An Interview with Mama Juggs’ Own Anita Woodley

Anita will be performing her show, “Mama Juggs,” at 3 p.m.on Sunday, June 22, at Martin Street Baptist Church, 1001 E Martin St, Raleigh. This funny and informative show will be a kickoff event for the Breastfeeding Collaborative, an initiative of the NC Council of Churches that helps congregations to be breastfeeding friendly.

Interviewed by Marnie Cooper Priest, project director for the Breastfeeding Collaborative

How long have you been performing the “Mama Juggs” show?

On June 20 it will be the fifth anniversary of the “Mama Juggs” show.

Did you have another show before this one?

No, I wasn’t performing at all before the show. I did a few things, but I didn’t know it was performing. It was just a part of who I am. Before this, I was a producer for “The Story with Dick Gordon” on WUNC radio. That’s what I moved to North Carolina to do and I did that for seven years. While I was working at “The Story with Dick Gordon” my great-grandmother died and I missed her, and I already missed my mom a lot because my mom died from breast cancer at 47. I started going to parties and singing breastfeeding songs my great-grandmother made up, and one of my friends, painter Bud Rudesill, said, “You should turn that into a play!” And I’m like, “I’m not a playwright. I’m not an actor” and they said you don’t need to be. They encouraged me and I ended up renting a theater and 65 people showed up, many of whom I did not know, and they gave me a standing ovation for about three minutes. So that was my first show five years ago, and I have done about 115 shows in 17 states since then.

Has your work expanded beyond the “Mama Juggs” show?

Yes, I have a show called “The Men in Me” that focuses on HIV and urban male issues from a woman’s perspective. So I play 12 men from my family that range in age from five years old to age 87. I wanted to open my show by playing an electric bass guitar, but I’d never played an instrument before. However, I bid on bass lessons at a charity concert and won! For the next two months, Doug Largent taught me how to play and improvise a rocking six minutes of funk on the bass, so I became a musician for that show! Then debuted as a bass-playing stand up comedienne in New York’s Time Square at the Grand Marquis Ballroom.

The “Mama Juggs” show has had many different adaptations. This one that I will be performing on June 22 here in Raleigh focuses on breastfeeding and is infused with true stories about it. The show has also had heart health, housing authority lifestyle and breast cancer focuses. It’s just become really beautiful that people will have me come into their place of worship, university or community center and say, “Can you use our message in your show with your great-grandma’s voice?” and I say, “Sure!” The end result is that it’s funny and informational and still has the same “Mama Juggs” feel, although the take-away message is different.

I have a new show coming out on Sunday, December 7, at the Durham Public Main Library, which is called, “Bekang Boomerang.” It’s about me going to Africa to reconnect with my maternal tribe and become a princess in the rain forest, which really happened. It’s about how going to the rainforest (which I did in 2010) and seeing what my people are doing freed me from working in a traditional job. They all work for themselves and I thought. “Hey, I think I’m doing the wrong thing. I should be working for myself!” Many of them are artists as well, so I went ahead and tried that. I was very courageous and started standing up for myself in the workplace declaring, “I am free, maybe you didn’t read the memo.” So I liberated myself through going to Africa and I’ve been self-employed for the past two years!

What do you mean when you say, “My people?”

I am part of the Tikar tribe in Cameroon, Africa, and the village I associate myself with is N’ditam Ditam Tikar. I learned about my maternal ancestry through my family getting DNA testing via mouth swab through African Ancestry. So once I learned about my ancestry, when I was working on “The Story with Dick Gordon,” we interviewed an artist and political cartoonist named Issa Nyaphaga who was from the same tribe and he said, “How would you like to go home and show everyone what you have become?” I burst into tears and said, “Yes!” But there were several issues. I’d never left the country before, didn’t have a passport, or the funds for an overseas trip. I heard that Quincy Jones also shared the same ancestry with me and thought, “What would Quincy do to raise money?” The answer: Raise money by using his musical talent of playing his trumpet. My performance is my instrument, so I performed 21 “Mama Juggs” shows in three months (once again Mama Juggs saved the day) and raised $7000. Next thing I knew I was in the bush in Cameroon.

The village gave me a huge naming ceremony and danced for me and the chief announced that my name would be Princess Bekang. That means boomerang because I am the first African-American person to go and come back to the bush since the slave trade happened in their village. They had never had another African-American of Tikar descent return to their village. The chief gave me the charge of bringing more African-Americans of Tikar descent back home.

So were your ancestors captured into slavery?

Yes. My great-grandmother used to tell me that her dad told her they used to know where in Africa they came from. My great-grandmother lived to be 100 and her dad lived to be 98 so we have a lot of longevity, but the history didn’t stick with us about exactly what village we were from specifically. My mother’s side of the family was enslaved and settled in the Louisville, Arkansas area. My great-grandmother sharecropped, then moved to California. So it’s a long history of food and childrearing and midwifery and breastfeeding. This is why this is such an important project for me. My great grandmother nursed all of her children, my mother breastfed me, and I breastfed my son. Breasts were important and my great-grandmother made up songs about them, and I captured those songs, sharing them in “Mama Juggs.” It’s awesome that I am able to share true stories about what I grew up around when it comes to women and breastfeeding. It was just a normal part of conversation in our home. The women in my family had so much wisdom. When I created “Mama Juggs” it started with the breastfeeding songs that my great-grandma taught me, and once I started brainstorming about all the breast stories she and my mama ever told me, I had too many to put into the play. But now I’m able to use all of those stories that didn’t make it into “Mama Juggs” when a community calls on me to say we need this or that message and I’m able to say, “I have the perfect true story for that.”

What is one of the most important messages that you want to get across in the “Mama Juggs” show you will be performing on Sunday, June 22, at Martin Street Baptist Church in Raleigh?

I think the most important message about breastfeeding is to just try it. To give it a good go and not just denounce it off the top, if you are able to breastfeed. And then once you do it, support and encourage other women. Women who’ve experienced breastfeeding first-hand can go back into their communities, place of worship or workplace and they can influence policy by simply asking, “Do we have a breastfeeding friendly room for moms who want privacy? If so, where? If not, how can we become a breastfeeding-friendly place where moms feel comfortable, either in the pews or in a private room?”

Many people who see the “Mama Juggs” show get in touch with me to say how it influenced their lives. Women will say I breastfed because of you, I speak up for myself in the workplace, or I found out I have diabetes because I went to get my breasts checked, and more. I have done shows at the Durham Public Library and each one is packed with standing room only. And one of the best things is the diversity. I’ll see a 15-year-old black student next to a 45-year-old Asian doctor and a 92-year-old white organizer in the audience! The word is out about my work and people ask, “When is the next show by Anita Woodley?” It’s is truly an honor to be supported by the community and faith groups. It allows me to help people thrive by giving them information, and laughter, that might assist them in living healthier lives. I see it as a gift from me to the world. It’s like breathing. For me it is very necessary because it is just who I am and what I do. I want to be a big mirror for people. In order to do that, I have to be transparent and show up as who I really am, not who I am trying to be. It doesn’t matter if I feel bloated that day, or my Afro isn’t sitting right. I have to show up because I never know whose life I am meant to influence at a given performance. Therefore, I take my appointed, anointed job of being a vessel for true-life performances very seriously.