Participation Type
Performance
Presentation #1 Title
“AFFRILACHIAN MEMORY PLAY: TOBACCO FIELDS” a play in one Act
Presentation #1 Abstract or Summary
When I came to understand myself as an Affrilachian Scholar/Artist, I found myself in a gendered, educated, semi-country, semi-urban, Black, Southern culture state of in between. My work joins the efforts of Black woman scholars such as Kimberle Crenshaw, calling for an indebt understanding of life at the intersections of race, gender, class and place. This project is a study of how the memory of survival, in its various iterations, among African American women in the region of Appalachia represent a multidimensional identity experience. I examine the expressions of Black women in Appalachia to understand the representation of an Affrilachian identity performance construct.
The Affrilachian Memory Play series, serves as a Performative Inquiry for understanding Affrilachian identity in its familial iterations. Tobacco Fields is a one act play within the series that presents the experience of one Black Appalachian girl, affectionately known as Girl #9, growing up as an insider/outsider within Appalachian Studies. Situated in rural Kentucky, the plays focuses on Girl #9's coming of age. Girl #9 negotiates her Affrilachian identity through her own memory and imaginative stories of surviving work, abuse and family. Her story suggests potentials for tracing personal histories of Affrilachia as word and concept more broadly with the discipline. Based on oral histories, fieldwork, poetry and personal interviews with Black women in and of the region, this staged reading yields a complex view of Affrilachia from multiple angles of creative, individual and collective survival.
At-A-Glance Bio- Presenter #1
Yunina Barbour-Payne currently serves as a Theater Educator in the Yes Prep Public School District in Houston, Tx. She holds an M.A. in Performance Studies from Texas A&M University. Barbour-Payne’s is a Scholar/ Artist whose interdisciplinary work involves Africana studies, Appalachian studies, folklore and Performance studies. As a scholar/artist she has performed regionally in Kentucky, Ohio, Virginia and Texas. Barbour-Payne’s performances can be found at the Museum of Blacksburg Odd Fellows Hall and have been presented at the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center in Cincinnati, Ohio.
Conference Subthemes
Diversity and Inclusion
“AFFRILACHIAN MEMORY PLAY: TOBACCO FIELDS” a play in one Act
When I came to understand myself as an Affrilachian Scholar/Artist, I found myself in a gendered, educated, semi-country, semi-urban, Black, Southern culture state of in between. My work joins the efforts of Black woman scholars such as Kimberle Crenshaw, calling for an indebt understanding of life at the intersections of race, gender, class and place. This project is a study of how the memory of survival, in its various iterations, among African American women in the region of Appalachia represent a multidimensional identity experience. I examine the expressions of Black women in Appalachia to understand the representation of an Affrilachian identity performance construct.
The Affrilachian Memory Play series, serves as a Performative Inquiry for understanding Affrilachian identity in its familial iterations. Tobacco Fields is a one act play within the series that presents the experience of one Black Appalachian girl, affectionately known as Girl #9, growing up as an insider/outsider within Appalachian Studies. Situated in rural Kentucky, the plays focuses on Girl #9's coming of age. Girl #9 negotiates her Affrilachian identity through her own memory and imaginative stories of surviving work, abuse and family. Her story suggests potentials for tracing personal histories of Affrilachia as word and concept more broadly with the discipline. Based on oral histories, fieldwork, poetry and personal interviews with Black women in and of the region, this staged reading yields a complex view of Affrilachia from multiple angles of creative, individual and collective survival.
