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Busy Being Black with Joshua Rivers

<p>The award-winning podcast exploring queer Black creative, cultural and spiritual vitality.</p>

Busy Being Black/W!ZARD Studios

Dr Ajamu X explores taking responsibility for what we create, and the punk-radical necessity of tending to archives that reflect and honour the complex and pleasureful lives of queer Black folk—now and in the so-called past. 
Regular Listeners have access to the full and ad-free conversation on Busy Being Black's Patreon.
This conversation was recorded at the 2025 Kinfolk Convening in Manchester.
'I think we have a reluctance to talk about pleasure for pleasure's sake; to validate it, we feel we have to attach it to something else like politics or sexuality. Sometimes it's just the thing itself. There is a reluctance to talk about what makes us feel good—what we want done with our Black bodies, with our lovers or with our friends—[because] we live in a pleasure-phobic society.'
⁠Dr Ajamu X⁠ is a darkroom and fine art photographic artist, whose practice, aesthetics and theoretical provocations privilege sensuality, and the tactile, material elements of the photographic act. Ajamu's work is held in numerous private and public collections, including the Autograph ABP, Tate Britain, the Victoria & Albert Museum and the National Portrait Gallery.
Busy Being Black's theme music was created for the show by Lazarus Lynch and Joshua Pleeter. The oceanic cellos that open the show were created for Busy Being Black by Dylan Halverson.
Cover photo of Ajamu © 2024 Henry Mills  See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Archival Pleasures — Dr Ajamu X

There is perhaps no better person to speak to about Black creative expression and excellence through art than Kadiatu Kanneh-Mason—the matriarch, mother and woman who makes possible the prodigious creativity of the seven Kanneh-Mason siblings.  
In her book, To Be Young, Gifted and Black, Kadiatu shows that the key to a creatively fulfilling and purposeful life is in how we live in between the highs and the lows—the relationships we nurture, the humour we entertain and in the routines we build that honour and sustain our passions. 
Part II of my conversation with Kadiatu continues on Patreon for Regular Listeners: patreon.com/busybeingblack
This conversation was recorded at Manngington Book Bash 2025, one of the UK's most cherished literary festivals.  If the interiority & craft of authors, writers & artists stir your imagination to whirling, come to Mannington Book Bash 2026.
Thank you to Henry Layte and the team at the Book Hive.
Busy Being Black's theme music was created for the show by Lazarus Lynch and Joshua Pleeter. The oceanic cellos that open the show were created for Busy Being Black by Dylan Halverson. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Foundations of Excellence — Kadiatu Kanneh-Mason

I sat down with award-winning author Brandon Taylor live at Brixton House Theatre to mark the UK launch of his latest novel, Minor Black Figures. Our conversation explores what happens when Black artists resist the demands of the always-on attention economy to instead embrace the archives, tend to our cultural inheritances and allow ourselves—and the characters in our art—the messy complexities we are so often encouraged to hide.
06:20 How's your heart?
18:00 Real Life in a Black Square Summer
36:00 Minor Black Figures in Interminable Pandemics
43:00 It's okay to be an uppity negro 
Get your copy of Minor Black Figures from your local bookshop.
This episode includes the voices of: Lorraine Hansberry and Pamela Sneed.
 If the interiority & craft of authors, writers & artists stir your imagination to whirling, come to Mannington Book Bash.
Busy Being Black is only sustainable with community support. Become a Regular Listener on Patreon ✷ patreon.com/busybeingblack See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Not So Minor Black Figures — Brandon Taylor

As we bear witness to the destruction of our world and kin through handheld technologies designed as slot machines, and increasingly disoriented by the hourly oscillations between the cannibal horror and unutterable awe of being human in 2026, Minna Salami reminds us that we won’t build new worlds with the same words that built this one. Read that again, friends.
With her full-bodied philosophy, sensuous knowledge, she calls us back to the wild, sensate, subterranean and queer within and beyond us so that we can reclaim what europatriarchal knowledge systems taught us was uncivilised and savage—including the innumerable ways of knowing that have nothing to do with taxonomies or science or murder.
Minna says that ‘freedom is the ability to conjure and then create of our lives the sense of rapture and joy that is our birthright.’ And we know very well that europatriarchal knowledge systems quite explicitly do not offer that as an option
About Minna Salami ✷ Minna is an acclaimed afrofeminist scholar, author and cultural critic. Her publication, Kaleido, explores society, culture and power through the kaleidoscopic method: a sensuous, multilayered and epistemically polyamorous approach to knowledge that draws from multiple intersections and cultures.
Busy Being Black is the award-winning podcast for Black LGBTQ+ creative, cultural & spiritual inquiry.
If the podcast moves you, please:
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PERKS + PARTNERS
advaya creates courses to awaken the human spirit & inspire purposeful action in the world. Otherworlds begins on 12 May and provides the perspectives, practices & community we need to become active & empowered agents for emerging futures: https://advaya.life/otherworlds
🔑 BUSY-OTHERWORLDS for 15% off advaya+ membership
Founded in 1969, Pluto Press is one of the world’s oldest radical publishers & their focus remains making interventions in contemporary struggles: https://www.plutobooks.com/?s=imagination&post_type=product
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Sensuous Knowledge  — Minna Salami

My bodacious conversation with theatre-maker and cosmological enchantress Candice D'Meza opens with my poem, Our Life Together. Inspired by an exchange between Nikki Giovanni and James Baldwin, the poem is a fitting expression of the ways Black artists think, feel and create across time and space to build the worlds we need now.
Candice D'Meza builds liberated worlds through art, cosmology and the Imagination Institute, where she teaches others to reclaim the operational divinity & living power of the Black radical imagination: https://www.candicedmeza.com/

How to inhabit the version of yourself that has already made it through
Why the crisis of imagination leaves us vulnerable to the violent desires of capitalism
Embracing the body's curriculum and learning through pleasure instead of pain 
What Harriet Tubman teaches us about the impossible
Why they can never make us forget who we are

Busy Being Black is the award-winning podcast for Black LGBTQ+ creative, cultural & spiritual inquiry ✷ https://www.busybeingblack.com/
If the podcast moves you, please:
Support ✷ https://buy.stripe.com/aFa3cw82KfqeeNE0UdgjC00
Subscribe ✷ http://www.youtube.com/@busybeingblacktube
Follow ✷ https://www.instagram.com/_busybeingblack 
PERKS + PARTNERS
advaya creates courses to awaken the human spirit & inspire purposeful action in the world. Otherworlds begins on 12 May and provides the perspectives, practices & community we need to become active & empowered agents for emerging futures: https://advaya.life/otherworlds
🔑 BUSY-OTHERWORLDS for 15% off advaya+ membership
Founded in 1969, Pluto Press is one of the world’s oldest radical publishers & their focus remains making interventions in contemporary struggles: https://www.plutobooks.com/?s=imagination&post_type=product
🔑 BUSY50 for 50% off
 See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Dancing to Freedom — Candice D'Meza

Poet and author Dean Atta returns to Busy Being Black to share how therapy, memoir-writing and entering into his "big man stage" have transformed his relationship with his mental health, creativity and self-acceptance. The episode opens with a joint reading of Dean's poem "Two Black Boys in Paradise"—the poem that inspired the BAFTA-winning animation of the same name—and closes with Dean reading "On Days When" from his poetry collection There Is Still Love Here.
Busy Being Black is the award-winning podcast for queer Black creative, cultural and spiritual vitality.  If the show moves you, consider ⁠buying me a coffee or a book⁠.
Dean Atta is an award-winning Black British writer from London known for his heartfelt storytelling rooted in his Greek Cypriot and Jamaican heritage. He writes poetry, fiction and nonfiction for all ages.
 See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

The Paradise of Our Intimacy — Dean Atta

Art is a vital mechanism through which we process grief and sustain life. In times of intense discord, denying our impulse to create often results in destructive behaviours. Artist and writer Rosel Jackson Stern offers a gentle provocation to anyone feeling paralysed by the current geopolitical climate: find and nurture even the tiniest moments of joy. 
By anchoring life in joy, Rosel has built an artistic and spiritual practice that moves them closer—with every prayer, sweep of the brush and stroke of the pen—to a world where queer Black people experience an abundance of peace, community and creative vitality. It is in and through our joy we find our freedom, and this episode is a reminder that liberation is rooted in the timeless intimacy of the present moment.
Watch this conversation.
About Rosel ✷ Rosel Jackson Stern (they/them) is an artist, journalist and writer whose creativity spans several mediums and modalities. The purpose of their work is to carve out space for the unknown, and is a testament to what happens when we take leaps of faith.
Busy Being Black is the award-winning podcast for Black LGBTQ+ creative, cultural & spiritual inquiry. 
If the podcast moves you, buy me a book. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

The Alchemy of Black Joy — Rosel Jackson Stern

Today marks eight years since Busy Being Black first came to life: on 21 October 2017, I produced and hosted an event called Forbidden Fruits, anchored by a conversation about love, intimacy and belonging among queer Black men. I couldn't have known in that moment how much I would need this space.
Ben Ellis is a poet—and a poet in the way James Baldwin, Toni Morrison and René Ménil meant it: one ordained to dive into the unconscious and awaken the rest of us with their marvels. I am stunned and struck by the energy of Ben's poetry, his vulnerability, his rage. I am enlivened by his sensitivity, his heartache and his desire for peace of mind. I am grateful to honour my own thresholds by bearing witness at the gates of his.
If you enjoyed this conversation, you'll enjoy the ⁠Black Marvellous⁠: a growing collection of conversations that adventure into Black imaginative vigour—in art, attitude and life.
—
Chapters
00:26 Are you avoiding your own emergence?  
02:04 The ordination of the bard: 8 years of Busy Being Black
12:43 Ben recites Pansies
16:32 All my poems are sad n*gga poems
24:19 There is no word for depression in my native tongue
29:25 Who is served by the performance of our grief?
33:16 Ben recites Milkshake
37:09 Can we reclaim any spirituality from within the religions that have harmed us?
47:23 I am Black first and Black also
51:00 Ben recites To Orlando
53:37 Peace of mind
55:55 Every gesture is a prayer when you know who you are
—
Thank you:

This episode includes wisdom from ⁠Candice D'Meza⁠, ⁠Rev. Jide Macaulay⁠ and ⁠Bayyinah Bello⁠.


If this conversation resonates with you, there are three ways you can show your love: leave a comment, rating, or review; share this conversation on social media; or ⁠buy me a book⁠.


The songs 'Busy Being Black' and 'Baptism' were created for Busy Being Black and in collaboration with Lazarus Lynch and Joshua Pleeter, and Dylan Halverson, respectively.
 See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

All My Poems Are Sad N*gga Poems — Ben Ellis

A tender meditation on grief, healing and courage with multidisciplinary artist Phoebe Boswell, who creates portals that return us to our miraculous hearts. 
If you'd like to see the art we discuss in this conversation, you can watch this episode on @busybeingblacktube. 
The ⁠⁠Black Marvellous⁠⁠: a growing collection of conversations that adventure into Black imaginative vigour—in art, attitude & life.
—
If this conversation resonates with you, there are three ways you can show your love: leave a comment, rating, or review; share this conversation on social media; or buy me a book.
The song 'Busy Being Black' was created for the show and in collaboration with Lazarus Lynch and Joshua Pleeter.
The song 'Baptism' was created for the show and in collaboration with Dylan Halverson—and inspired by the oceanic overwhelm I felt engaging with Phoebe Boswell's art & the music she commissioned from bassist Gregg August: 'The promise of your redemption is within the depths you've been avoiding.'  See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Our Miraculous Hearts — Phoebe Boswell

Inspired by Afrosurrealism, surrealist philosophy and the archetypal imagination, the Black Marvellous is a growing collection of conversations that adventure into Black imaginative vigour—in art, attitude and life.
Who better than Mojisola Adebayo to remind us of the adventure and irreverence of Black artistry, during and beyond times of crisis? 
In this conversation, which originally aired in February 2023, Mojisola takes us on a journey from Goldsmiths University to Antarctica, to space and back again, to explore how we utilise performance to challenge the sanctity of whiteness, what an orgasm-seeking space odyssey tells us about the world-changing potential of queer Black pleasure, and how the reanimation of the life and story of Henrietta Lacks prompts us to consider our own genealogical and cosmic immortality.
—
Thank you:

