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 dangerous” — 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 Basic Sam Houston at 16, transforms her extraordinary life experiences into theatrical gold. From surviving 4 rifles pointed at her in Liberia’s Government 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 her multimedia method — combining dwell efficiency, audio dramas, and rising AI know-how — she creates artwork that each preserves historical past and speaks on to modern 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 exhausting, and now she’s attempting to starve herself. It’s shifting as a result of think about taking a prepubescent baby away from you.
Then whereas they’re at one other home, I modify garments and turn out 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 international locations, 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 unbiased.”
Why did they pull rifles on you in Liberia?
As a result of the president’s son saved asking me to bop. This was at just like the White Home of Liberia, and so they have been welcoming all the brand new People. However what he didn’t know is I simply turned down a extremely cute man, so why would I dance with you? After I informed 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 for those who 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, “Possibly you greatest go away 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 Basic Sam Houston. I didn’t discover that out till I used to be 16 as a result of my mom was pissed off. She wished to be a instructor, and he or she wasn’t allowed to go to Sam Houston State Instructor’s Faculty as a result of although 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 Occasions I Virtually Died.”
What initiatives 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 folks 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 youngsters and excessive schoolers like “Adam’s Navel” and “The Millennium Sport” about Uncle Sam and Miss Liberty deciding who thus far for the following millennium.
On the finish of every play, I’ve somewhat rap: “You see all of us are particular it doesn’t matter what they are saying, however we have now to work collectively to make a greater method for the youngsters and the long run to be all that they’ll, ’trigger we’re on this world collectively, every lady and every man.”
