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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