Standing on the steps of a historic slave home, Kijana Wiseman embodies the ache and resilience of numerous moms separated from their kids. Her efficiency piece “No Maya” — Liberian English for “don’t really feel unhealthy” — weaves collectively private memoir, historic trauma, and triumph in a story that spans continents and generations.
The Texas-born artist, who found her lineage to Common Sam Houston at 16, transforms her extraordinary life experiences into theatrical gold. From surviving 4 rifles pointed at her in Liberia’s Govt Mansion to sustaining her ancestor’s Rosenwald College property, Wiseman defies standard boundaries between efficiency and lived expertise.
Her journey from Peace Corps volunteer to tv host, from classical soprano to storyteller, displays a uniquely American narrative of reinvention and resistance. By means of her multimedia method — combining reside efficiency, audio dramas, and rising AI expertise — she creates artwork that each preserves historical past and speaks on to up to date audiences.
Inform me about your participation on this efficiency.
I welcome everyone. I’m on the step of the slave home, and I’m sleeping once they come up. I begin crying and singing “No person, No person,” after which they are saying what’s flawed. I inform them that Grasp took away my 11-year-old child, my child lady Leslie, then took her to a different farm. I inform about how Elizabeth escaped and got here again and the way they whipped her so arduous, and now she’s attempting to starve herself. It’s transferring as a result of think about taking a prepubescent little one away from you.
Then whereas they’re at one other home, I alter garments and grow to be, with a petticoat and a fan, the spouse, the proud spouse of Jack. We married, we emancipated, and it’s superb.
What’s your background as a performer?
I’m a coloratura soprano. I sing in seven languages. I carried out in 23 nations, and it ain’t over but. I had a TV present in Liberia, West Africa, for six years. I used to be there as a Peace Corps volunteer the primary two years, after which I turned a GDI — what they name over there “g–d–n impartial.”
Why did they pull rifles on you in Liberia?
As a result of the president’s son stored asking me to bop. This was at just like the White Home of Liberia, they usually have been welcoming all the brand new People. However what he didn’t know is I simply turned down a very cute man, so why would I dance with you? After I advised him no, I didn’t need to dance, he determined to pursue it and ask me a number of instances. Then I attempted to flee him, and he grabbed me by the arm. I screamed, “N—a, please cease!” I pointed my finger at him and mentioned, “I’m from Texas, darling. You’re impolite, crude, barbaric, perverted, uncivilized, and should you ever contact me once more, I’ll rip your balls off.”
It made the newspapers two days later that I threatened his life. However his mom despatched the guards away and mentioned, “Perhaps you greatest depart Little Miss Texas alone.” She adopted me after that. That was December 1973.
Inform me about your loved ones heritage.
I’m the great-great-great-great granddaughter of Common Sam Houston. I didn’t discover that out till I used to be 16 as a result of my mom was pissed off. She needed to be a trainer, and he or she wasn’t allowed to go to Sam Houston State Instructor’s Faculty as a result of regardless that her grandfather taught there, her mom was Black. Her grandfather, John Wesley Wilson, who’s Sam’s grandson, constructed the Rosenwald College up in Huntsville. Mom Wanda inherited it, and he or she handed it on to me. So I’m sustaining it as Rosenwald Acres with outside occasions and an Earth Day competition yearly.
How does Juneteenth hook up with your private expertise?
It was so humorous. We have been within the restroom when it simply popped into my thoughts how I wouldn’t have been allowed to make use of this restroom once I was 14, 15, going to the library. I beloved the library right here, and I discuss that in “No Maya and All of the Instances I Nearly Died.”
What tasks are you engaged on now?
I’ve some nice kids’s performs and tales on kijana.com. I’m engaged on one proper now referred to as “The Particular One thing” about Liberian twins who saved their cash for 3 months to purchase one thing particular. I’m making it into a visible slideshow utilizing Pixar characters with AI. The ethical is there are some issues on this life that aren’t on the market, and our youngsters’s integrity is a kind of issues.
The place can individuals discover your work?
Go to kijana.com — I’ve the primary 10 chapters of my memoirs as an audiobook with sound results. I’ve a YouTube channel at Kijana Wiseman. I’ve performs for kids and excessive schoolers like “Adam’s Navel” and “The Millennium Sport” about Uncle Sam and Miss Liberty deciding who to this point for the subsequent millennium.
On the finish of every play, I’ve a little bit rap: “You see all of us are particular it doesn’t matter what they are saying, however we now have to work collectively to make a greater means for the kids and the longer term to be all that they will, ’trigger we’re on this world collectively, every girl and every man.”