If this conversation resonates with you, here are three ways you can show your love: leave a comment, rating, or review; share this conversation on social media; or ⁠buy me a book.
The song 'Busy Being Black' was created for the show and in collaboration with Lazarus Lynch and Joshua Pleeter.
 See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Black Duende — Mojisola Adebayo

You’ll no doubt have heard of and read Kuchenga Shenjé's debut novel, The Library Thief, which brings together her passions for history, mystery and rebels; and you’re likely to have felt the warmth and humour of her writing in publications like British Vogue and Stylist. In our conversation, we explore how she came to the transformative decision to pursue sobriety, her hodgepodge approach to her spirituality and spiritual practice, how the deferred dreams of her mother and grandmother have shaped how she enjoys her life and what she’s learned from the characters in her novel and daring women across history about what it means to live a life worth writing about. 
You can find out more about Kuchenga here.
Thank you

If this conversation resonates with you, here are three ways you can show your love: leave a comment, rating, or review; share this conversation on social media; or ⁠contribute towards production costs⁠.
The song 'Busy Being Black' was created for the show and in collaboration with Lazarus Lynch and Joshua Pleeter.
 See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

A Life Worth Writing About — Kuchenga Shenjé

I’ve been invigorated by Legacy Russell’s ongoing inquiries into how we come alive together. Whether she’s encouraging us to think expansively about the connection between marine life and Black agency under duress, or pointing us towards the liberatory possibilities at the intersection of our bodies, genders and technologies, her work is evidence of her desire and drive to live in a world in which Black folks thrive. 
We explore how an investigation into visual culture helps us appreciate and reckon with the role Black people have played in shaping the modern world, our responsibility as global and digital citizens to harness the internet to collectively push forward what our shared future looks like, and what we learn from what it means to really live—or to not live—from the ancestors who refused to survive the Middle Passage. 
Legacy's first book, Glitch Feminism, explores how we find liberation in the glitch between body, gender and technology; her second book, Black Meme, shows us how images of Blackness have always been central to our understanding of the modern world. Both are available from Verso Books.
Thank you

If this conversation resonates with you, here are three ways you can show your love: leave a comment, rating, or review; share this conversation on social media; or ⁠contribute towards production costs⁠.
The song 'Busy Being Black' was created for the show and in collaboration with Lazarus Lynch and Joshua Pleeter.
 See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Rehumanising the Black Meme — Legacy Russell

How do we engage with and sustain Black cultures, communities, histories and futures outside of the extractive infrastructures and institutions that thrive on Black death and disposability? Maleke Glee is a curator and scholar of cultural sustainability who offers go-go music as a wonderful working example: a genre and sonic landscape native to Washington DC, with an insular economy that supports self-taught and formerly incarcerated musicians.
Our conversation today also explores the spiritual work that undergirds Maleke’s ongoing research into and preservation of go-go music, how initiatives for Black inclusion within art world institutions often stifle ongoing efforts to sustain Black vernacular cultures, and how a closer relationship to ugliness helps us queer what it means to embody and pursue Black excellence.
Thank you

If this conversation resonates with you, here are three ways you can show your love: leave a comment, rating, or review; share this conversation on social media; or ⁠contribute towards production costs⁠.
The song 'Busy Being Black' was created for the show and in collaboration with Lazarus Lynch and Joshua Pleeter.
 See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

A Posture of Improvisation — Maleke Glee

Angelina Namiba serves as a possibility model for effective and sustained engagement with those vulnerable to HIV. When she was diagnosed in the early 90s, she immediately set to work to understand why Black women were being left out of national efforts to combat the spread of the virus, and she participated in and assembled groups of women committed to raising the voices of women living with HIV globally.
She is a titan within England’s HIV advocacy movement and she has worked for almost 25 years to promote and advocate for the involvement of women living with HIV in forming and informing local and national HIV strategy and policy. Today, we explore the resilience required to sustain our advocacy when our lives are systemically undervalued and the ongoing need for cultural competency within the NHS, which despite being built on the backs of Black women, still leaves so many Black women to suffer in silence.
Angelina shares the mnemonic device she created to help women remember their rights when engaging with healthcare practitioners, and the role literature, storytelling and book clubs have played in bringing her and others like her together to effect systemic change. Angelina reminds that in the face of anti-Blackness, homophobia and misogynoir, it has always been us looking after us.
Recommended reading:
Our Stories Told by Us by Angelina Namiba
Queer Footprints by Dan Glass
Thank you

If this conversation resonates with you, here are three ways you can show your love: leave a comment, rating, or review; share this conversation on social media; or ⁠contribute towards production costs⁠.
The song 'Busy Being Black' was created for the show and in collaboration with Lazarus Lynch and Joshua Pleeter.
 See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Our Stories, Told By Us — Angelina Namiba

Dennis Carney is an elder whose respect among our community needs no justification nor explanation. Among much else, he led the now-closed Black Gay and Lesbian Centre in Brixton, and he has worked for 25 years as a therapeutic practitioner, supporting Black gay men to love themselves more deeply, hold their emotions more gently and show up in the world more fully. 
We explore his involvement in the Stop Murder Music campaign, the internationalism of Brixton’s Black Gay and Lesbian Centre and the creation of “Let’s Wrap”, the UK’s first-ever discussion group for Black gay men, which was hosted at London Lighthouse, the leading hospice and charity for people living with HIV. We attend to the history of the long 1980’s, and Dennis shares his advice and insights on what we should pay closer attention to about that fraught, traumatic and generative period of our collective history.
Dennis shares how his disillusionment with the efficacy of protests and marches helped recalibrate his energy and efforts towards self-empowerment within our communities, and we broach the ever-important topic of intergenerational conversations, including what we learn from each other in our efforts to get free. Dennis reminds us that love for oneself and community, especially within a world so primed for lovelessness, has a singularly motivating power that supports us in being the change we hope to see in the world.
Thank you

If this conversation resonates with you, here are three ways you can show your love: leave a comment, rating, or review; share this conversation on social media; or ⁠contribute towards production costs⁠.
The song 'Busy Being Black' was created for the show and in collaboration with Lazarus Lynch and Joshua Pleeter.
 See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Sustaining Our Thriving — Dennis Carney

We are living through a particularly tense geopolitical moment and I have found myself in a near-constant state of anger over the past couple of weeks. I have had to work very hard to ensure the language and energy I put out into the world is not only angry, but productive. To help me – and us – show up with compassion and clarity in this moment, I’m resurfacing my 2019 conversation with communications provocateur Jean Lloyd.
Jean has spent her life deeply committed to the emancipation of the human spirit and she invites us to focus on and remember that language is a tool used to create, not destroy. We explore the difference between talking and communication; forgiveness and making peace with unanswered questions and missing apologies; the urgent, important and life-long work of being ourselves; and communication as the essential tool for love and our liberation.
Thank you

If this conversation resonates with you, here are three ways you can show your love: leave a comment, rating, or review; share this conversation on social media; or ⁠contribute towards production costs⁠.
The song 'Busy Being Black' was created for the show and in collaboration with Lazarus Lynch and Joshua Pleeter.
 See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

My Word Creates My World — Jean Lloyd

I’m thrilled to share this conversation with British Nigerian writer and curator Irenosen Okojie, which was recorded at the Garden Cinema in London after a private viewing of Blitz Bazawule’s new musical adaption of The Color Purple. Our conversation was one of many events that took place as part of Irenosen’s Black to the Future festival, an afrofuturist celebration of outstanding Black artists and a growing space for visionary imaginings to thrive. 
We explore why The Color Purple aligns with Irenosen’s notions of afrofuturism; the lessons we can learn from characters within the novel and the musical about Black hope, family and love; and the ways Black queer people across space and time continue to live, by example, the futures we deserve to inhabit together.
Thank you

If this conversation resonates with you, here are three ways you can show your love: leave a comment, rating, or review; share this conversation on social media; or ⁠contribute towards production costs⁠.
The song 'Busy Being Black' was created for the show and in collaboration with Lazarus Lynch and Joshua Pleeter.
Thank you to our friends at Warner Bros, The Royal Society of Literature and The Garden Cinema for making this conversation with Irenosen possible.

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Black to the Future — Irenosen Okojie

The urgent problems of our time require collective engagement with the generative offerings of our imaginations. Whether our work calls us to challenge the extractive practices ruining our planet, educate a new generation of thinkers and creators, or to put out into the burning world poetry that awakens and enlivens, each of us carries – and feels the weight of – a responsibility to help fashion a better future.My guests today offer us ways to tackle the demands of liberation through active engagement with the Black radical imagination and tradition. I’m in conversation with Melz Owusu, Marai Larasi and Yomi Sode. Melz is the Founder of the Free Black University and a PhD researcher at the University of Cambridge. Marai is a feminist advocate, community organiser and consultant who has worked in social justice for over twenty-seven years. And Yomi is an award-winning writer and the recipient of the 2019 Jerwood Compton Poetry Fellowship.This conversation was recorded at Rehearsing Freedoms, a festival of community health, healing, movement building, arts and culture created and curated by Healing Justice London. And together we explore how the Black radical imagination helps shift us out of oppressive landscapes and times, and towards just and dignifying worlds that affirm Black aliveness. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

We Are Rehearsing Freedom

Questioning and then breaching our limits is a salient and consequential concern — and a quest Elijah McKinnon undertakes as founder and executive diva of Open Television (OTV), a platform and media incubator for intersectional storytelling. Elijah’s insights into how their imagination is supported and encouraged by their pragmatism made me think and reflect on how I engage with my own; and we wax lyrical on a shared desire to become undone. We explore the difference between surrender and intentional release, the differing demands of and confusion between transparency and vulnerability, and refusing to be bound by other people’s ideas and labels. Elijah reflects on their stewardship of OTV, the care required to sustain artistic vitality, and how an entitlement to softness has transformed their sense of duty to themselves and the communities they love.About Elijah McKinnonElijah McKinnon (they/them) is an award-winning entrepreneur, strategist and visionary from the future currently residing on planet earth. They are the founder of Chicago-based consultancy and creative studio People Who Care, which specialises in campaign development and management, brand strategy and identity and cultural productions exclusively for non-profits and grassroots initiatives. Elijah is the Co-founder and Executive Director of Open Television, an Emmy-nominated non-profit and web TV platform for intersectional artistry.About Busy Being BlackBusy Being Black with Josh Rivers is the award-winning podcast that centres and celebrates queer Black liveliness. Help these enlivening conversations reach more people, by leaving a rating and review.Sign up for Field Notes – Busy Being Black's newsletter offering to encourage your wonderlust.Thank you to our funding partner, myGwork – the business community for LGBT+ professionals, students, inclusive employers and anyone who believes in workplace equality. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Elijah McKinnon – Becoming Undone

Help me shape the future of Busy Being Black by filling out this short listener survey: https://forms.gle/y7y3iQ7RPievyGFP8Kokomo City takes up a seemingly simple mantle — to present the stories of four Black transgender sex workers: Daniella Carter, Liyah Mitchell, Dominique Silver and the late Koko Da Doll, who share their reflections on desire, confronting taboos, gender’s many meanings and the ways Black trans women are harmed by both structural and cultural impositions that render their lives less valuable than any other. The film is the directorial debut of D Smith, a veteran of the music industry who was shunned when she came out as trans. In creating Kokomo City, D Smith has captured an unapologetic and cutting analysis of Black culture and society at large from a vantage point that is vibrating with energy, sex and hard-earned wisdom – and tenderness, intimacy and humour.We explore how the artistic process that made Kokomo City possible reflects what D’s learned through her own survival, thriving and liveliness; the role of forgiveness in clearing room for creative expression; and creating art about Black LGBTQ lives that intentionally extends beyond the confining limits of mainstream LGBTQ media narratives. D says she was inspired to create a work of art that not only calls us to imagine and produce more and better options for Black trans women in the world, but also one that cis Black women, her brothers, uncles and father would encounter and which might provoke necessary and life-sustaining conversations about the world we want to inhabit together.About D Smith and Kokomo CityD. Smith is a Grammy-nominated producer, singer and songwriter. She is the director of Kokomo City, which was executive produced by Lena Waithe, and the film won the Sundance Film Festival’s NEXT Innovator Award and NEXT Audience Award, as well as the Berlinale’s Audience Award in the Panorama Documentary section. Kokomo City is released in the UK and Irish cinemas on 4 August, 2023.A special thank you to Campbell X for always advocating for Busy Being Black and thus making this conversation possible.About Busy Being BlackBusy Being Black is an exploration and expression of quare liveliness and my guests are those who have learned to live, love and thrive at the intersection of their identities. Please leave a rating and a review and share these conversations far and wide. As we continue to work towards futures worthy of us all, my hope is that as many of you as possible understand Busy Being Black as a soft, tender and intellectually rigorous place for you to land. Thank you to our funding partner, myGwork – the business community for LGBT+ professionals, students, inclusive employers and anyone who believes in workplace equality. Thank you to my friend Lazarus Lynch for creating the ancestral and enlivening Busy Being Black theme music. Thank you to Lucian Koncz and Stevie Gatez for helping create the Busy Being Black artwork. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

