POET, WRITER, HISTORIAN, TEACHER, HULA-hooper, activist

MY NAME IS ANN HUMPHREYS

I was born in North Carolina in 1969. Being white and Southern going back many generations, I grew up with a faraway but distinct dread that my family had played a role in American enslavement. This feeling of historical responsibility pushed me to study African-American literature at Barnard College of Columbia University, and later to live for over a year in Kolkata, India volunteering with unhoused children. Still later—in fact, starting the day after white terrorists swarmed Charlottesville, Virginia—I became an antiracist activist and, eventually, a historian in the American South.

FOr five years, I stood

with community members in Durham, Chapel Hill, Pittsboro, and Graham NC to demand the removal of Confederate monuments from our public spaces. In all but one town we were successful. It was this work that convinced me I needed to study my own family lineage, to begin to take responsibility for the grievous crimes committed by my white ancestors against generations of Native and African-American people—crimes that have never been accounted for in any meaningful way.

my great-uncle aubrey strode (1873-1946)

played a key role in the eugenics movement in this country, helping to write the so-called Racial Integrity Act of 1924, establish the Virginia Colony for Epileptic and Feebleminded, and also arguing the *Buck vs. Bell* case to the United Supreme Court in 1927. This case set a legal precedent for states to target, imprison, and sterilize people they deemed to be “defective” or “socially inadequate”—people with chronic health conditions, learning disabilities, and also girls and women who had children out of wedlock.

Carrie and EMMA BUCK

were a disadvantaged but otherwise normal mother and daughter who—along with Carrie’s baby Vivian—were specifically and purposely targeted by my great-uncle and his coterie of eugenics advocates.
Both Carrie and Emma were imprisoned and sterilized at the Virginia Colony. Emma was never able to leave, and died there in 1944. Carrie went on to marry and have a perfectly normal life…except, she did not understand why she could never have children. She was in her 60s before she learned of her own sterilization.
There is a powerful and multi-layered shadow story behind Strode’s aggressive targeting of poor unmarried mothers. I am researching this story right now for my master’s thesis at North Carolina Central University. The thesis will inform my upcoming book, *We Have Their Blood: My First Family Ancestors and the Trauma of Race.*

I also teach hula-hooping!

Do you wish you could dance?

I’m here to tell you that you already can.

Trust me—you CAN dance, no matter who you are. You were born human, and so you have an innate sense of balance and rhythm.

For the same reasons that I know you can dance, I also know that you can hula-hoop…and I know that you can write. We all have an embodied, centered connection to our truth, whatever it may be. We can all access our truth through our own body.

I’m here to teach you how to hula-hoop—if you wish to learn how—and to help you with any writing projects you might be struggling with. I can help you both learn how to dance and to learn how to write better…to say what you mean with greater clarity and conviction.

I have published a book of poetry and a memoir, and am now working hard to research my third book, an account of American history through the lens of my own family—many of whom were instrumental in creating the laws and institutions we recognize today. Some of those achievements were worthy of enduring, and some were decidedly unworthy. My family history will provide a perspective on how we, as Americans, became who we are

My memoir, The Tao of Hoop: On the Transformational Practice of Hula-Hooping (Seriously Though) tells the story of how I learned to hula-hoop alongside my mentor, Jonathan Baxter, and my dear friend, the Cree artist Kimowan Metchewais, whose posthumous book of photography and painting was just published by Aperture . Earlier this year, I withdrew The Tao of Hoop from a specific platform—-because billionaires. I am currently seeking a traditional publisher for this manuscript and upload-ready audiobook.