I made and placed on empty pages...to be beautiful. See, I thought that maybe if I were pretty, boys would like me, my aunts would be nicer and love me and I wouldn't feel so left out. So that wish, that dream of looking like a 1980's model like Beverly Johnson or Iman, was something I was waiting to come true. Like Pecola in Toni Morrison's first book, The Bluest Eye, I thought beauty was the end all to be all. That young man took my thought and my dream of beauty and stomped on it, looking for the joke that, for me, was not funny. He teased and laughed at me for making that wish, for thinking I could come close to pretty, for even writing it down. I remember being called baboon, totem poll, scarecrow...those ugly, cruel words that mean kids called kids that were weird or different from them, thinking that no one really gets hurt behind somebody playing.

But I got hurt. That one page that I shared that whimsical thought, that wish to go from being an ugly duckling to become a swan...that mere written thought got me ridiculed. I was a sensitive kid who didn't share everything with the world yet. I spent more time trying to make friends and influence people only to come off really weird because my social skills weren't up to par. And this moment didn't exactly make me look un-weird. That moment I was so embarrassed that I stopped sharing my words on an empty page and for two years I kept my thoughts to myself.

The fear of someone messing with me for my thoughts, calling me names because of my yearnings as an adolescent...that day stayed frozen in time in my head and in my heart. That was the moment that I learned that diaries with locks are not secure. I learned that when you're an insecure, socially awkward 11 year old, some thoughts you keep to yourself.

It was during those quiet, non writing years that I fell in love with music and lyrics. I loved reading the liner notes and lyrics to an album...and wondered if I could write my own. At 13, I started writing again, only this time, I had discovered a way to express myself without putting it in diary pages and hiding it from the world. I started writing music lyrics and poetry: the perfect way to express myself, what I wanted and what I desired. The best part was that I could express and tell truths about myself, and the hilarity of it was that people would be busy tapping to the beat to not even listen to the lyrics. From writing raps for the popular girls to writing poetry for the guys who didn't know how to express themselves, I had found a way to put my emotions on paper without someone calling me on my silliness.

That, ladies and gentleman, was when I discovered that I was a superwoman. A female Clark Kent by day, a writing-typing-expressing diva hidden in the dark shadows. It was that moment that instead of feeling insecure about my writing and my emotions that I started embracing myself in ways that no one would even notice. From that point on, my writing became my hidden superpower that I didn't share with the world. I thought about superheroes like Wonder Woman and Super Girl, who were everyday people who had this hidden talent that no one knew they had due to the fact they had another persona, another name, another costume.

For me, that is who Aisha Raison is for me: a Superwoman who spits poetry in a single bound and spins records to make you remember the good times as well as bad. Best of all, she's an activist, a mom, a mentor, a girlfriend slash artist agent, and so on, and so on and so on. If only most people knew that my life outside of Aisha Raison is actually quiet. It's peaceful. and there are only a few that know both sides of me.

This is how Heroine Tracks came to be. It was a book for years, but I had been afraid to share it because the thought of standing in the desert naked was a frightening feeling. I mean, I'm exposing a lot!! My thoughts my feelings, what I went through, how I got over...there are so many things I've shared with the world when it comes to this book.

Why now? After losing a mentor and a best friend in a matter of months, I was weak. I was far from gone. So many people wanted me to open up and talk, to either hold on to the grief or to let it go. I just wanted everyone to back off and let me think. So I started off my talking and telling everyone to give me a minute to think, but apparently some people though I meant 60 seconds, literally. I even yelled it on a few occasions. After a while, I had to go through drastic measures that stood out, and not necessary in the best way. But I had a