D Smith – A Provocation for More

At just 23 years old, Leon Benson was sentenced to 61 years in prison for a murder he did not commit. At 47 years old, Leon is a free man after his case was taken up by lawyers at the University of San Francisco Law School’s Racial Justice Clinic. Over 25 years, Leon consumed as much knowledge as he could get access to, which helped him explain the complex dynamics of not only his physical form in relation to confined space, but also of how his mind made sense of the injustice of his experience and the experiences of those like him. We explore the parallel experiences of those confined within and beyond the walls of prison, the awakenings and reckonings that helped him build emotional and psychic resilience and the near impossible task of embodiment in a place that traffics in sensory deprivation. We discuss the moments and people in 2020 that would be instrumental in his release and how people born guilty in America maintain faith in the idea of justice, which he believes is a natural human impulse and, like hope, is also a spiritual practice.About Leon BensonLeon's case was championed by The Racial Justice Clinic at the University of San Francisco’s School of Law and led by all-star attorney and author Lara Bazelon. The particulars of his case are the focus of season three of investigative podcast series Suspect. Leon performs as EL BENTLY 448 and shares his survivor's journey on Innocent Born Guilty, an explosive hip hip record full of poetry, philosophy and world history, inspired by Black-led social justice movements. Innocent Born Guilty is available now from Die Jim Crow Records.Throughout his incarceration, Leon was supported by family, friends and strangers on the internet, like Shannon Coleman and Steve Willet. For those interested in supporting charities in the UK addressing miscarriages of justice and prison reform, please consider supporting the work of Appeal and the Prison Reform Trust.About Busy Being BlackHelp me shape the future of Busy Being Black by filling out this short listener survey: https://forms.gle/y7y3iQ7RPievyGFP8Busy Being Black is an exploration and expression of quare liveliness and my guests are those who have learned to live, love and thrive at the intersection of their identities. Please leave a rating and a review and share these conversations far and wide. As we continue to work towards futures worthy of us all, my hope is that as many of you as possible understand Busy Being Black as a soft, tender and intellectually rigorous place for you to land. Thank you to our funding partner, myGwork – the business community for LGBT+ professionals, students, inclusive employers and anyone who believes in workplace equality. Thank you to my friend Lazarus Lynch for creating the ancestral and enlivening Busy Being Black theme music. Thank you to Lucian Koncz and Stevie Gatez for helping create the Busy Being Black artwork See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Leon Benson – I'm Living Like I Died Before

Writer and organiser Kenyon Farrow is fighting for better infrastructures of support for queer Black people vulnerable to and living with HIV. He trained as an actor before he pivoting to activism in response to the fault lines he saw emerging as gentrification, criminalisation and healthcare inequalities began to rock his personal and extended networks. He has since coordinated campaigns large and small, local, national and global at the intersection of public policy, public health and social justice.Today, we explore his upbringing in Cleveland, Ohio – including watershed encounters with gay Black film and literature – and the events that led to a hard pivot from acting to activism. He shares how his work at the policy level is work that centres queer Black liveliness, and speaks lovingly about house music and house music spaces as evidence of the ways queer Black communities create for themselves that which is often structurally denied: spaces of love, care, spiritual renewal and healing.About Kenyon FarrowKenyon Farrow is a writer, editor and strategist working at the intersection of public health and social justice. Kenyon has a long and distinguished track record working in communities impacted by HIV. BET named Kenyon a "Modern Black History Hero".About Busy Being Black﻿Help me shape the future of Busy Being Black by filling out this short listener survey: https://forms.gle/y7y3iQ7RPievyGFP8Busy Being Black is an exploration and expression of quare liveliness and my guests are those who have learned to live, love and thrive at the intersection of their identities. Please leave a rating and a review and share these conversations far and wide. As we continue to work towards futures worthy of us all, my hope is that as many of you as possible understand Busy Being Black as a soft, tender and intellectually rigorous place for you to land. Thank you to our funding partner, myGwork – the business community for LGBT+ professionals, students, inclusive employers and anyone who believes in workplace equality. Thank you to my friend Lazarus Lynch for creating the ancestral and enlivening Busy Being Black theme music. Thank you to Lucian Koncz and Stevie Gatez for helping create the Busy Being Black artwork. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Kenyon Farrow – A Modern Black History Hero

Earlier this year, writer, actor and director Rikki Beadle-Blair gave an electrifying and affirming keynote speech at Let’s Debate, a conversation about creativity and culture in the UK, produced by arts commissioner Mediale with the support of Arts Council England. As Rikki does, his speech centred his insistence that marginalised communities create art unashamedly; and at a time of increased cultural and political disregard for queer life around the world, Rikki reminds us all that art-making is life-giving. So it feels like the right time to resurface our 2018 conversation, in which he asks us to pay closer attention to the beauty that abounds around us and within us, and to our role as creators of the worlds we want to inhabit.Watch: Let's Debate Keynote for Inclusivity and RelevanceAbout Rikki Beadle-BlairRikki Beadle-Blair MBE is a British actor, director, screenwriter, playwright, singer, designer, choreographer, dancer and songwriter of British/West Indian origin. He is the artistic director of multi-media production company Team Angelica.About Busy Being Black﻿Help me shape the future of Busy Being Black by filling out this short listener survey: https://forms.gle/y7y3iQ7RPievyGFP8Busy Being Black is an exploration and expression of quare liveliness and my guests are those who have learned to live, love and thrive at the intersection of their identities. Please leave a rating and a review and share these conversations far and wide. As we continue to work towards futures worthy of us all, my hope is that as many of you as possible understand Busy Being Black as a soft, tender and intellectually rigorous place for you to land. Thank you to our funding partner, myGwork – the business community for LGBT+ professionals, students, inclusive employers and anyone who believes in workplace equality. Thank you to my friend Lazarus Lynch for creating the ancestral and enlivening Busy Being Black theme music. Thank you to Lucian Koncz and Stevie Gatez for helping create the Busy Being Black artwork. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Rikki Beadle-Blair – Yearning into Creation

Farzana Khan is the tender titan leading the transformative work of Healing Justice London, which works to dignify lives made vulnerable and to cultivate public health provisions for collective liberation. She's a writer, cultural producer and award-winning arts educator, and her work centres community health, repair and self-transformation, rooted in disability justice, survivor work and trauma-informed practice.We share a love for the poetic wisdom of Kevin Quashie and language and practices that engender tenderness. And our conversation today explores how Farzana and the team at Healing Justice London are thinking through and building new infrastructures that respond to the ongoing needs of vulnerable communities. Undergirding this work is Farzana’s commitment to holding and facilitating spaces that invite change through a deeper engagement with the world of feeling and wisdom in our bodies. We discuss the importance of attending to our grief, mobilising with an improved class consciousness and the long work of un-internalising hundreds of years of colonial thinking. Farzana calls on us to refuse the individualising thrust of the colonial regime, so we can then free ourselves for the transformative work of extending ourselves to each other’s aliveness.References in this conversation include: "Unworlding: an aesthetics of collapse", "the endless possibilities of open-source design" and Rehearsing Freedoms.About Healing Justice LondonHealing Justice London builds community-led health and healing that creates capacity for transformation. Working for and with communities surviving state and systemic oppression, Healing Justice London build towards futures rooted in dignity, safety and belonging and free from intimate, interpersonal and structural violence. Their practice nurtures the work of radical and holistic medicine to support our personal, collective and structural transformation.About Busy Being Black﻿Help me shape the future of Busy Being Black by filling out this short listener survey: https://forms.gle/y7y3iQ7RPievyGFP8Busy Being Black is an exploration and expression of quare liveliness and my guests are those who have learned to live, love and thrive at the intersection of their identities. Please leave a rating and a review and share these conversations far and wide. As we continue to work towards futures worthy of us all, my hope is that as many of you as possible understand Busy Being Black as a soft, tender and intellectually rigorous place for you to land. Thank you to our funding partner, myGwork – the business community for LGBT+ professionals, students, inclusive employers and anyone who believes in workplace equality. Thank you to my friend Lazarus Lynch for creating the ancestral and enlivening Busy Being Black theme music. Thank you to Lucian Koncz and Stevie Gatez for helping create the Busy Being Black artwork. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Farzana Khan – Extending Ourselves to Each Other's Aliveness

There is a divine vision for all of us and Mikael Owunna hopes his work can be a vessel for the transformation of our consciousness. Trained in the mechanics of bioengineering and empowered by the imaginative possibilities of photography, his artistic practice conjures queer Black people as embodied reflections of the black and brilliant cosmos. He does this work because he believes we, as queer Black people, are heirs to African cosmological traditions, which place us as the stewards of spiritual experience and as gatekeepers between the realms of the physical and the numinous. Our conversation explores how Mikael utilises technology to help us reencounter ourselves as divine beings, what 50 different expressions of queer Black liveliness taught him about his own capacity for self-actualisation and how art helps us push back against distorted images of ourselves.About Mikael OwunnaMikael Owunna is a Nigerian American multimedia artist, filmmaker and engineer. He is the Director of Mikael Owunna Studios, LLC., a full-service art production company, and the co-founder of Rainbow Serpent, Inc., a Black LGBTQ art nonprofit. His art emerges from the generative intersection of technology, art and African cosmologies, with the aim of reanimating our imaginative possibilities.About Busy Being Black﻿Help me shape the future of Busy Being Black by filling out this short listener survey: https://forms.gle/y7y3iQ7RPievyGFP8Busy Being Black is an exploration and expression of quare liveliness and my guests are those who have learned to live, love and thrive at the intersection of their identities. Please leave a rating and a review and share these conversations far and wide. As we continue to work towards futures worthy of us all, my hope is that as many of you as possible understand Busy Being Black as a soft, tender and intellectually rigorous place for you to land. Thank you to our funding partner, myGwork – the business community for LGBT+ professionals, students, inclusive employers and anyone who believes in workplace equality. Thank you to my friend Lazarus Lynch for creating the ancestral and enlivening Busy Being Black theme music. Thank you to Lucian Koncz and Stevie Gatez for helping create the Busy Being Black artwork. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Mikael Owunna – I Have Magic to Work

Many of us have an intimate and ongoing relationship to shame and shame forms part of a very public conversation about what it means to be queer in the world. And until my conversation today, which is with social worker and psychotherapist Rahim Thawer, I thought I had a pretty good grasp of what shame is. I was wrong. I wasn’t aware, for example, of how shame really operates, nor how it prevents the radical intimacy necessary for our collective liberation. Our conversation today explores how shame thrives on white supremacist ideas of desirability, how we learn to live with shame’s imprint and residue and the four defensive behaviours we exhibit to separate us from our shame. Rahim also shares why attempts to love ourselves before we can love anyone else will always leave us wanting; and says that contrary to the dominant culture’s insistence that shame is a problem for the individual to address in isolation, we must learn that love for yourself only develops in positive relationships with other people. For those who’d like to dive deeper, Rahim has a number of articles available on Medium.About Rahim ThawerRahim Thawer works as a psychotherapist, clinical supervisor, facilitator and public speaker, sessional lecturer, writer and community organiser. Rahim is particularly interested in examining innovation in queer relationships. He has dedicated almost ten years to community organising with Salaam Canada, a national volunteer-run LGBTQ Muslim organisation. He was also a co-editor and essay contributor in a local history anthology entitled Any Other Way: How Toronto Got Queer.About Busy Being Black﻿Help me shape the future of Busy Being Black by filling out this short listener survey: https://forms.gle/y7y3iQ7RPievyGFP8Busy Being Black is an exploration and expression of quare liveliness and my guests are those who have learned to live, love and thrive at the intersection of their identities. Your support of the show means the world. Please leave a rating and a review and share these conversations far and wide. As we continue to work towards futures worthy of us all, my hope is that as many of you as possible understand Busy Being Black as a soft, tender and intellectually rigorous place for you to land. Thank you to our funding partner, myGwork – the business community for LGBT+ professionals, students, inclusive employers and anyone who believes in workplace equality. Thank you to my friend Lazarus Lynch for creating the ancestral and enlivening Busy Being Black theme music. Thank you to Lucian Koncz and Stevie Gatez for helping bring new Busy Being Black artwork into the world. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Rahim Thawer – Sexuality and the Imprint of Shame

