Yoni Ki Baat

The title of her piece “An Open Letter to my High School Friends” pretty much says it all. The biggest gift VagMo and YKB have given her is the power to use her voice and speak her truth. Ina says: “ I started my college career becoming disillusioned with old relationships while making new ones that empowered me to be and explore all that I am. Now that I’m leaving the space that’s allowed me to foster this growth, it feels right to come full circle and finally confront the feelings I’ve felt about the relationships I’ve had. I want to make a shoutout to my best friend Kate, the high school friend who gave me the courage to tell my story and be myself.” This piece is about forgiving her white peers for their microaggressions, and finally being able to fully express and accept herself after all this time. https://womenslunchplace.org/donate

Moffat's piece titled “Yo No Quiero Joder” highlights her coming to terms with her sexuality. She takes listeners on her emotional voyage where she grapples with how familial and societal perceptions of sexuality influenced her own perceptions of her sexual identity. She hopes this piece sheds light on voices of the LGBTQ+ community which aren’t normally heard. https://womenslunchplace.org/donate

Noelle's monologue “Hairytale”  is a storybook tale about a mixed woman of color and her journey of self-discovery through her natural hair. https://womenslunchplace.org/donate

In her second year of YKB and final year in Vagmo, Sarah Cristine decided to unearth and revamp a poem she had written freshman year about her experience as one of the few women of color in her all-white girl's high school academy. Her monologue, entitled "For Me,"  is a reflection of frustration and healing, of hurt and of hope. As you listen to her piece, Sarah Cristine hopes you feel the same fire in your belly that she's held onto her whole life, and the triumph she feels at having channeled it into something as positive and wholesome as YKB. https://womenslunchplace.org/donate

Dr. Mystery's piece, titled "Symptoms," is about the way colorism has hurt their self-confidence as a darker-skinned South Asian person. They explain “I know a lot of times people make throwaway comments about someone else's body and don't think it's a big deal, but your words can really have an impact on some people. Even if I am aware that dark skin is beautiful, it's hard to always apply that thinking to myself. We are so much harder on ourselves, and those messages can be so deeply internalized.” https://womenslunchplace.org/donate

Chichi’s monologue “A Clarification” is about her experience growing into her blackness and her journey towards self-acceptance and loving her black skin. It also deals with her frustrations in being a black woman in a culture that commodifies black cultures (as expansive as they are) while either ignoring or actively degrading black people, especially women. https://womenslunchplace.org/donate

Maria's piece “Chicken Sandwich” is about the different experiences she’s had with exotification and fetishes as a Latinx woman. In her monologue, Maria talks about how racism is implemented through exotification. Maria explains “This is a type of racism that is not talked about, and it is oppressive in its own way. The attraction towards the non-western has to satisfy a certain area of desire, yet it is not enough to be taken seriously. That is where the real oppression happens when it is all about your ethnicity, not who you are as a person.” https://womenslunchplace.org/donate

Amy's piece "The Wall" is about how Latin culture objectifies women from a young age, making them prone to thoughts about constantly trying to satisfy a man. https://womenslunchplace.org/donate

Maria's poem, "American Dream Child," is about her experience navigating a world of privileged white people as a young Latina immigrant. At its core, though, the poem is a love letter to her parents, who she moved to the US with when she was three years old. It's about the let downs of the American Dream, it's about the sacrifices her parents had to make to be here, and it's about the responsibility that she feels to make all of those sacrifices worthwhile. https://womenslunchplace.org/donate

Gladys’ piece “White Bread” is about her coming to terms with her experience from last semester when she dated for the first time. She chose to revolve her piece around the last text that she sent the person, when she finally allowed herself to feel angry at them. https://womenslunchplace.org/donate

 “To Love for the First Time” is about falling in love for the first time and learning how to accept and welcome love. But specifically, it's about the way her Asian background combined with the images of love she has seen on screen growing up impacted the way she navigated this relationship. https://womenslunchplace.org/donate

“I Speak in Apology” is the last word on a failed relationship that helped Naveen start to face a lot of trauma she’s pushed off since childhood. Her monologue seeks not to paint her as the innocent victim, but finally take a stand on actions she let slide. She states “I spent so much of that relationship apologizing for who I was and cultivating someone satiable that was worthy of love. I sacrificed my physical and mental wellbeing in order to be with someone who fell for this idea of me and was constantly at odds with who I really was. I apologized every single day and 9 times out of 10 I didn’t need to.” This piece is about rebuilding self and fighting old haunts. https://womenslunchplace.org/donate

Hello, I am Christina Bissereth and I am Bruna D’Amore Giampietro.  Welcome to our Director’s Note for Yoni Ki Baat! In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, students at Boston University had their 2020 Spring semester cut short. Consequently meaning that our onstage and in-person performance of Yoni-Ki-Baat was cancelled. Yoni-Ki Baat, or YKB, is a world-wide attempt to create a platform for women of color, queer women, and non-binary folks to share their intersectional experiences through original monologues. We were absolutely heartbroken over this cancellation as we have worked tirelessly for the success of this performance, spent countless hours organizing, and worked with each performer to ensure that this community has a voice. This loss, however, is not only felt by us. 100% of our ticket sales were meant to be donated to our community partner, the Women's Lunch Place, a nonprofit in Boston that supports women who are facing homelessness by helping restore their dignity through providing them with hot meals, showers, shelter, and a supportive community. Now more than ever, organizations like the Women’s Lunch Place need to be supported and initiatives such as YKB need to be protected. Since YKB  provides marginalized communities with a platform to speak their truths without restrictions, the erasure of these stories would be the erasure of these womxn’s experiences. It is for that reason that we have come up with an alternative project to transform their performances onstage into an auditory experience, easily accessible for everyone. It is with immense pride that we present to you our Yoni-Ki-Baat podcast. This YKB podcast is a collection of twelve episodes that shed light on experiences regarding intersectionality and its broad spectrum within the female identity. Each episode features a wide range of topics ranging from interacial relationships, hair politics, racial fetishchism, class struggles, sexuality, institutional racism, and much more. At Boston University, YKB has become a space for womxn to claim their defiance by speaking up about their oppression and to rebel against the stereotypes and misconceptions society has created about them. As directors, we refuse to allow the silencing of womxn and ask that you listen to these powerful stories. We also invite you to donate to the Women’s Lunch Place to ensure that women in need receive their indispensable services in this time of crisis. Together, we are able to take a step further into expanding feminist discourse and directly fighting for womxn’s rights. Donate here: https://womenslunchplace.org/donate