Notes from the Motherfield LIVE! Online / Dec 5

Saturday, December 5, 2020 on Zoom

6pm Tucson MT / 5pm PT / 8pm ET.

This event is ASL interpreted. Accessibility for the Deaf and hard of hearing community thanks to Brandy Resnick and Kathy Murtaugh.

Ticket sales closed at midnight Dec 4.

Regular $20 / Discounted $15 / Gift-a-ticket $20

KPI will donate Gifted tickets to women of color and Deaf community members who wouldn’t otherwise be able to attend. Contact Tina@KorePress.Org to request a Gifted ticket and she will be happy to get you access.

When you purchase tickets, you will be sent Zoom access instructions just prior to the event.

The Motherfield is a movement of radical mothers dedicated to telling complicated truths and listening to other women. Story-coaching, knowledge, and event support is shared by storytelling alumni and staff to sustain the effort of building connections and communities of care through story telling.

Kore’s eighth listening session in this series presents five amazing mothers who teach, write, heal, act, edit, organize, activate, play music, coach, make art, do sex work, and tell stories. Based on Kore’s online essay series and newsletter feature, “Notes from the Motherfield,” the LIVE event presents spoken work by rad mamas across the US telling their unique truths in 10-minute stories about the wild, wooly, sacred, thorny, liberatory, stunning, real and sometimes painful encounters with live while mothering.

Help us close 2020 (already!) with these superheroes:

Kymberly Cutter is an herbalist, writer, and career sex worker, a former Montessori teacher and parenting educator. Kymberly spend over a decade in education. Kymberly is a multi generational parent of four ( three biological) and had her first child in 1995 at the age of 26. A second child followed in 1997, and for a few years she worked full time at home raising them. When her third child was born in 2007 she moved in to a collective home with a close friend and her daughter and still resides in a collective space with no walls, three co parents and two teen girls, a cat, 3 rats, and a snake.

Vivian Smith is steady, intense; playful when least expected, fiery when needed, and always on the move. She is the kind of person who lays down a beat before scribbling out a paragraph. She follows the rhythm of her life, be it with a pencil on a notepad, spare chopsticks with dinner, or claps and protest chants. Named after her sharp-tongued and equally fiery great-grandmother, Vivian has learned to channel that intensity into righteous anger at injustice, especially in Black, Brown, and Indigenous, LGBTQ, and disabled communities. Vivian, her wife Travonne, and two kiddos found their way from Selma, Alabama to Tucson, a city equal parts art and activism, to become more politically active. Traveling with her family, reading with friends, searching for the perfect snoball, and infusing every moment with rhythm and Japanese outbursts are a few things that bring Vivian joy.

Lisa DiDonato Brousseau is a science editor, an actress, and an Italian girl from New York who likes a good story. She’s been part of Portland’s improvisational theater community for nearly 20 years. As Bridge City Improv, she and her husband, Beau, produce comedy shows; they also work as role-play actors in much more serious scenarios, while training police officers, doctors, and such. Lisa came late to motherhood, which means she’s navigating menopausal hormone flashes as she tends to her hyperactive/autistic 9- and 11-year-old boys. Thankfully, everyone in the Brousseau home has a good sense of humor and is nimble on their feet.

Tia L. Tsosie-Begay is a Diné woman from the Tangle People Clan and born for the Under-His-Cover Clan. Her maternal clan is Water’s Edge and her paternal clan is Water-Flows-Together. She has lived in Tucson for 22 years and calls Fish Point, AZ on the Navajo Nation her home. Tia grew up guided by her mother, Arlene Tsosie. After graduating from The University of Arizona she married her partner, Jasper Begay and had 3 smart and silly girls. She works as an Elementary School Educator and volunteers her time with various local organizations that progress education and opportunities for girls. Other days, she sits on the couch in her pajamas waiting for the new Mandalorian to drop. She tackles motherhood with Excel spreadsheets, planned out holiday activities, a messy house and too many unmatched socks for her comfort level. She dreams of Disneyland days and when you didn’t have to say, “Keys, Phone, Wallet, MASK!”

Emcee:

Adiba Nelsonis a New York City girl turned desert dweller. She currently resides in Tucson, AZ and is the author of the popular children’s book about inclusion, Meet ClaraBelle Blue. Adiba is also a contributing writer for online magazine The Mighty, My Brown Baby, Everyday Feminism, and The Huffington Post. Her book, Meet ClaraBelle Blue is loosely based on her precocious daughter, Emory, and for this reason she has made it her life’s mission to ensure that children and adults of all abilities have access to the same opportunities and representation in life. See the video of Adiba’s performance here.

Curator & Host:

Lisa Bowden, Kore Press Institute co-founder, has developed Kore’s 27-years long list of titles, artists, and award-winning community programming as a Publisher, activist, writer, editor, and intersectional feminist culture worker. She was named the University of Arizona English Department 2018 Alumni of the Year Award, a Maryann Campau Fellow for poetry from the University of Arizona Poetry Center, and a Woman on the Move Awardee from the YWCA. Listen to an interview with Lisa on KXCI’s Artistories about Notes from the Motherfield LIVE here.

Thanks to Lisa Bowden, Motherfield visionary, curator, and host; to alumni storytellers Tenecia Phillips, Barrie Cole, Rameen Ahmed, Soma Mei Frazier, Tina Howard, Adiba Nelson, and Charlie Buck for story coaching support; and to Denise Uyehara for behind the scenes tech!

Gifted tickets will be provided to BIPOC woman or Deaf community members who wouldn’t otherwise be able to attend.

Ticket sales closed at midnight MT Dec 4.

The concept of the motherfield was coined by Joy Harjo on her blog long ago and refers to the imaginal colliding that happens in the motherfield––where only truth exists—somewhere between grief and beauty, the ineffable and mundane, boundlessness and numbing routine lies a sacred, and profane space. We speak, and listen to, these stories to keep the narratives about mothering complicated, to pierce the veil of perfection and silence, and to make manifest our invisibilized labors. We see you, we hear you, we appreciate you!

See more Motherfield info, bios, and links to videos of the stories here: October 25 2019, August 16 2019, April 12 2019. Individual videos become available from prior shows. Screenings of an entire show are available for $10.

In Notes from the Motherfield, we enter into these spaces and listen to one another’s unique stories in order to keep narratives about mothering complicated and multiple. To pierce the veil of perfection and silence, and to keep the often invisibilized labor and oppressions of women and mothers accessible. We see you mamas, we are listening with our ears and our hearts.

You can support this powerful storytelling program and the intersectional feminist work of Tucson’s Kore Press Institute here.

Interested in telling a story? See the Motherfield FAQs.

KPI is a nonprofit working at the nexus of arts and justice dedicated to radically connected communities, to amplifying women’s voices, publishing, and social justice education. Kore Press is one of four remaining feminist presses in the country over 20 years old. Kore’s award-winning work has impacted communities locally and nationally for 27 years.