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S3, E46 Shannon: A Magnificent Millennial

Hailing from West Philadelphia, Shannon Griffin was exploring opportunities outside of her neighborhood from the time she was a teenager. On this episode, the 25-year-old traveler and thrill seeker talks about living in a predominantly Black neighborhood but going to school across town in an affluent, nonblack community. She explains how, in many ways, navigating these two worlds prepared her well for her college and post-college lives. After graduating from a university where she was one of few Black students, she moved to China. Shannon is honest about the hilarity and awkwardness that have been the themes of her experiences in the three years she’s called China home. She shares stories of curious questions about her hair as well as sincere attempts to connect with her and empathize with the oppressive treatment of Black Americans by their own country. Shannon is also honest about how cavalier she’s been in making lifestyle choices. While she’s grateful to exist in a time period where Black women can be flighty and just jump right into non-traditional lives without hesitation, she is cognizant that she’ll be thirty in only a few years. She is beginning to realize while the paths she’s taken so far have helped her grow and gifted her with many lessons, she has yet to take one that has purpose. She’s acutely aware that she needs to find her life’s mission. When asked if her life challenges what it means to be a good Black woman, Shannon thinks about the fact that she is an 18-hour flight away from all the people who share her last name in West Philadelphia. “I think I’m challenging this notion that you have to sacrifice everything for your family. I love them, but I don’t see it as necessary to return to Philadelphia or even America once I’m ready to leave China.”

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S3, E45 Ama: A Magnificent Millennial

A native New Yorker, Ama Gyamerah currently lives in California where she works in the film industry. With parents from Ghana and a network of women from the African diaspora, Ama formed a strong identity as a young girl of color before she was even in high school. On this episode, she talks about the shock to her system that was adulthood. Having attended an all-girls’ high school in East Harlem where everyone looked like her and believed in her, she didn’t quite know how to navigate the assumptions made about her once she went to a predominantly white university in a town that didn’t mirror the diversity of New York City. She shares micro-aggressions endured at the hands of white roommates and overt racist vitriol spewed on social media platforms during the height of the Black Lives Matter movement. Post-college, she was confronted with the reality of bills and entry level jobs that didn’t always cover all those bills. It was through these brand new traumatic experiences that Ama learned the true meaning of self-care. She began to practice the skill of pulling back from “the struggle” when said struggle was draining. Instead of always being in warrior mode, she learned to pour into herself. Because Ama’s older sister is a strong proponent of utilizing mental health services, Ama was also able to access consistent therapy. Because her mother and the other women who raised her had deeply entrenched West African values, the idea of having any other comfort for mental anguish outside of God was unfamiliar to her. She credits her sister’s wisdom and worldliness for exposing her to such a life-transformative resource. When Ama reflects on a narrative about Black womanhood she has come to challenge, it is the belief that Black women always have to be strong. She has always been a very emotional and sensitive person and grew up hearing that she needed to toughen up. “I don’t think it’s true that being sensitive and emotional are weaknesses,” she says. “I feel deeply and am not strong in the way people think Black women are supposed to be. I think vulnerability is important and doesn’t need to be corrected.”

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S3, E44 Armani: A Magnificent Millennial

At 23 years old, Armani Eady has committed her life to social justice – even if it doesn’t always mean she’ll create from scratch the platform from which to do it. On this episode, she shares how the first thing she did as a brand new college freshman was charter her predominately white university’s first ever organization for Black women’s equal and fair access to the school’s resources. Having gone to an all-girls high school where the student body and some of the faculty looked like her and reflected her worldview, Armani underestimated how life outside of her comfortable girl power bubble would require her to explain herself and resist constant edicts to shrink herself. She admits that those first few years post-high school surprised her because she’d never considered there were multiple ways to do womanhood and college exposed her to the diversity in choices young women like her were making. She has used these years in her young adulthood to learn how to enter romantic relationships from a place of wholeness, to adjust how she practices her faith and to take advantage of mental health services that are invaluable for her growth. As she works towards being a free Black woman in every sense of the word, Armani says what she needs to claim that title is to commit herself to her own wellness. “I’ve learned a lot of people aren’t interested in being well,” Armani states. “I decided I would be committed to being a well woman so I can help others become well, too.”