Emily Aboud believes that art needs to be political. Whether in its critique of power or its provocation of joy and laughter, art must help move us towards freedom. Her cabaret-play, Splintered, gathers the first person experiences of 12 queer women in Trinidad and Tobago and weaves together these experiences to show how queer women living under threat of homophobic violence manage to cultivate and nurture intimacy, joy and resistance together. Emily says she made an explicit and intentional decision to avoid centring the trauma queer women know so well, deciding instead to let laughter, irreverence and satire act as the vehicle for a necessary critique of what post-colonial countries and cultures decide to hold onto. We explore Emily’s complicated feelings about carnival, her adoration of the mythic shapeshifter Lagahoo, and her challenge to what she calls the false binary between art and science. Emily says art and science are asking the same question in two distinct but connected ways and we discuss how Splintered is evidence of her scientific approach to theatre-making.About Emily AboudEmily Aboud is a theatre director, a film director and a writer of mixed heritage, born and raised in Trinidad and Tobago, based in London. She won the Evening Standard Future Theatre Award in 2021. She is an associate artist at the Bush Theatre and Artistic Director of Lagahoo Productions.About Busy Being Black﻿Help me shape the future of Busy Being Black by filling out this short listener survey: https://forms.gle/y7y3iQ7RPievyGFP8Busy Being Black is an exploration and expression of quare liveliness and my guests are those who have learned to live, love and thrive at the intersection of their identities. Your support of the show means the world. Please leave a rating and a review and share these conversations far and wide. As we continue to work towards futures worthy of us all, my hope is that as many of you as possible understand Busy Being Black as a soft, tender and intellectually rigorous place for you to land. Thank you to our funding partner, myGwork – the business community for LGBT+ professionals, students, inclusive employers and anyone who believes in workplace equality. Thank you to my friend Lazarus Lynch for creating the ancestral and enlivening Busy Being Black theme music. Thank you to Lucian Koncz and Stevie Gatez for helping bring new Busy Being Black artwork into the world. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Emily Aboud – Splintered

When we think of the sweeping constellation of music that is Americana, we could be forgiven for thinking of it as a genre that doesn’t really speak to our lived experiences as queer Black people. Emerging in the 1940s as music borne of the weathered realities of rural life in the United States, Americana is perhaps most closely — if not accurately — associated with the region of Appalachia and the experiences of white Americans. But as my guest, Paula Boggs, makes clear: there is no Americana — no bluegrass, no country, no folk music — without the backbeat of African influences and the musical ingenuity of Black Americans.Paula Boggs fronts the Paula Boggs Band, whose music is described as “Seattle-brewed soulgrass.” She is an accomplished musician and songwriter and the COVID-19 pandemic offered her an opportunity to reevaluate and research, §and to come into closer relationship with her ancestral lineages — an experience which animates Janus, the newest release from the Paula Boggs Band. Today, we explore how the pandemic has altered our understanding of place and belonging, how the segregation of public radio helped obscure the West African roots of bluegrass and why bluegrass is the genre Paula feels most at home within. She also shares the recipe for her 30-year relationship with her wife, a secret sauce which offers insights into how we might create a more graceful civic life together now and in the future.About Paula BoggsPaula Boggs served as Executive Vice President, General Counsel and Secretary at Starbucks Corporation from 2002 to 2012. In 2009, NASDAQ©️ named her its top general counsel. She also had a 14-year career in public service, including as an Assistant U.S. Attorney, and in various capacities as an attorney for the U.S. Army, the Department of Defence and the White House Office of Legal Counsel. She served eight years as a Regular Officer in the United States Army, earned Army Airborne wings and a Congressional appointment to the US Naval Academy – among America’s first women to do so. Paula is a graduate of the University of California at Berkeley School of Law and earned a bachelor’s degree in International Studies from Johns Hopkins University. She was also an adjunct professor at the University of Washington School of Law and she served under President Obama on the President's Committee on the Arts and the Humanities.About Busy Being BlackBusy Being Black is an exploration and expression of quare liveliness and my guests are those who have learned to live, love and thrive at the intersection of their identities. Your support of the show means the world. Please leave a rating and a review and share these conversations far and wide. As we continue to work towards futures worthy of us all, my hope is that as many of you as possible understand Busy Being Black as a soft, tender and intellectually rigorous place for you to land. Thank you to our funding partner, myGwork – the business community for LGBT+ professionals, students, inclusive employers and anyone who believes in workplace equality. Thank you to my friend Lazarus Lynch for creating the ancestral and enlivening Busy Being Black theme music. Thank you to Lucian Koncz and Stevie Gatez for helping bring new Busy Being Black artwork into the world. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Paula Boggs – Ebony Revisited

This week, I’m in conversation with queer Black theologian and Anglican priest Father Jarel Robinson-Brown, whose theology and pastoral practice offer a re-embodied understanding of Christianity. Jarel is one of many theologians, poets and philosophers whose work has offered me an affirming and vitalising framework for understanding and practising my evolving spirituality. You’ll have heard me talk about author Sophie Strand, biological philosopher Andreas Weber and poet and theologian Pádraig Ó Tuama, who joins me today for a conversation about his new book of poetry, Feed the Beast, which features poems wrestling with sexuality and religion. Today, we discuss the body as a site of divine and erotic intelligence, the potential of poetry to help us approach and unlock our desires and Pádraig reads four of his poems: “Monster”, “Exorcism”, “Someone” and “How to Be Alone”.About Pádraig Ó TuamaPádraig Ó Tuama is a poet and theologian from Ireland. His work has appeared in Poetry Ireland, The Harvard Review, Gutter and the Academy of American Poets. He is host of the podcast Poetry Unbound from On Being Studios and his newest collection of poetry, Feed the Beast, is available from Broken Sleep Books.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Pádraig Ó Tuama – Feed the Beast

This week, I'm in conversation with author and scholar Dagmawi Woubshet, whose 2015 book, The Calendar of Loss, has transformed how I engage with the work Black gay men created during the AIDS crisis of the 1980s and '90s. In this clip from our 2018 conversation, HIV activist and community organiser Marc Thompson shares insights about the Black gay experience in London in the 1980s.About Marc ThompsonMarc Thompson is an HIV activist and writer. He established The Love Tank in March 2018 and is one of the original founders of PrEPster. Marc lead Positively UK’s peer mentor programme until June 2018 and he is now Strategic Programme Lead for Health Improvement at the UK’s Terrence Higgins Trust. He has a rich history of community organising and engagement, co-founding Big Up in the late 1990s to respond to the sexual health needs of Black queer men.Help me shape the future of Busy Being Black by filling out this short listener survey: https://forms.gle/y7y3iQ7RPievyGFP8 See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Marc Thompson – I Have a Virus Older Than You

I cherish my copy of Joseph Beam and Essex Hemphill’s 1991 anthology, Brother to Brother: New Writings by Black Gay Men. It is a soaring, sensual and at times heartbreaking collection of the writings, plays, poetry and speeches of some of the Black gay men we lost during the AIDS crisis of the 1980s and 1990s. I cherish it because it has affirmed my unequivocal spiritual lineage to the Black gay men who came before me – and because it offers such piercing first-person insight into how Black gay lived and loved. As I’ve learned from Dagmawi Woubshet, Brother to Brother is also an effervescent and enlivening demonstration of grief as a public and political act.In The Calendar of Loss, Dagmawi illuminates how AIDS mourning challenges how we have come to think about loss and grief, insisting that the bereaved can confront death in the face of shame and stigma in eloquent ways that also imply a fierce political sensibility and a longing for justice. We explore how political funerals during the AIDS crisis honoured those who died — and would die — by exposing and confronting governmental neglect, what we can learn from those whom Dagmawi names “disprized mourners” about how we utilise our rage in our present moment; and the ways queer Black men maintained a fierce erotic intimacy that would animate their legacies long after their deaths.Busy Being Black listeners get 50% off at Pluto Press.About Dagmawi WoubshetDagmawi Woubshet is a scholar of African American literature and art at the University of Pennsylvania, working at the intersections of African American, LGBTQ and African studies. The Calendar of Loss has transformed how I engage with the art and writing of those we lost during the AIDS crisis and I'm excited for his second book, Here Be Saints: James Baldwin’s Late-Style.About Busy Being Black﻿Help me shape the future of Busy Being Black by filling out this short listener survey: https://forms.gle/y7y3iQ7RPievyGFP8Busy Being Black is an exploration and expression of quare liveliness and my guests are those who have learned to live, love and thrive at the intersection of their identities. Your support of the show means the world. Please leave a rating and a review and share these conversations far and wide. As we continue to work towards futures worthy of us all, my hope is that as many of you as possible understand Busy Being Black as a soft, tender and intellectually rigorous place for you to land. Thank you to our funding partner, myGwork – the business community for LGBT+ professionals, students, inclusive employers and anyone who believes in workplace equality. Thank you to my friend Lazarus Lynch for creating the ancestral and enlivening Busy Being Black theme music. Thank you to Lucian Koncz and Stevie Gatez for helping bring new Busy Being Black artwork into the world. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Dagmawi Woubshet – The Calendar of Loss

In his essay, "Nothing Personal", James Baldwin writes: “One discovers the light in darkness, that is what darkness is for; but everything in our lives depends on how we bear the light. It is necessary, while in darkness, to know that there is a light somewhere, to know that in oneself, waiting to be found, there is a light. What the light reveals is danger, and what it demands is faith.” What light do we see in ourselves and in each other amid the literal and metaphorical darkness of our time? And what do we need in order to answer Baldwin’s call to be light bearers?To encounter our light, we often need courage, which my guest today defines as “acts that bring something necessary to the surface.” Prince Shakur is a queer, Jamaican-American author, journalist and videomaker, whose work is steeped in his commitment to Black liberation, prison abolition and queer resilience. His memoir, When They Tell You to Be Good, was released in October and won the Hurston/Wright Crossover Award, which honours probing, provocative and original new voices in literary nonfiction. Connected by our love for James Baldwin, Prince and I explore how our anger can often feel like a reaffirmation of our Blackness, defining and cultivating the courage we need to live according to our beliefs and how his desire to create spaces of transformation for others acts as a transformative force upon himself and what writing his memoir taught him about telling the truth.The music for this episode was provided by 3CNB.Busy Being Black listeners get 50% off at Pluto Press, and 30% off at Duke University Press and Combined Academic Publishers.About Busy Being Black﻿Help me shape the future of Busy Being Black by filling out this short listener survey: https://forms.gle/y7y3iQ7RPievyGFP8Busy Being Black is an exploration and expression of quare liveliness and my guests are those who have learned to live, love and thrive at the intersection of their identities. Your support of the show means the world. Please leave a rating and a review and share these conversations far and wide. As we continue to work towards futures worthy of us all, my hope is that as many of you as possible understand Busy Being Black as a soft, tender and intellectually rigorous place for you to land. Thank you to our funding partner, myGwork – the business community for LGBT+ professionals, students, inclusive employers and anyone who believes in workplace equality. Thank you to my friend Lazarus Lynch for creating the ancestral and enlivening Busy Being Black theme music. Thank you to Lucian Koncz and Stevie Gatez for helping bring new Busy Being Black artwork into the world. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Prince Shakur – When They Tell You to Be Good

