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| Ashley Wilkerson |
I am lost. It is the correct floor but… I… am… lost. Maybe it is the white building? Maybe the brick red one? Or, maybe the vanilla cream building? They are connected by two stairways on alternate sides. Standing on the balcony of the brick red building looking down at the courtyard and pool, I call Ashley to find out in which colored building I can locate her. She answers promptly and steps out onto the corridor. I hear her voice. It is big. Commanding. Articulate with a hint of southern twang. Finally, my eyes connect with what my ears are hearing. Vanilla cream. Ashley is small in stature; 5 feet even to be exact, but do not let that fool you. Ashley is FIRE.
Entering her apartment, I am greeted by the smell of incense, sweet rhythmic sounds and an explosion of non-linear yet geometric shapes in various shades of the same color on very large canvasses throughout the room. There is art everywhere. In the nook are Ashley’s lush green plants providing the very necessary oxygen to fill the lungs. I marvel at the huge hand carved table in the middle of the room, which looks as if it painstakingly took many, many hours of meticulous work – it is amazing. Ashley’s significant other and phenomenal artist in his own right, Jamaal Stafford, painted all the magnificent art and hand carved the table. In the corner are shelves upon shelves of books, straight up and down, flat, leaning, some double stacked, but one stands out to me most of all, it reads ‘Tupac Shakur’. Interesting. Later on, I would discover Ashley dreams of being the female version of the late Tupac. Her verses are tight. Insightful. She even battles Hip-Hop Artist in her head. However, she tells me she lacks the rhythm of hip-hop. I disagree. It is simply semantics. We agree.
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| As Rena in Jitney |
Ashley Wilkerson is a graduate of Eugene Lang College – The New School for Liberal Arts in New York. She is an actor. Ashley has appeared in Film/Television shows such as the upcoming independent film Sweetwater [where she stars alongside Dean Cain and John Savage], The Deep End, Numb3rs, Nothing Happened and Swirl. You can find her in Music Videos by Floetry featuring Common, Cam’ron or Geno Young. You might have seen her on stage as Rena in Jitney, Frankie in Frankie & Johnny, Ruby Tuesday in Leonard’s Car, or Gigi in Coco & Gigi. On the other hand, maybe you saw her in TV Commercials for Choice Hotels, Subway, John Peter Smith Hospital, and NIKE. For those of you with a love for Theatre and the true art of spoken word, Ashley currently has a one woman show titled ‘Freckle In My Eye’ about a woman on Texas’ Death Row. Intense.
The one woman show is not a new concept for her. On the contrary, a very ambitious 19-year-old Ashley decided to have her first one woman show at the South Dallas Cultural Center titled ‘Papers from a Southern Supernova’s Purse.’
Who is Ashley Wilkerson?
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| The Actress |
Ashley sighs deeply before continuing.
“be obedient and do my part so that I can contribute to the greater good of society.”
“be obedient and do my part so that I can contribute to the greater good of society.”
Do you feel all this is predestined.
“I think so. Absolutely! I don’t have all the answers. I don’t know exactly what I need to do all the time but considering where I came from and the trials and obstacles that I was able to come out of with my sanity – and I’m still going through it – but I feel like early on my Grandmother told me I had the gift. There’s a lot of responsibility that comes with that. I didn’t understand it early on, she’ll be 80 in a couple of weeks, but she said I had the gift; I had the gift.
Early on I received a lot of attention - could be because I started off as a preemie. I’m the darkest one in my family and you hear those horror stories of the black sheep of the family but in many ways, especially with my Grandmother, mine was kind of reversed. In between sips of beer (and on good days), she would say, ‘you were the most beautiful black thing I saw, when you came home we put you on a white satin pillow and the next thing I heard was pow, pow, pow, pow, pow.’ I was like ‘What was that?’ She said ‘all the kids were fighting to get next to you’. If there was a show, she thought I needed to be in the middle of the show. ‘Dance, Ashley.’ ‘Do your poem.’ One of those types of experiences.”
Basically, a lot of this sounds like it comes primary from your Grandmother but also from your family being very supportive of you.
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| Ashley & Keevonya |
“I have a lot of support from friends and family, especially from my sister. My mother died when I was 10 of cancer and my father at the time suffered from a drug addiction, which lasted most of my childhood and he’s relapsed into my adulthood. But he’s a remarkable human being. My sister is really one of the best people on the planet; like no lie – I love – that’s her right there.”
