UNRULY: Reclaiming Our Bodies, Reclaiming Our Stories (Reading & Workshop)

The Free Black Women's Library is a grassroots funded literary hub, social site, Black Feminist archive, and community care space that features over 5000 books by Black women and Black non-binary folks, as well as a wide range of free public programs, special events, and creative workshops, a free store, period pantry, backyard garden, virtual reading club, and weekly book swap.

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The Free Black Women's Library
presents
UNRULY: Reclaiming Our Bodies, Reclaiming Our Stories
A Public Reading & Writing Workshop led by Antoinette Cooper
Sunday, December 14
3PM - 4.30PM

A debut book reading and community care space for UNRULY (Legacy Book Press, 2025), a groundbreaking poetry collection exploring Black women's experiences with medical racism, ancestral trauma, and bodily autonomy. Through selected readings, collective dialogue. and facilitated writing prompts, participants explore what it means to listen to our bodies' wisdom, slow down, and integrate our full selves.

This program creates space for Black folks to practice witness together while exploring themes of bodily autonomy, ancestral wisdom, and becoming whole. Includes trauma-informed writing exercises and community care practices.

*Age range recommended for this workshop is 16 and up

Books will be available for purchase.

Facilitator's Bio:
Antoinette Cooper is the author of UNRULY (Legacy Book Press, 2025), a poetry collection exploring Black women's experiences with medical racism, ancestral trauma, and bodily autonomy. She holds a Poetry MFA from Columbia University and is a Collective Trauma Facilitator and founder of Black Exhale. Cooper serves on the Advisory Board for CUNY School of Medicine's Narrative Medicine Track and has facilitated programs at The Met Museum, MoMA, Columbia University, and medical humanities conferences.
Of her UNRULY collection, poet aracelis girmay says: “Cooper writes her story into a gathering place—an essential, vibrant text of reckoning and testimony.”

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