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S2, E30: Jude-Laure Unearths The Truth

Originally from Haiti, Jude-Laure Denis moved to the United States at the age of seven largely because her grandmother feared that a girlchild with such a strong sense of self, will to learn and determination to fight would wither away in their home country. In this episode, she talks about how in addition to the gift of protective elders, her family also left her the legacy of silence. They did not talk about the generations of abuse and secrets that her grandmother could not protect Jude from. She talks about how her life as an adult has been spent trying to unravel the lies she learned to tell as a result of being raised in a family where truth was rarely spoken. Jude explains how she has had to find blueprints for how to find her truth. One powerful blueprint was her life partner, Carol Francis, who challenged Jude to become her best self. Jude also talks about how Beyonce’s Homecoming performance helped her deal with the disenchantment she felt as a social justice activist who worked with organizations that didn’t value racial justice as much as they proclaimed. She speaks of how much she has come to appreciate this generation’s embracing of themselves and black women, particularly, being a lot more intuitive to when they are being asked to sacrifice themselves and pushing back against such oppression. She highlights this freedom to live out loud with an anecdote about her niece who questioned her teacher’s version of The Civil Rights Movement. “She was barely in first grade,” Jude marvels. “And was able to articulate quite clearly why the teacher was selling her bullshit. I don’t remember being that aware at such a young age.”

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S2, E28: Wendi is Protective of Her Community

Activist, storyteller and proud preserver of Black Southern culture, Wendi Moore-O’Neal honors the legacy left by her parents – both engaged participants in the Civil Rights Movement and dedicated creators of art and culture. In this episode, Wendi shares how her experience as a community organizer and artist impacted how she dealt with rebuilding a battered New Orleans after the devastation of Hurricane Katrina. She is honest about the blockades to bring back residents who were misplaced after the storm, citing that even she, a college educated professional organizer had trouble finding work that paid her enough money to survive and also allowed her the freedom to rebuild New Orleans the way she and its generations of residents needed it to be rebuilt. Wendi also talks about the mismanagement of financial resources that contributed to many black New Orleanians never being able to return home and the strategic way in which governmental entities sent the message that Black culture did not possess the skill set to properly remake a city that had been broken. Wendi’s honesty continues as she shares how “new” New Orleanians contribute to the city’s rebranding in ways that make her uncomfortable. She ultimately addresses this discomfort in the way she knows best: through the creation of art. She regularly hosts get togethers where marginalized New Orleanians sing together and has produced a film, This Little Light. The film tells the story of how the blockade to progress in New Orleans impacted her personally when she was fired from an organization because she married her wife. As Wendi explores what it will take for New Orleans to be free of what blocks it from the kind of progress she would like to see, she continues her pattern of unabashed honesty. “It won’t be free for the same reason none of us are free. Even in 2019, New Orleans, like many places around the world, is based on a plantation economy.” Wendi explains how it is a city built on the backs of the working class. “This is how capitalism works; all of the wealth is gained on the labor of working people.”

*Shortly after recording this episode, Wendi’s father, John O’Neal, passed away. We offer her and the entire Black South our condolences as he was an icon and culture bearer in not only the Freedom Movement of the 1960s, but in the Black Southern Arts Movement as well.

S2, E27: Dr. Kaye is Passionate and Honest About Her Mission

Host of the popular Baltimore radio show, Today with Dr. Kaye, Karsonya Wise Whitehead is an accomplished scholar, author, activist and speaker. She has had many missions in the course of her career: street activist, advocate for public education and prolific writer for black mothers who are trying to raise healthy black children in America. In this episode, she talks about making the choice to serve her mission based on wherever she was in her life at the time. She explains that a challenge from a listener of her radio show sparked her to examine how she could use herself and her show to bring the racial disparities in Baltimore to the forefront of its residents’ awareness. As a university professor and speaker, Dr. Kaye shares how she has come to reclaim her time and energy. She rejects the expectation that black women, in general, and black women scholars, in particular, should make it their mission to educate white people on white supremacy. Dr. Kaye candidly expresses her disinterest in playing mammy to white America as it still struggles to figure out how to unpack its privilege. When asked about being a free black woman, she provides a nuanced answer that speaks to the complexities of being nonwhite and nonmale in today’s world. She notes freedom is a process and not a goal that one is even consciously seeking most times. “Part of what freedom looks like for me,” Karsonya says, “is being able to have difficult conversations with myself and forgiving myself when I fall short. It is allowing myself not to be perfect.”

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