Ashley points to a picture of Keevonya on her mantle.
“I absolutely love her! And that’s my brother.”
She directs me to John-John’s picture.
She directs me to John-John’s picture.
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| John-John |
“It’s me, my sister and my brother, as well as three sisters on my father’s side. After my mother passed and my father was locked up, we had to really rely on each other and a lot of great tragedy got us closer. My brother was shot and paralyzed two months after my mom died. He was 13. Then he was shot again at 17 and subsequently murdered at 28. So, we had a lot, a lot, a lot of things that wouldn’t always be the most positive.
But my sister moved me to Dallas when I was 12 years old because she said ‘I don’t want my sister being swallowed by the city’. Like I said I was born in Lubbock, Texas which is a small town in West Texas but I consider Dallas my home because that is where my heart is. And just when my sister had enough gumption… she was like 21 and she had a one year old son and she was going to school in Houston. And being the umm, just being a natural – it’s almost like she lived vicariously through me because my sister wanted to be an actress, she wanted to be a lawyer, she’s super talented, one of the best actresses I know and she’s a comedienne as well. Now she’s going back to school to study criminal justice. And so, I received a lot of support from my sister.
But, she had to deal with a rebellious 12 year old, yeah she saw potential in me but I was also acting a fool in Lubbock, I was acting out. My brother was wheelchair bound and in rehabilitation but he was still banging, he was so cute and fly and just feeling completely misunderstood. Hearing that I had the gift and knowing it but not always living up to my own potential because I was 12. And not understanding why my life was the way it was and even though I had heard such things I looked on TV and I didn’t see any little girls that looked like me. So, when I came to Dallas, my sister who you can see is yellow, was very, very adamant ‘you wear bright colors’, ‘you’re so beautiful’, ‘you’re so talented’.
Sometimes I get choked up because it’s almost like I’m having to tell her the same thing now as an adult. All the things that she told me, which made me the woman that I am, I can tell her that now cause we all need that. There’s certain times in our lives when we feel more empowered than others.”
Ashley got her hair braided prior to my arrival by a fierce sister in her own right – Khayriyyah Fahmi proprietor of Ether Keepers. The Mohawk-do seems to fascinate her; provides a necessary momentary distraction from the heaviness of our conversation. She tosses it a few times, glances at the ends and jumps right back into it. She worries that this makes her seem vain. I disagree. The adjectives that readily come to mind are ‘Phenomenal’ and ‘Powerful’.
“But overall I’m very, very fortunate to have had a bunch of people who validated me through a bumpy childhood. And there were times in my life that I held on to the negative things that people said. But as I’ve gotten older and I can look back… I am here off of someone’s prayers. A lot of people’s prayers. And I don’t take that for granted. I was always told I had an old soul and it’s just walking with that, I don’t know what it is.”
She is concerned with her time. I glance over at the time clock; we are about eight minutes into our conversation. There is nothing to be concerned about, already we have covered so much ground. It is so early into our conversation and her story amazes me. I did not expect any of this.
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| Young Ashley |
Ashley explains she used part of this chicks name in one of her plays.
“who was always trying to get like a 100, not try but she was getting 100s and I would get 90s. And this little teacher, Ms. Stanton, was like Ashley you can do this, you can do that, you can get a 100. I would do talent shows and she was like you can dance better than them. She said if I do all of my work, the last 10 minutes of class I could get up perform, I could tell stories and stories I did tell chile – some of them were real and some of them were make believe. But she gave me that platform to get up there and just... Who does that? I mean you have standardized testing. You have 30 other kids you got to deal with.
I remember teachers giving me their kid’s clothes. And I’m thinking was it a charity case or am I so special? I’d like to think it was both”
If you were not the right type of child, they would not have done it.
“I was so rebellious.”
They saw it. They knew what your potential was.
“They did! They were like her grades were good but that mouth isn’t. I’d read you, write you, tell all about you.”
What interest me so much about all of this is it sounds like, and looking at what you are doing now, you never gave up. Why do you think that was? Because it would have been easy with all of these issues to just say ‘forget it I’m going to do drugs’ or anything negative. Sounds like you had a whole lot of support but it still would have been so easy to go the other route. Why do you think you didn’t?
