I am Miya Shaquan Fowler — Black, queer, feminist, womanist, writer, poet, dancer, thinker, explorer, and experimenter,  in no particular order, all at the same time.  Through my creative practice and engagement with multidisciplinary thought, I explore questions about my location with the complex network of an expansive and fluid, yet stable Blackness — the diasporic web — and avenues of creating, maintaining, and transforming diasporic consciousness and connectivity. This necessarily includes questions about Black identities and identity formations; histories, cultures, and cosmologies; ways of being and knowing; survival within and resistance to white supremacist  patriarchal capitalism and its concomitant oppressions; and the unique expressions of God that we embody, engage, and sometimes stifle in our attempt to survive. 

My journey into asking and answering these questions began in earnest as a dancer with Wose of Charleston and as an undergraduate at College of Charleston. I majored in African American Studies, minored in Political Science, and completed extensive coursework in Dance. Through my interrogation of neo-traditional West African dance techniques and histories and exposure to elements of multiple Black cultures, I began to understand movement as a vehicle for deciphering and engaging the connecting threads within the diasporic web. 

During my graduate studies at Union Institute and University, I wrote an integrative literature review, titled “Connective and Expanding: Black Dance as an Expression of Diaspora,”  in which I proposed that Black Dance functions as a method of collective self-identification and affirmation within oppressive structures and  transcends spatial and temporal boundaries to carve new spaces of existence. The ideas proposed in this essay became foundational to my M.A. thesis, “Reaching Back, Feeling In, Dancing Forward: The Convergence of African Dance and Somatics for the Negotiation of Black Women’s Embodiment.”

In my thesis, an autoethnography with a creative component, I proposed that neo-traditional West African dance functions as a somatic movement practice for Black women in the US to uncover histories housed in our bodies and to express in ways outside of conventional Western and white standards of femininity. Through this autoethnography, I recognized that our bodies and how we express through them is not only shaped by the histories and cultures from which we emerge, but also that our expression carries connective and transformative capacity.

In the years following my thesis, I continued interrogating and applying the concepts of embodiment and somatics to my daily living, artistic practice, and theory-making. I wrote poetry and essays, which often flowed out of and worked with my dance practice. The collection of poems, essays, and dance work that emerged during this period are concerned with each of our unique expressions of the divine and how living and being as our full and whole selves puts pressure on the structures and systems that attempt to dehumanize us and rob us of our connection to our bodies, and therefore the rich memory and guidance held in our bodies. 

This independent work required me to deepen my connection with my ancestors, and I asked to know their names and their stories. As their stories— and consequently, my story—  have unfolded, I have been called toward an exploration of Black movement in its various iterations to better understand the routes that have made me. In this extensive and ongoing exploration, “Black movement” refers to a multitude of phenomena, including but not limited to voluntary and involuntary migration out of and into Africa, within the sphere of the Black Atlantic, and out of and into the American South; the political action and consciousness of Black people globally; and Black creative expression, such as dance, music, literature, fashion, and language that have the tendency to transcend the borders within which they were created. 

The voices and work of the Black women who have made me and led me on this path are central to this exploration. I stand on the shoulders of Lizzie, Essie, Edith, Annie, Joanette, Linda, and Jammie; as well as Zora, Pearl, Katherine, Maya, Ntozake, Audre, and bell, to name a few. This online space carries past and ongoing creations, and it functions as an offering to my communities and those who wish to learn and build together. Engage with me if you feel so inclined; or take what you need, and leave the rest. May you find yourself inspired to be and to feel. Peace.