No Fairy Tale Here

Performed by the Grand Rapids Women's Chorus at their Spring Concert, Finding Home, on May 11, 2024. Words by Robyn Watson, music composed by Zanaida Robles, narration by Makaela Lewis.
This selection is inspired by woman warrior-writer, Ida B. Wells-Barnett and tells of her extraordinary writing and artistry and how she fought racism and oppression through literature. This is a powerful statement about the responsibility we have to tell the stories of those whose voices have been marginalized.
Robyn Watson's bold, sobering poetry highlights Ida B. Wells-Barnett as a beacon of truth during a brutal period of our nation's history. The composer, Zanaida Robles, takes fact and blends it with imagination that answers the question of what it must have been like to tell the story of lynching during the late 18th and early 19th centuries in the USA. Even with what one imagines to be Wells-Barnett's shattered, frustrated, furious, and fiery heart, the warrior-woman wrote on.
Please listen to the story that is no fairytale, but that still provides a lesson from which we can learn today-that is, that even when terrified, walking with your face to the sun's truths makes the shadows fall behind.