“It was just this understanding. I probably couldn’t always articulate it but that I was called to do this work. That I was chosen and when you are chosen to do certain things you can’t give up.
Now some days I do feel like giving up, especially when I lost my brother. I talk about it like it happened just yesterday but it’s going on four years this year. It is by far been the most devastating experience, it literally almost broke me. I saw what it did to my sister. I saw the impact that it had on my father. It was just terrible.
Now some days I do feel like giving up, especially when I lost my brother. I talk about it like it happened just yesterday but it’s going on four years this year. It is by far been the most devastating experience, it literally almost broke me. I saw what it did to my sister. I saw the impact that it had on my father. It was just terrible.
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| Ashley in Cuba |
That is so important.
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| Strength |
“Yeah! You know what I’m saying? And… I know God. I know God. I know God. I know God. I know that there’s a lot of people working for me to have this life. So, shame on me to not honor them by doing what I’m supposed to do. And I have to remind myself that cause like I said some days it’s not like… you just think God… especially with the industry I’m in it’s easy to do hoodrat stuff. You know that’s what everyone is doing. Everybody wants to be a star and when you are called to be an artist then there’s a responsibility. And beyond my art I am a survivor baby!”
Ashley pounds on the table to drive home her point.
“I think about little sisters and brothers all over the planet that lose their whole family to bombs. I can list these things that happened which are tragic but imagine losing your whole family. It could be worse. I know people who have not went through half of what I went through and they don’t have the peace and joy that I have.”
It’s all perspective.
“Yeah, it’s all perspective.”
With all of this, and based on you saying everybody always saying ‘Ashley dance’ ‘Ashley act’ ‘Ashley do this’, it’s really kind of surprising - do you think they said that because they saw it in you or they wanted to plant it in you?
“I don’t know. Could be a bit of both but I think they saw it because I was always animated and talking and fearless when it came to talking to people. My sister used to say ‘We thought you would be kidnapped cause you always used to talk to strangers.’ So, I always had this natural rhythm and was charismatic as a child.”
I’m really surprised, a lot of times, I find that when people tend to push a child in a certain direction that child rebels and goes away from it. I’m just kind of surprised you still went with it.
“There is a lot of internal pushing. And there is a flipside to all this pushing because I didn’t realize until later in life that I had struggled with being a perfectionist. It wasn’t until I was in a group counseling session about my brother and I was like… ‘I tried to… I was in school… and I wrote him letters… and I tried to show him a better life…’ and it was just I… I… I… me… what I did. And she said Ashley you are struggling, you are a perfectionist. People have high expectations but (I) have even higher expectations.
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| The Writer |
At 26, I’m 28 now, I started going to counseling. I started peeling back those layers and realizing it’s okay. It doesn’t have to be perfect. If you mess up it’s not the end of the world. I love the Arts. I love acting. I love writing. So, it’s not like they were pushing me to do something I didn’t love.”
What was the point in which you felt like this is it; this is what I’m going to do because you still had options. You still had options to go in another direction.
“My mother passed so I started writing poetry to cope with her death. By the six-grade I wanted to be… in this order: an actress, a rapper and a veterinarian. I would win these Creative Writing competitions and sign: Ashley: the actress, the rapper and the veterinarian. Unfortunately, when my dog died I stopped wanting to be a veterinarian. By the time I moved to Dallas it was just actress and a rapper. I just knew I was going to be like Tupac.”
Have you given up all hopes of being a rapper?
“You know… I can’t really stay on beat. I have a dope flow and I am really, really super witty and I love Hip-Hop. I’m always trying to challenge rappers in my head. But I don’t have like that rapper persona. I’ve tried. I really have tried because I feel Hip-Hop in my Soul. And because I can write it would be just dope – I could be Lauryn Hill. If I could stay on beat. But I just start rapping too fast, then I go too slow. Then it’s just like maybe you should just recite poetry.”
Or, maybe you just need to get a better producer who can keep up with you.
We laugh hard.
“That’s true! Cause sometimes I go fast then I go too slow because I’m trying to imitate Andre 3000. Then it’s like Ashley, Andre 3000 has like 3000 years of practice. So you’ll get it and you’ll try to do all of that and fit in all those syllables. And it’s like you need to break some of that down. And I have issues with Hip-Hop right now. So I don’t know, that’s on pause. But I did say I have a great idea. I’m going to break into [movies] as a rapper. This is before Nicki Minaj stole my game plan. And I’m just going to be this really dope rapper and then they’re going to offer me movie roles. Since it is more likely that I’ll get a movie role as a rapper than just a regular actress; which is the sad tragedy of the industry. But I’m going to come in rapping hard; they’re going to offer me a movie role.”