I've been drawn to expressions of art and life that speak to a wisdom shared with me by mentor: "Your ministry is in your DNA". The work we choose do in the world, the people we choose to be against the odds, is how each of us does the ministering necessary to ensure we and our communities can thrive. We live as an expression of our truth. And the ministry we're engaged in is one that requires defiance, which my guest today offers through a prodigious kaleidoscope of artist expression.Nakhane is a multi-disciplinary artist and musician from South Africa whose music, writing and film-work strikes an unusual balance between vulnerability, rage and the erotic. Nakhane grew up in the throes of Christianity and felt compelled to renounce their sexuality in order to do what was asked of them. But the religious community Nakhane gave up so much for was not there when Nakhane needed them – their queer family was. And so our conversation today explores what their excommunication from the church taught them about their capacity for love – and to be loving, their refusal to abide by the dictate that Black people should always take the high road, the importance of understanding our chosen art forms as both multi-faceted and as a calling to be taken very seriously and their advice to those who are resisting against a world that wants them to be anything other than who they are.Pre-order and save Nakhane's new EP, Leading Lines, here. Listen to Nakhane's new single, "My Ma Was Good", here.Busy Being Black listeners get 50% off at Pluto Press, and 30% off at Duke University Press and Combined Academic Publishers.About Busy Being Black﻿Help me shape the future of Busy Being Black by filling out this short listener survey: https://forms.gle/y7y3iQ7RPievyGFP8Busy Being Black is an exploration and expression of quare liveliness and my guests are those who have learned to live, love and thrive at the intersection of their identities. Your support of the show means the world. Please leave a rating and a review and share these conversations far and wide. As we continue to work towards futures worthy of us all, my hope is that as many of you as possible understand Busy Being Black as a soft, tender and intellectually rigorous place for you to land. Thank you to our funding partner, myGwork – the business community for LGBT+ professionals, students, inclusive employers and anyone who believes in workplace equality. Thank you to my friend Lazarus Lynch for creating the ancestral and enlivening Busy Being Black theme music. Thank you to Lucian Koncz and Stevie Gatez for helping bring new Busy Being Black artwork into the world. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Nakhane – Do You Well

Can we look at the stars queerly? And if so, how might queer star-gazing help orient us towards earthly liberation? To help me answer these questions is Dr Chanda Prescod-Weinstein – a theoretical cosmologist and particle physicist. Her book, The Disordered Cosmos, presents a Black queer feminist challenge to the dominant understanding of physics and calls for a more robust and intersectional approach to ensuring the sciences and the night sky are available to all. Three lessons in particular stand out to me from this conversation: The first is that science is queer. If we understand queerness as a refusal to aspire to the norm, then the insatiable curiosity that queerness demands is well-suited to a science like physics. Indeed physics – perhaps the most difficult and ever-changing of the sciences – could be the queerest science of all. Physics is for us. The second lesson is personal. Ahead of my conversation with Chanda, I told her I was feeling nervous because I’m not a scientist: do I have what it takes to hold space for her enchantment with something I don’t fully understand? Chanda assured me that I don’t have to pass a physics test to understand what lights her up or to read her book, and so I was reminded of something Mary Oliver wrote: “the touch of our separate excitements is another of the gifts of our life together”. The third lesson is that physics is the science concerned with how the universe behaves; and whether through scientific inquiry, poetry or lived experience, is that not also the work we’re engaged in together here?  Our conversation explores how Star Trek upholds and challenges ideas about who is representative of the human race, how queer Black feminisms have taught Chanda to look to the stars in more generative ways and why dreaming of a future where every Black child has access to the dark night sky requires robust interventions across culture and society right now. Busy Being Black listeners get 50% off at Pluto Press, and 30% off at Duke University Press and Combined Academic Publishers.About Busy Being Black﻿Help me shape the future of Busy Being Black by filling out this short listener survey: https://forms.gle/y7y3iQ7RPievyGFP8Busy Being Black is an exploration and expression of quare liveliness and my guests are those who have learned to live, love and thrive at the intersection of their identities. Your support of the show means the world. Please leave a rating and a review and share these conversations far and wide. As we continue to work towards futures worthy of us all, my hope is that as many of you as possible understand Busy Being Black as a soft, tender and intellectually rigorous place for you to land. Thank you to our funding partner, myGwork – the business community for LGBT+ professionals, students, inclusive employers and anyone who believes in workplace equality. Thank you to my friend Lazarus Lynch for creating the ancestral and enlivening Busy Being Black theme music. Thank you to Lucian Koncz and Stevie Gatez for helping bring new Busy Being Black artwork into the world. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Dr Chanda Prescod-Weinstein – The Disordered Cosmos

My conversation this week is with artist, producer and educator malakaï sergeant. During the recording of our conversation, malakaï flagged the carceral geographies many of us have become so accustomed to – limiting and murderous as they can be. In the moment, I grabbed one of my favourite books of poetry, The Actual by Inua Ellams – an incisive, fiery and tender defence of Black liveliness. My favourite poem in the collection is "F*ck / Sunflowers", which speaks with such stunning heartbreak about the realities so many are forced to endure when robbed of the soil that could sustain us. With Inua’s permission, I’m reciting it for you today. Content warning: this poem infers death by suicide.The Actual is published by and available from Penned in the Margins. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

F*ck / Sunflowers by Inua Ellams

In 2020, as we enclosed ourselves to protect ourselves and others from the ravages of Covid-19, I noticed for the first time in a long time the resonant chorus of birdsong. Without the sound and smog of vehicles, the natural world around us began to sing more loudly. As I discovered through a conversation between Krista Tippett and sound ecologist Gordon Hempton on the radio programme On Being, the return of birdsong – to the world around us and to our consciousness – is much more than something beautiful to listen to: humans have evolved to not only detect the faintest birdsong in the distance, but to move in its direction because birdsong is the primary indicator of habitats prosperous to our survival. But the birds of our ancestors sang in a very different jungle. The concrete jungles we inhabit now are increasingly inhospitable to our survival. And as malakaï sargeant explores with me today, tapping into and utilising the ancestral and evolutionary wisdom within us is urgent work. What else do we know? In order for us to survive and to do for others what our ancestors have done for us, malakaï says we must continue to dream outside the carceral geographies of the cities we can feel trapped in. To help themself and others do this, malakaï does dream-enabling work creating and holding space for queer Black creative expression in the arts. From theatre-making to artistic direction, poetry and performance, malakaï enables art that not only challenges the carceral limitations of our world, but which offers what Katherine McKittrick might call “liberatory clues”.I caught up with malakaï ahead of their pilgrimage to Jamaica where they reconnected with their liveliness through a closer proximity to land and lineage; and our conversation today is one of diasporic tensions, cultural knowledge, queerness as cosmic and ancestral gift – and how malakaï knows they sparkle when they sleep.This conversation was made possible with funding from the AZ Creative Fund.Busy Being Black listeners get 50% off at Pluto Press, and 30% off at Duke University Press and Combined Academic Publishers.About Busy Being BlackBusy Being Black is an exploration and expression of quare liveliness and my guests are those who have learned to live, love and thrive at the intersection of their identities. Your support of the show means the world. Please leave a rating and a review and share these conversations far and wide. As we continue to work towards futures worthy of us all, my hope is that as many of you as possible understand Busy Being Black as a soft, tender and intellectually rigorous place for you to land. Thank you to our funding partner, myGwork – the business community for LGBT+ professionals, students, inclusive employers and anyone who believes in workplace equality. Thank you to my friend Lazarus Lynch for creating the ancestral and enlivening Busy Being Black theme music. Thank you to Lucian Koncz and Stevie Gatez for helping bring new Busy Being Black artwork into the world. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

malakaï sargeant – I Sparkle When I Sleep

Busy Being Black is the award-winning podcast exploring how we live in the fullness of our queer Black lives. Each week, I have conversations with academics, artists, activists, thinkers and change-makers who help me and listeners understand ourselves as complex and complicated, messy, beautiful and vibrant people making the grandest and noblest attempts to thrive. Whether we’re searching for our place in the vast expanse of the universe or tracing our ancestral lineages through dance, guests on Busy Being Black bring their hard earned wisdom to your ears and heart each episode. From Black Trans Feminist theory to poetry, HIV/AIDS activism and questions of Black masculinity, Busy Being Black centres queer Black hope, as we discuss what it means to show up as ourselves against the odds. Busy Being Black is by us, for us.In the words of poet and activist PJ Samuels: "Come into this; it’s flavoured, fully seasoned. Taste. Look what was made for you."#busybeingblackbusybeingblack.comtwitter.com/_busybeingblackinstagram.com/_busybeingblackinstagram.com/_joshrivers See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Come Into This

One of my favourite quotes is from the late Toni Morrison: “Sometimes you don’t survive whole, you just survive in part. But the grandeur of life is that attempt. It’s not about that solution. It is about being as fearless as one can, behaving as beautifully as one can, under completely impossible circumstances. It’s that that makes it elegant.” For those of us inclined to share ourselves through the creative process, we can also be navigating imposter syndrome, structural barriers and limiting beliefs about ourselves. The reminder that our attempt is the grandest part of it all feels like a reminder worth shouting repeatedly. Dionne Edwards is a wonderful example of Morrisonian attempt in action. She’s a screenwriter and director, whose debut feature film Pretty Red Dress debuts this month at BFI London Film Festival. We explore why it’s important for us to embrace the grandiose, the beauty and weirdness of distortion in the creative process, and telling the stories of flawed people with care. We discuss the impossibility and undesirability of perfection and why she thinks utopia is a wonderful ambition — as long as we never get there.This conversation was made possible with funding from the AZ Creative Fund.Busy Being Black listeners get 50% off at Pluto Press, and 30% off at Duke University Press and Combined Academic Publishers.About Busy Being BlackBusy Being Black is an exploration and expression of quare liveliness and my guests are those who have learned to live, love and thrive at the intersection of their identities. Your support of the show means the world. Please leave a rating and a review and share these conversations far and wide. As we continue to work towards futures worthy of us all, my hope is that as many of you as possible understand Busy Being Black as a soft, tender and intellectually rigorous place for you to land. Thank you to our funding partner, myGwork – the business community for LGBT+ professionals, students, inclusive employers and anyone who believes in workplace equality. Thank you to my friend Lazarus Lynch for creating the ancestral and enlivening Busy Being Black theme music. Thank you to Lucian Koncz and Stevie Gatez for helping bring new Busy Being Black artwork into the world. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Dionne Edwards – Attempting Utopia

My conversation this week is with Ahmed Best, a story teller, artist, educator and futurist who helps facilitate the game Afrorithms from the Future. In this bonus episode, Ahmed and Afrorithms from the Future co-creator Dr Lonny Brooks take Long Time Academy host Ella Saltmarshe through the game. Afrorithims from the Future is a collaborative, design thinking, storytelling game that helps activate our radical imaginations by centring the experiences and wisdoms of Black people and BIPOC.About Busy Being BlackBusy Being Black is an exploration and expression of quare liveliness and my guests are those who have learned to live, love and thrive at the intersection of their identities. Your support of the show means the world. Please leave a rating and a review and share these conversations far and wide. As we continue to work towards futures worthy of us all, my hope is that as many of you as possible understand Busy Being Black as a soft, tender and intellectually rigorous place for you to land. Thank you to our funding partner, myGwork – the business community for LGBT+ professionals, students, inclusive employers and anyone who believes in workplace equality. Thank you to my friend Lazarus Lynch for creating the ancestral and enlivening Busy Being Black theme music. Thank you to Lucian Koncz and Stevie Gatez for helping bring new Busy Being Black artwork into the world. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Afrorithms from the Future

