The birth of language is menstrual

Inspired by Cecilia Vicuña’s book, The Read Thread, and the myth of the Wawilak Sisters—the Aboriginal Australian tale of the birth of language and cat’s cradle through menstrual blood––my work in storytelling, anthropology and menstrual research roots itself in language born from the body and the menstrual blood of our early ancestors.

Red Memory is a cross-genre hybrid saturation in menstrual language braiding itself around ecological crisis.

Red Memory was born from many threads: mysteriously prolonged amenorrhea (the absence of a period), Hakomi sessions that led to a buried memory of crashing a red bike into a tree and bleeding profusely, the myth of the Wawilka Sisters, and a deep longing to greater understand the inner and outer symbolism of menstrual blood beyond the mind and reality.

Working with Radical Anthropology, theories of human origins began to make sense: coalitions of menstruators banning together, bleeding together. These theories immediately spoke to my body on an innate level, and I began to wonder what ties grow between dreams, menstrual perceptions, and atrocity. If periods are hidden, disgusting, and neglected by way of insufficient period products, how does their POWER manifest in the outer world? Oil drilling, fracking, war, gun violence, violence, and reproductive laws against those who have the innate power to die and resurrect with each monthly cycle.

In homage to the menstrual works of Cecilia Vicuña and Chris Knight, the journey into the menstrual origin of language and Red Memory begins with the Wawilak Sisters…

What if litter/garbage/refuse is a metaphor for the silencing of menstruation and menstrual inequity?

Published by FlowerSong Press, Red Memory plays with language, image, and tongue to shed light on the menstrual metaphors we ignore in daily life.

From dreamwork influenced by poet Penelope Shuttle to attuning to menstrual images strew across the sidewalk, Red Memory revives and entwines menstrual threads.

Listen to the birth of Red Memory on Femme On Collective’s Poetry Theatre podcast.