Ashley gets deep in character for the next line.
“I’m going to be so amazing and I’m going to be like ‘I had no idea. Like. I just. I don’t know. I just. I never in a million years thought I would be doing movies.’”
Don’t let Ashley fool you, not only is her sister a comedienne, she is one as well. We laugh even harder.
I still have the flier from your first one woman show where you hand wrote it out.
“Not the first one from like ten years ago! Stop! Girl! Not ‘Papers from a Southern Supernova’s Purse’! What an awful title! Please make me a copy!
I was like 19. After my freshman year of college. That summer I’d come back home and my sister was in the hood. I was just sheltered in Arts, and all the little hood boys was looking fly with their muscle shirts. And all the sudden I wasn’t trying to do any Ntozake stuff, I’m trying to save all the Malcolm Xs who’s talking to me. But that was so wonderful. I saw some of the poems that I had written and one of them was about my brother and it was all about trying not to get caught up…
That makes my heart sing because now I’m getting more recognition for “Freckle In My Eye” but to think that was my first… at 19. To think I was so bold to put on my own show. And to have the support from Vickie Meek of the South Dallas Cultural Center and Vickie Washington, one of the best teachers at Arts Magnet, to direct it and it was all just a bunch of poems streamlined together and I’m acting them out. And I’m so grateful that anybody showed up. Because people don’t have to show up or even take a flier or keep a flier. That means so much to me!
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| Tisha Crear & Ashley |
The concept of the one woman show was something Ashley learned while attending Arts Magnet, short for Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing and Visual Arts, where they not only emphasize artistic excellence but academic excellence as well. BTWHSPVA is the Alma Mata of such greats as Erykah Badu, Roy Hargrove, Norah Jones, Jamaal Stafford and Ashley Wilkerson, to name a few.
“I love Arts! I had a teacher named Jeff Farrell… he was so freaking incredible. He was new age. He was introducing the concept of one woman shows to me in high school. He introduced me to Anna Deavere Smith and people like that. Tisha Crear, ‘Teetah’ co-founder of Reciprocity, had introduced me to Rhodessa Jones. I had no idea that my piece ‘Freckle In My Eye’ would be about a woman on death row and that me and Rhodessa Jones would cross paths on numerous occasions. She is the Queen.”
I saw your new piece ‘Freckle In My Eye’ online a couple of months ago. It was very good. Are you going to tour it? What are you going to do with it?
“I took it to Austin in June. Girl I was just so happy to revamp it and get it out of Dallas. I hadn’t touched it in like a year and a half. It took me a minute because I wrote that piece a month after my brother died. That was my coping mechanism; that was my saving grace. I thought it was going to be a piece about my brother. Or I said it, but the Spirit said ‘Baby, it’s bigger! It’s bigger! Ya’ll good.’ I had no idea it was going to be about a woman on death row at all. I know that was God. I know that was the ancestors. I know that was my brother saying that there are more stories to be told.”
In June of this year, Ashley performed ‘Freckle In My Eye’ at the BAM Festival in Austin. She also conducted a workshop with twelve woman inmates in Travis County, which she described as powerful and very deep. Currently, Ashley is working on a book of poetry.
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| Fire |
Ashley’s story is one she is still writing. She is the face of a survivor. She has come a long way from Lubbock, Texas. The past is in the rear view mirror although never forgotten. Her sights are on the future. Ashley is on her grind and the grid is not a part of the grand scheme of things. Her story is profound. She could have been a statistic. However, she has taken her life and now uses her past as the fuel to carve her future with just as much detail as her beautifully intricate table. Now that is something for you to ponder while beginning your travels off the grid...
Be Strong... Stay Strong... Live Strong… Love Strong... Asuecion
Please visit www.dawnofashley.com for more information about
Ashley Wilkerson.
Please visit the following link to see the Sweetwater Trailer:
http://vimeo.com/32476426
http://vimeo.com/32476426
Every time I read your blog, I can't decide what's more impressive: your subject or your writing. Well done. Very, well done.
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