I’m still revelling in an acute awe, inaugurated by the images captured by the Just Wonderful Space Telescope in July. As a big and beautiful conversation about our significance continues, a persistent narrative about how small we are has emerged and I suspect that the language deployed to make us insignificant as we gaze at the stars, has something to do with the dominant culture’s denuding of our imaginations, which my guest today says require an emotional athleticism.To help us reckon with our collective awe and our responsibility to harness our imaginations for the futures we deserve, I’m in conversation with Ahmed Best. Ahmed is a multi-hyphenate story teller, artist, educator, and futurist – as well as an Adjunct Professor at USC School of Dramatic Arts and the Stanford d. school. You may also know him as the actor who played Jar Jar Binks in Star Wars. We explore afrofuturism as an imaginative framework that helps us work through current and oppressive realities in order to fashion a future worthy of us all. And the need for Black people – especially – to take seriously the project of engaging with what Ahmed calls long futures. He reminds us that the oppressions so many of us live through now are the result of someone’s imagination. If we are to have any chance of helping shape the future, we don’t have the luxury of not thinking about it.Together with Dr Lonny Brooks, Ahmed helps facilitate AfroRithms from the Future – a collaborative, design thinking, storytelling game that helps activate our radical imaginations by centring the experiences and wisdoms of Black people and BIPOC. You can hear more of Ahmed in conversation about the power of our collective imagination and defining futures we can all inhabit on The Long Time Academy.This conversation was made possible with funding from the AZ Creative Fund.Busy Being Black listeners get 50% off at Pluto Press, and 30% off at Duke University Press and Combined Academic Publishers.About Busy Being BlackBusy Being Black is an exploration and expression of quare liveliness and my guests are those who have learned to live, love and thrive at the intersection of their identities. Your support of the show means the world. Please leave a rating and a review and share these conversations far and wide. As we continue to work towards futures worthy of us all, my hope is that as many of you as possible understand Busy Being Black as a soft, tender and intellectually rigorous place for you to land. Thank you to our funding partner, myGwork – the business community for LGBT+ professionals, students, inclusive employers and anyone who believes in workplace equality. Thank you to my friend Lazarus Lynch for creating the ancestral and enlivening Busy Being Black theme music. Thank you to Lucian Koncz and Stevie Gatez for helping bring new Busy Being Black artwork into the world. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Ahmed Best – Hope Among the Stars

This is episode 100 of Busy Being Black. To honour this milestone, my friend DYLEMA takes my seat to interview me. Busy Being Black emerged four years ago at a time of great personal distress – and transformation. I am unendingly grateful that you all keep showing up, tuning in and talking back. 
About DYLEMA
DYLEMA is an acronym: Do You and Let Every Man Adapt. She is an artist, musician and spoken word poet, whose life and spiritual guidance continue to enrich and inspire my own. You may remember her voice from our soaring conversation in 2019, "When I Named Myself, I Became a Poet", which I encourage you all to revisit. 
The voice notes included in this episode are (in order of inclusion): Max and Freya Powers, Lerone Clarke-Oliver, Adrian Jönsson-Iseni and Pádraig Ó Tuama.
The poem included in this episode, "The Dancing Boy", was written and performed by Josh Rivers, includes vocals by Lazarus Lynch and was scored by Joshua Pleeter.
About Busy Being Black
Thank you to Lazarus Lynch – a queer Black musician and culinary extraordinaire, for the triumphant and ancestral Busy Being Black theme music. The Busy Being Black theme music was mixed and mastered by Joshua Pleeter.
Busy Being Black listeners have a discount at Pluto Press. Enter BUSY50 at checkout. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Episode 100 — The Dancing Boy

I’m in conversation with Rico Norwood, who opens our conversation with a beautiful and important introduction to Isaac Julien’s seminal film Looking for Langston. As well as doing more justice to Looking for Langston’s importance than I could, we open with this introduction because Rico flags an important word “quare”, which – as some of you already know – I have tattooed right across my throat. “Quare” was put forward by E. Patrick Johnson, the fairy godfather of Black queer studies, in his 2001 essay, “Quare studies, or (almost) everything I know about queer studies I learned from my grandmother”. Part of what animates Johnson’s theoretical intervention is an understanding that Black queer people and the non-queer people who birth, nurture and raise us, often have much more to offer the world than we’re given credit for. It is a “quareness” that energises my own cultural and intellectual inquiry and which brings me and Rico together, both as friends and conversation partners. Today we explore Looking for Langston’s ongoing importance, the role cultural institutions like the BFI play in either gatekeeping or providing access to our quare cultural canons and how politics of respectability and representation continue to hinder our collective cultural memory. And together we attempt to answer an enduring question, one addressed often on Busy Being Black, how do we ensure that work that could be so important to our liberation isn’t so continually withheld from us? About Rico NorwoodRico Norwood (they/them) is an American Film and Video Game researcher out of the University of Southampton, who currently resides in London and Berlin. They hail from Houston, Texas but received their undergraduate degree in Mass Communications from Xavier University of New Orleans and their M.A. in Media Studies at Long Island University’s Brooklyn Campus. Their primary academic concerns are Black Queer Art and historical narratives through films, as well as Video Game studies with regards to race, gender, sexuality, and their development.About Busy Being BlackBusy Being Black is the podcast exploring how we live in the fullness of our queer Black lives. Thank you to our partners: UK Black Pride, BlackOut UK, The Tenth, Schools Out and to you the listeners. Remember this, your support doesn’t cost any money: retweets, ratings, reviews and shares all help so please keep the support coming. Thank you to our funding partner, myGwork – the LGBT+ business community.Thank you to Lazarus Lynch – a queer Black musician and culinary extraordinaire based in New York City – for the triumphant and ancestral Busy Being Black theme music. The Busy Being Black theme music was mixed and mastered by Joshua Pleeter.Busy Being Black’s artwork was photographed by queer Black photographer and filmmaker Dwayne Black.Join the conversation on Twitter and Instagram #busybeingblackBusy Being Black listeners have an exclusive discount at Pluto Press. Enter BUSY50 at checkout. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Rico Norwood – A Quare Gaze

My admiration of Travis Alabanza runs deep. They were one of the first people to say yes to me and Busy Being Black at a time of tremendous uncertainty for me, and our 2018 conversation remains a firm favourite with listeners. The wisdom and insights Travis shared on art, gender, race and self-awareness are as relevant and salient today as then. I find them refreshing, not least for the ways they engage with the spectacle of curiosity that confronts them and trans folks daily. Travis reproaches with sass, or critique or silence: a questioning back that asks, ultimately, whether the rest of us know the role we play in the ongoing hostilities facing trans people. But Travis’ work is not only, always or forever work about their experience as a trans person in a transphobic world, nor do they create to explain; which is perhaps most beautifully expressed in a statement made to Travis by writer and friend Kuchenga: "This is for us, baby, not for them." At the heart of Travis’ new book, None of the Above, is a call to keep questioning who we are when no one is watching. None of the Above is available to pre-order from Gays the Word, the UK's oldest LGBTQ bookshop.This conversation was recorded live at Shoreditch House in East London in May 2022, in front of an audience of friends, family and Busy Being Black listeners. A special thank you to Khaleel Johnson at Soho House, and to Matt Noades and his team at Anvil Audio.About Busy Being BlackBusy Being Black is the podcast exploring how we live in the fullness of our queer Black lives. Thank you to our partners: UK Black Pride, BlackOut UK, The Tenth, Schools Out and to you the listeners. Remember this, your support doesn’t cost any money: retweets, ratings, reviews and shares all help so please keep the support coming. Thank you to our funding partner, myGwork – the LGBT+ business community.Thank you to Lazarus Lynch – a queer Black musician and culinary extraordinaire based in New York City – for the triumphant and ancestral Busy Being Black theme music. The Busy Being Black theme music was mixed and mastered by Joshua Pleeter.Busy Being Black’s artwork was photographed by queer Black photographer and filmmaker Dwayne Black.Join the conversation on Twitter and Instagram #busybeingblackBusy Being Black listeners have an exclusive discount at Pluto Press. Enter BUSY50 at checkout. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Travis Alabanza – None of the Above

2015 and 2016 were big years for me: in April 2015, I was shocked into my political awakening by the Baltimore riots, which erupted after the funeral of Freddie Gray. The rage and grief expressed through the riots inspired me to action: how might I be part of a solution? And a year later, in 2016, I stumbled on No Tea, No Shade, an anthology of nineteen essays from scholars, activists, and community leaders doing work on black gender and sexuality. No Tea, No Shade helped focus the fire stoked by the riots towards something generative, rigorous and tender. Busy Being Black is a product of these two events — and a life of searching and questioning before, during and since.So, you can imagine how honoured I am to be in conversation with Dr Jafari S. Allen, whose essay "Black/Queer Rhizomatics" opens No Tea, No Shade and was the first piece of Black queer theory I ever read. We discuss his latest book, There’s a Disco Ball Between Us, a sweeping and lively ethnographic and intellectual history of what he calls “Black gay habits of mind.” We explore the impact of the church and Black folk on his lyric use of language, tussling with the wisdom offered by our ancestors and forebears, his beautiful friendship with freedom fighter Sister Nehanda and how inhabiting or embodying a Black fullness can make space for all the ways we’ve decided to, or need to, show up in the world – for protection, survival and thriving.About Jafari S. AllenJafari S. Allen is the Director of Africana Studies, Inaugural Co-Director of the Centre for Global Black Studies and Associate Professor of Anthropology at University of Miami. Dr. Allen’s scholarship and teaching has opened new lines of inquiry and offered re-invigorated methods of Black feminist narrative theorising in anthropology, Black studies and queer studies. His latest book, There’s a Disco Ball Between Us, was released on 1 March by Duke University Press.About Busy Being BlackBusy Being Black is the podcast exploring how we live in the fullness of our queer Black lives. Thank you to our partners: UK Black Pride, BlackOut UK, The Tenth, Schools Out and to you the listeners. Remember this, your support doesn’t cost any money: retweets, ratings, reviews and shares all help so please keep the support coming. Thank you to our funding partner, myGwork – the LGBT+ business community.Thank you to Lazarus Lynch – a queer Black musician and culinary extraordinaire based in New York City – for the triumphant and ancestral Busy Being Black theme music. The Busy Being Black theme music was mixed and mastered by Joshua Pleeter.Busy Being Black’s artwork was photographed by queer Black photographer and filmmaker Dwayne Black.Join the conversation on Twitter and Instagram #busybeingblackBusy Being Black listeners have an exclusive discount at Pluto Press. Enter BUSY50 at checkout. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Jafari S. Allen – There's a Disco Ball Between Us

This week, my conversation is with Black, fat, queer and trans theorist and abolitionist Da’Shaun Harrison. Their new book, Belly of the Beast: The Politics of Anti-fatness as Anti-Blackness is an important addition in the fields of fat and Black studies, which offers us all necessary knowledge and insights to help improve how we relate to one another and ourselves. In this bonus episode, Da’Shaun and I explore the erotic and how the many barriers society forces us to erect around ourselves, preclude a deeper, necessary and potentially world-ending intimacy. Content warning: sexual violence.Da’Shaun Harrison is based in Atlanta and is the author of Belly of the Beast: The Politics of Anti-fatness as Anti-Blackness. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Da'Shaun L. Harrison – An Invitation to Pleasure

I’ve long admired the work of Da’Shaun L. Harrison. Like many of those I’ve come to encounter and adore over the past few years, Da’Shaun’s work came across my timeline on social media and their incisive and invigorating intellectual offerings have had me hooked since. Da’Shaun is a Black, fat, queer and trans theorist and abolitionist, and in their debut book, Belly of the Beast: The Politics of Anti-fatness as Anti-Blackness, they argue that to live in a body that is both fat and Black is to exist at the margins of a society that limits us in ways we may have never considered.In our conversation today, Da’Shaun expands on the connection between anti-fatness and anti-Blackness, explains how diet culture persists as a tool of social control and offers up ways of thinking about how the policing each of us might do of our own bodies invariably impacts how we interact with – and even judge – those around us. Like all of the best intellectual work, Da’Shaun’s intervention is grounded in a political awakening that took place at the community-level, where they say they felt safe and brave enough to explore who they wanted to be in the world; and so we also discuss how community-building has shown them what the future – or, a beyond as they call it – could look like, and they make a compelling case for the power of our imaginations to help us think beyond what we know.About Da'Shaun L. HarrisonDa’Shaun L. Harrison is a Black, fat, queer and trans theorist and abolitionist in Atlanta. Harrison is the author of Belly of the Beast: The Politics of Anti-Fatness as Anti-Blackness, and a public speaker who often gives talks and leads workshops on Blackness, queerness, gender, fatness, disabilities and their intersections. Da'Shaun currently serves as the Editor-at-Large for Scalawag Magazine and is the co-host of the podcast Unsolicited: Fatties Talk Back.About Busy Being BlackBusy Being Black is the podcast exploring how we live in the fullness of our queer Black lives. Thank you to our partners: UK Black Pride, BlackOut UK, The Tenth, Schools Out and to you the listeners. Remember this, your support doesn’t cost any money: retweets, ratings, reviews and shares all help so please keep the support coming. Thank you to our funding partner, myGwork – the LGBT+ business community.Thank you to Lazarus Lynch – a queer Black musician and culinary extraordinaire based in New York City – for the triumphant and ancestral Busy Being Black theme music. The Busy Being Black theme music was mixed and mastered by Joshua Pleeter.Busy Being Black’s artwork was photographed by queer Black photographer and filmmaker Dwayne Black.Join the conversation on Twitter and Instagram #busybeingblackBusy Being Black listeners have an exclusive discount at Pluto Press. Enter BUSY50 at checkout. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Da'Shaun L. Harrison – Belly of the Beast

