“The Sky was Red” is a performance score written by Jo Stewart to document Jasmine Hearn’s live performance, Pleasure Memory, presented by Washington Project for the Arts in Black Women as/and the Living Archive curated by Tsedaye Makonnen. Stewart wrote this score, not only in response to the singular performance but also alongside Hearn’s archive, family photos, and with Stewart’s own poetic sensibility and concerns. To learn more about this collaborative process, please see the Fall, 2020 Conversation Without Walls: Jasmine Hearn & Jo Stewart with Seta Morton.

To read more from Jo Stewart, please visit our neighbors at Poetry Project! Stewart’s “Excerpts from Un-” are published in the #263 Winter edition of The Poetry Project Newsletter.

“The Sky was Red” can be listened to as audio or read, below.

Image Credits:

Page 1, Title Page:

Untitled, Photograph of Rita Jean Anderson (1984) with hand-dye paper. Courtesy of, Jasmine Hearn and Jo Stewart.

Page 5:

[1] Untitled, Hand-dyed paper and hand-made window frame made with black tape. Courtesy of the artist, Jo Stewart.

[2] Untitled, Hand-made window frame with Sonya and Byronné Johnson, Crockett, TX, at the house of Minnie Houston Nickens Woodall Thigpen or at  “Grannie’s” house (1969). Courtesy of, Jasmine Hearn and Jo Stewart.

Page 7:

Untitled, Mary Gay Parker and Byronné Jeanice Johnson at Texas Women’s University in Denton, TX. Nurse Pinning Ceremony; “Penny” (1978). Courtesy of, Jasmine Hearn and Jo Stewart.

Page 8:

Untitled, Sonya and Byronné Johnson at Minnie Houston Nickens Woodall Thigpen “Grannie”’s house in Crockett, TX (1969). Courtesy of, Jasmine Hearn and Jo Stewart.