NEW YORK – Stories play essential roles in a young person’s development and expressive abilities.

Sharing one’s personal experiences is also significant in fostering humanity and building narratives as well as giving someone a chance to realize that they are not alone in their struggles.

“We can see our full humanity, we can actually become more engaged and committed when we actually listen to each other’s lived experiences and true stories,” said Margari Aziza.

At the launch of Women’s History Month, the girl empowerment organization J.E.S.S.I.C.A Cares facilitated the Phenomenal Muslimah…That’s Me workshop for Muslim girls ages eleven to sixteen. The program, which kicked off on March 1, drew on the famous poem Phenomenal Woman by African American writer Maya Angelou to inspire participants to draft poetry expressing their identities.

Phenomenal Muslimah

Workshop Instructor, Asiya Nasir told AboutIslam that the three-day workshop spanning Women’s History Month includes highlighting powerful Muslim women in Islamic history as well as Black women writers.

On the first day, Nasir constructed a salon-style atmosphere reminiscent of those fashioned by A’Lelia Walker during the Harlem Renaissance, bringing together African American, Muslim and women’s histories.

She told AboutIslam that participants talked about historical Muslim women, including, “Aisha (ra) for her knowledge and Umm Salamah (ra) and Asiya, the wife of Firawn for their faith.

We also discussed poets: scholar Khawlah Bint Al-Azwar and Nusaybah Bint Ka’ab, who fought with the Prophet Muhammad (saws) in the Battle of Uhud.

We then listened to the iconic poem by Maya Angelou as well as spoken word from Muslim poets.

The girls and their mothers were super excited, hearing Maya’s voice reading the Phenomenal Woman and listening to Scripture, My Hope by Ibrahim Jaaber.”