In the face of the ongoing and various violences experienced by Black women in the UK and across the world, Zinzi Minott wonders why more people don’t ask, “What do Black women’s bodies need?” It’s a question I’ve been sitting with since we recorded our conversation, which includes us exploring what our duty of care is to each other. Zinzi is a dancer, artist and filmmaker and she’s interested in ideas of broken narrative, disturbed lineage and how the use of the "glitch" can help us to consider notions of racism one experiences through their life. She is specifically interested in telling Caribbean stories, highlighting the histories of those enslaved and the resulting migration of the Windrush Generation.In this sweeping conversation, we explore her work commemorating the Windrush Generation, how we might show up better and more meaningfully for Black women and how her queerness kicked the doors open to her acceptance of what she calls her weirdness. Zinzi also explores her rearing in both the Pan Africanist and Black Radical traditions, and credits her belief in abolition with helping her hold space for those she encounters among her archival work and artistic practice. As she makes clear, the generations who came before us may not have had the attitudes or the language to hold who we have become in the world, but no one is to be discarded.About Zinzi MinottZinzi Minott’s work focuses on the relationship between dance, bodies and politics. Zinzi explores how dance is perceived through the prisms of race, queer culture, gender and class. As a dancer and filmmaker, she seeks to complicate the boundaries of dance, and sees her live performance, filmic explorations and made-objects as different but connected manifestations of dance and body-based outcomes and inquiry.​​BLOODSOUND is Zinzi’s latest work and features newly commissioned prints, moving image, sound and sculpture and expands on her durational film work(s) FI DEM, released annually on 22 June to commemorate the Windrush Generation.About Busy Being BlackBusy Being Black is the podcast exploring how we live in the fullness of our queer Black lives. Thank you to our partners: UK Black Pride, BlackOut UK, The Tenth, Schools Out and to you the listeners. Remember this, your support doesn’t cost any money: retweets, ratings, reviews and shares all help so please keep the support coming. Thank you to our funding partner, myGwork – the LGBT+ business community.Thank you to Lazarus Lynch – a queer Black musician and culinary extraordinaire based in New York City – for the triumphant and ancestral Busy Being Black theme music. The Busy Being Black theme music was mixed and mastered by Joshua Pleeter.Busy Being Black’s artwork was photographed by queer Black photographer and filmmaker Dwayne Black.Join the conversation on Twitter and Instagram #busybeingblackBusy Being Black listeners have an exclusive discount at Pluto Press. Enter BUSY50 at checkout. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Zinzi Minott – Ancestral Interference

For many of us who’ve grown up in the so-called West, our understanding of what belly dancing is has been shaped by colonialism’s legacy. What we’ve learned about or encountered as belly-dancing is actually a white-washed mishmash of several cultures, designed to play into the West’s fascination with and manufactured fear of those designated Muslim. My guest today, Shrouk El-Attar, is an LGBTQ rights campaigner, electronics engineer and belly dancer from Egypt. She is currently working on a piece of interactive art – a belly-dancing robot – which troubles the line between technology and human, and between the east and west. Her desire is to return belly-dancing, or more accurately Egyptian dancing, to its roots – which, she reminds us, has little to do with the movement of the belly and was never a practice restricted to women. Today we explore her experience as an asylum seeker, her fascination with technology and the moment she learned the people in her television set were there through the magic of engineering. She shares what she’s learned about nations and borders and citizenship, the joy, refusal and revolution enabled through dance, and how she’s turned her life experience and passion into both art and activism.About Shrouk El-AttarShrouk El-Attar is an LGBTQ rights campaigner, electronics engineer and belly dancer from Egypt. She was named one of BBC’s 100 Most Influential Women in the World 2018, UNHCR Young Woman of the Year 2018, and one of the Institution of Engineering and Technology’s Top 6 Young Women Engineers in the UK in both 2019 and 2020. She is one of two artists taking part in Watershed’s Winter Residences programme, which offers artists the opportunity to develop their ideas with the financial, critical, and technical support of Watershed.Watershed is the leading film culture and creative technology centre in the South West of England and champions engagement, imagination and ingenuity, working locally, nationally and globally from Bristol.About Busy Being BlackBusy Being Black is the podcast exploring how we live in the fullness of our queer Black lives. Thank you to our partners: UK Black Pride, BlackOut UK, The Tenth, Schools Out and to you the listeners. Remember this, your support doesn’t cost any money: retweets, ratings, reviews and shares all help so please keep the support coming. Thank you to our funding partner, myGwork – the LGBT+ business community.Thank you to Lazarus Lynch – a queer Black musician and culinary extraordinaire based in New York City – for the triumphant and ancestral Busy Being Black theme music. The Busy Being Black theme music was mixed and mastered by Joshua Pleeter.Busy Being Black’s artwork was photographed by queer Black photographer and filmmaker Dwayne Black.Join the conversation on Twitter and Instagram #busybeingblackBusy Being Black listeners have an exclusive discount at Pluto Press. Enter BUSY50 at checkout. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Shrouk El-Attar – The Dancing Queer

The late Ursula K. Le Guin wrote, “Our roots are in the dark; the earth is our country. Why did we look up for blessing – instead of around, and down? What hope we have lies there.” And it is down there, among roots and earth, that Black trans gaming designer, archivist and artist Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley is looking for our Black trans ancestors—those whose lives and stories have been lost to history and thus our collective memory. Danielle believes we are each responsible for someone in the earth, and through her work, calls us to interrogate the roles we play in the ongoing violence directed towards our trans siblings. Her approach to this interrogation brings together AI and game design, and places us in situations where we have to make choices—choices that can feel impossible. And that is the point. In our conversation today, we explore how she provides space and means for the expression of multiple Black trans essences; disrupting ideas about what an archive is, what we think it should do and who it should serve, by centring those whose lives and stories have been erased; how her residency at Serpentine, one of the UK’s most important contemporary art galleries, is helping shape her understanding of the potential of humanity; and her ongoing research into and fascination with creating a Black trans AI that speaks back to us and makes decisions for itself.About Danielle Brathwaite-ShirleyDanielle Brathwaite-Shirley is an artist living and working in London. She creates work that seeks to archive Black trans experience, and uses technology to imagine Black trans lives in environments that centre their bodies – those living, those that have passed and those that have been forgotten.About SerpentineDanielle has long been part of Serpentine's network and last year contributed to their Future Art Ecosystems: Arts x Metaverse report, which analysed what the metaverse means for the future of art, artists and cultural institutions. In particular, how real change and collaboration is vital to support the ever-growing number of artists, like Danielle, who work with advanced technologies and use the virtual space as a site of social liberation and resistance.﻿About Busy Being BlackBusy Being Black is the podcast exploring how we live in the fullness of our queer Black lives. Thank you to our partners: UK Black Pride, BlackOut UK, The Tenth, Schools Out and to you the listeners. Remember this, your support doesn’t cost any money: retweets, ratings, reviews and shares all help so please keep the support coming. Thank you to our funding partner, myGwork – the LGBT+ business community.Thank you to Lazarus Lynch – a queer Black musician and culinary extraordinaire based in New York City – for the triumphant and ancestral Busy Being Black theme music. The Busy Being Black theme music was mixed and mastered by Joshua Pleeter.Busy Being Black’s artwork was photographed by queer Black photographer and filmmaker Dwayne Black.Join the conversation on Twitter and Instagram #busybeingblackBusy Being Black listeners have an exclusive discount at Pluto Press. Enter BUSY50 at checkout. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley – Knowing Where to Dig

I met Raven Gill in March 2020 at the Equality and Justice Alliance convening in Saint Lucia, just before our countries went into their respective lockdowns. We became fast friends. She is an outspoken and forthright activist, who does essential and life-sustaining work with trans and non binary Bajans through the civil society organisation she founded, Butterfly Barbados. In our conversation, we explore how she and the communities she fights for have navigated the challenges of Covid-19, the toll the weight of responsibility has taken on her over the past two years and how the positive image Barbados has earned on the global stage recently obscures some harsher realities for trans and non-binary Bajans. And she shares some of her more personal reckonings, including learning what she needs from her friendships, the chosen family she has gathered around her, and what — or rather who — is bringing her joy.About Raven GillRaven Gill is a community organiser and activist and the founder of Butterfly Barbados, which advocates for transgender and non-binary Bajans. She works with the Barbados Family Planning Association, the Ministry of Health and with organisations regionally and internationally in order to redress and address the erasure of issues impacting trans people.Barbados is one of 54 countries in the Commonwealth, many of which still have colonial-era laws on their books that enable the discrimination against and persecution of LGBTQ people. And Butterfly Barbados is a member of The Commonwealth Equality Network is a network of 60-plus organisations working to uphold the human rights of LGBTQ people across the Commonwealth. UK-based charity Kaleidoscope Trust is host to the Network’s Secretariat. Kaleidoscope Trust believes the UK has an important role to play in redressing colonial era wrongs and works with partner organisations across the Commonwealth to provide funding for programmes to both sustain and liberate LGBTQ communities.About Busy Being BlackBusy Being Black is the podcast exploring how we live in the fullness of our queer Black lives. Thank you to our partners: UK Black Pride, BlackOut UK, The Tenth, Schools Out and to you the listeners. Remember this, your support doesn’t cost any money: retweets, ratings, reviews and shares all help so please keep the support coming. Thank you to our funding partner, myGwork – the LGBT+ business community.Thank you to Lazarus Lynch – a queer Black musician and culinary extraordinaire based in New York City – for the triumphant and ancestral Busy Being Black theme music. The Busy Being Black theme music was mixed and mastered by Joshua Pleeter.Busy Being Black’s artwork was photographed by queer Black photographer and filmmaker Dwayne Black.Join the conversation on Twitter and Instagram #busybeingblackBusy Being Black listeners have an exclusive discount at Pluto Press. Enter BUSY50 at checkout. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Raven Gill – The Bajan Butterfly

“Tiny resistances were a kind of healing in a weeping place” is just one of the many powerful and lyric aphorisms that ennoble The Prophets, the New York Times best-selling debut novel from Robert Jones, Jr. – a story about the forbidden union between two enslaved young men on a Deep South plantation, the refuge they find in each other and a betrayal that threatens their existence.Robert Jones, Jr. is a writer and thinker, and the creator and curator of the social-justice social media community Son of Baldwin. He has written for numerous publications, including the New York Times, Essence and the Paris Review. Today, in a far reaching conversation, we explore how The Prophets came to life and why he felt it so important to ensure queer Black love was neither denigrated nor ignored within it, his desire to correct the historical record, learning rebellion from his mother and making sure that queer Black people know they are loved, valued and have a purposeful place in the world.About Busy Being BlackBusy Being Black is the podcast exploring how we live in the fullness of our queer Black lives. Thank you to our partners: UK Black Pride, BlackOut UK, The Tenth, Schools Out and to you the listeners. Remember this, your support doesn’t cost any money: retweets, ratings, reviews and shares all help so please keep the support coming. Thank you to our funding partner, myGwork – the LGBT+ business community.Thank you to Lazarus Lynch – a queer Black musician and culinary extraordinaire based in New York City – for the triumphant and ancestral Busy Being Black theme music. The Busy Being Black theme music was mixed and mastered by Joshua Pleeter.Busy Being Black’s artwork was photographed by queer Black photographer and filmmaker Dwayne Black.Join the conversation on Twitter and Instagram #busybeingblackBusy Being Black listeners have an exclusive discount at Pluto Press. Enter BUSY50 at checkout. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Robert Jones, Jr. – The Prophets

This week, I’m in conversation with Robert Jones, Jr., author of The Prophets – his New York Times best-selling debut novel about the forbidden union between two enslaved young men. In this bonus episode, Robert reads an excerpt The Prophets, entitled “New Covenant”.Robert Jones, Jr. is a writer and thinker, and the creator and curator of the social-justice social media community Son of Baldwin. He has written for numerous publications, including the New York Times, Essence and the Paris Review.About Busy Being BlackBusy Being Black is the podcast exploring how we live in the fullness of our queer Black lives. Thank you to our partners: UK Black Pride, BlackOut UK, The Tenth, Schools Out and to you the listeners. Remember this, your support doesn’t cost any money: retweets, ratings, reviews and shares all help so please keep the support coming. Thank you to our funding partner, myGwork – the LGBT+ business community.Thank you to Lazarus Lynch – a queer Black musician and culinary extraordinaire based in New York City – for the triumphant and ancestral Busy Being Black theme music. The Busy Being Black theme music was mixed and mastered by Joshua Pleeter.Busy Being Black’s artwork was photographed by queer Black photographer and filmmaker Dwayne Black.Join the conversation on Twitter and Instagram #busybeingblackBusy Being Black listeners have an exclusive discount at Pluto Press. Enter BUSY50 at checkout. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Robert Jones, Jr. reads "New Covenant" from The Prophets

Edafe Okporo is an author and activist, who successfully sought asylum in the United States after years of violent persecution in Nigeria because of his sexuality. Since then, he’s made it his mission to not only speak out against the ongoing violence faced by LGBTQ people in Nigeria, but to help those displaced by violence build new lives as close to the American Dream as possible. We explore his relationship to the idea and the reality of America, the importance of pleasure in our understanding of freedom, his refusal to participate in the spectacle of Black death and trauma, making space for his hopes, dreams and desires, and his complicated and evolving understanding of what it means to be a Black African man in America. About Edafe OkporoEdafe Okporo is an author and activist. He currently serves as the Mobilisation Director at Talent Beyond Boundaries, and in 2022, Simon and Schuster will publish Edafe’s first book, ASYLUM, a Memoir & Manifesto. He is also among the inaugural winners of the David Prize, which is modeled on the Macarthur Genius Grant and celebrates individuals and ideas that create a better, brighter New York City.About Busy Being BlackBusy Being Black is the podcast exploring how we live in the fullness of our queer Black lives. Thank you to our partners: UK Black Pride, BlackOut UK, The Tenth, Schools Out and to you the listeners. Remember this, your support doesn’t cost any money: retweets, ratings, reviews and shares all help so please keep the support coming. Thank you to our funding partner, myGwork – the LGBT+ business community.Thank you to Lazarus Lynch – a queer Black musician and culinary mastermind based in New York City – for the triumphant and ancestral Busy Being Black theme music. The Busy Being Black theme music was mixed and mastered by Joshua Pleeter. Busy Being Black’s artwork was photographed by queer Black photographer and filmmaker Dwayne Black.Join the conversation on Twitter and Instagram #busybeingblackBusy Being Black listeners have an exclusive discount at my favourite publisher, Pluto Press. Enter BUSY50 at checkout. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Edafe Okporo – My Brother's Keeper

Phyll Opoku-Gyimah and Frank Mugisha are two powerhouse LGBTQ human rights activists. Phyll, who has been a guest on the show before, is the co-founder and executive director of UK Black Pride, Europe’s largest pride celebration for LGBTQ people of colour, and the executive director of Kaleidoscope Trust, the UK-based charity working to uphold the human rights of LGBTQ people across the Commonwealth. She became widely known as Lady Phyll, after she turned down an MBE from the Queen, to protest the UK’s colonial impact and legacies. Frank Mugisha is a Ugandan LGBTQ activist. He’s the founder of Icebreakers Uganda, a support network for LGBTQ Ugandans, and is the executive director of Sexual Minorities Uganda, or SMUG, an alliance of eighteen organisations supporting and advocating for the Ugandan LGBTQ community. Frank is a recipient of the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award, the Rafto Prize, the International Human Rights Film Award at Cinema for Peace, and has been recognised by the United Nations as a human rights defender. In 2014, he was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.We came together for Black Tech Fest 2021 to discuss the many and varied ways social media platforms are used to connect those fighting for their human rights, the impact of Covid-19 on their respective organisations and work in community and what they have to say to tech leaders at platforms like Facebook, who continue to overlook important insights from marginalised communities about how tech can be utilised for more good. About Black Tech FestBlack Tech Fest takes place annually during Black History Month here in the UK and exists to inspire and create space for powerful conversations around technology, inclusion and innovation. #BTF21About Busy Being BlackBusy Being Black is the podcast exploring how we live in the fullness of our queer Black lives. Thank you to our partners: UK Black Pride, BlackOut UK, The Tenth, Schools Out and to you the listeners. Remember this, your support doesn’t cost any money: retweets, ratings, reviews and shares all help so please keep the support coming. Thank you to our newest funding partner, myGwork – the LGBT+ business community.Thank you to Lazarus Lynch – a queer Black musician and culinary mastermind based in New York City – for the triumphant and ancestral Busy Being Black theme music. The Busy Being Black theme music was mixed and mastered by Joshua Pleeter. Busy Being Black’s artwork was photographed by queer Black photographer and filmmaker Dwayne Black.Join the conversation on Twitter and Instagram #busybeingblackBusy Being Black listeners have an exclusive discount at my favourite publisher, Pluto Press. Enter BUSY50 at checkout. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Frank Mugisha and Lady Phyll – Live at Black Tech Fest 2021

Tobi Ajala is the founder of TechTee, a complete lifecycle digital agency that specialises in software development and design within fashion and luxury industries. And Yasmina Kone is Senior Partnerships Manager at Beam – the world’s first crowdfunding platform for homeless people. We came together at Black Tech Fest 2021 to explore navigating and excelling within industries that can be inhospitable to Black women, addressing and redressing some of the barriers that prevent those experiencing homelessness from re-entering the job market, challenging assumptions that we all have equal access to technology and therefore equal opportunities, and their advice to young Black people who see a world they want to help change.You can support Beam's current campaigns here and sign-up for TechTee's Device Scheme here.About Black Tech FestBlack Tech Fest takes place annually during Black History Month here in the UK and exists to inspire and create space for powerful conversations around technology, inclusion and innovation. #BTF21About Busy Being BlackBusy Being Black is the podcast exploring how we live in the fullness of our queer Black lives. Thank you to our partners: UK Black Pride, BlackOut UK, The Tenth, Schools Out and to you the listeners. Remember this, your support doesn’t cost any money: retweets, ratings, reviews and shares all help so please keep the support coming. Thank you to our newest funding partner, myGwork – the LGBT+ business community.Thank you to Lazarus Lynch – a queer Black musician and culinary mastermind based in New York City – for the triumphant and ancestral Busy Being Black theme music. The Busy Being Black theme music was mixed and mastered by Joshua Pleeter. Busy Being Black’s artwork was photographed by queer Black photographer and filmmaker Dwayne Black.Join the conversation on Twitter and Instagram #busybeingblackBusy Being Black listeners have an exclusive discount at my favourite publisher, Pluto Press. Enter BUSY50 at checkout. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Tobi Ajala and Yasmina Kone – Live at Black Tech Fest 2021

“A part of each of us, our essence, is timeless, has never been harmed, and carries a dream it is waiting for us to bring into the world.” These are words from my guest today, Langston Kahn, whose new book, Deep Liberation, brings together the shamanic wisdom of ancient spirituality with the needs and demands of modern-day life— he wants to help us transform the emotional patterns that hold us back from healing. Langston is a queer Black teacher and shamanic practitioner who specialises in radical human transformation. We began our conversation in the usual way, with me asking how his heart is, but for all the wonder of technology in the 21st century, we experienced some digital interference. So, we jump right into the meat of our conversation which explores grief, his journey towards Shamanic healing, connecting with our felt sense, our individual purpose as contribution to the fabric of the universe and using our voice in service of our vision.About Busy Being BlackBusy Being Black is the podcast exploring how we live in the fullness of our queer Black lives. Thank you to our partners: UK Black Pride, BlackOut UK, The Tenth, Schools Out and to you the listeners. Remember this, your support doesn’t cost any money: retweets, ratings, reviews and shares all help so please keep the support coming. Thank you to our newest funding partner, myGwork – the LGBT+ business community.Thank you to Lazarus Lynch – a queer Black musician and culinary mastermind based in New York City – for the triumphant and ancestral Busy Being Black theme music. The Busy Being Black theme music was mixed and mastered by Joshua Pleeter. Busy Being Black’s artwork was photographed by queer Black photographer and filmmaker Dwayne Black.Join the conversation on Twitter and Instagram #busybeingblackBusy Being Black listeners have an exclusive discount at my favourite publisher, Pluto Press. Enter BUSY50 at checkout. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Langston Kahn – The World Needs You

Dr Francesca Sobande is an author and academic whose book, The Digital Lives of Black Women in Britain, explores the myriad ways Black women in Britain thrive, influence and are erased as they navigate social media platforms. We discuss disentangling a distinct digital experience for Black women in Britain, her ongoing interest in borders, citizenship and diaspora, and whether expressions of Black women’s interior lives are possible on platforms designed for public performance. She cautions against a limited understanding of Black women’s digital lives as always and only subversive and she reflects on the role poetry played in helping navigate, inform and shape her work—both as personal journal and vehicle for collaborative dialogue.About Dr SobandeDr Francesca Sobande is a Lecturer in Digital Media Studies at the School of Journalism, Media and Culture at Cardiff University, where she is Director of the BA Media, Journalism and Culture programme. She is the author of The Digital Lives of Black Women in Britain, and To Exist is to Resist: Black Feminism in Europe.About Busy Being BlackBusy Being Black is the podcast exploring how we live in the fullness of our queer Black lives. Thank you to our partners: UK Black Pride, BlackOut UK, The Tenth, Schools Out and to you the listeners. Remember this, your support doesn’t cost any money: retweets, ratings, reviews and shares all help so please keep the support coming. Thank you to our newest funding partner, myGwork – the LGBT+ business community.Thank you to Lazarus Lynch – a queer Black musician and culinary mastermind based in New York City – for the triumphant and ancestral Busy Being Black theme music. The Busy Being Black theme music was mixed and mastered by Joshua Pleeter. Busy Being Black’s artwork was photographed by queer Black photographer and filmmaker Dwayne Black.Join the conversation on Twitter and Instagram #busybeingblackBusy Being Black listeners have an exclusive discount at my favourite publisher, Pluto Press. Enter BUSY50 at checkout. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Dr Francesca Sobande – The Digital Lives of Black Women in Britain

Tristan Fynn-Aiduenu wants us to unleash our imaginations. A playwright, actor and director of Ghanaian heritage and raised in South London, he’s committed to telling stories that are wild, seasoned and passionate. He’s the director of a new play, For Black Boys Who Have Considered Suicide When the Hue Gets Too Heavy, in which six young Black men meet for group therapy, and let their hearts – and imaginations – run wild. Our conversation explores the limitations put on expressions of our anger, building support for mental and emotional health in the process of theatre-making, exercising the muscle our imagination, a limitless Black Britishness and what he hopes we take away from the work he puts out into the world.About Tristan Fynn-AiduenuTristan Fynn-Aiduenu is a playwright, actor and director. He’s written for The Royal Court, directed at The Young Vic and performed at The National Theatre. He’s received awards from the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama and Roehampton University. For Black Boys Who Have Considered Suicide When the Hue Gets Too Heavy is a new show from Nouveau Riche, written by Ryan Calais Cameron and directed by Tristan. The play runs from 12 October – 6 November, and tickets can be bought here.About Busy Being BlackBusy Being Black is the podcast exploring how we live in the fullness of our queer Black lives. Thank you to our partners: UK Black Pride, BlackOut UK, The Tenth, Schools Out and to you the listeners. Remember this, your support doesn’t cost any money: retweets, ratings, reviews and shares all help so please keep the support coming. Thank you to our newest funding partner, myGwork – the LGBT+ business community.Thank you to Lazarus Lynch – a queer Black musician and culinary mastermind based in New York City – for the triumphant and ancestral Busy Being Black theme music. The Busy Being Black theme music was mixed and mastered by Joshua Pleeter. Busy Being Black’s artwork was photographed by queer Black photographer and filmmaker Dwayne Black.Join the conversation on Twitter and Instagram #busybeingblackBusy Being Black listeners have an exclusive discount at my favourite publisher, Pluto Press. Enter BUSY50 at checkout. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Tristan Fynn-Aiduenu – The Muscle of Our Imagination

Lazarus Lynch is the multi-hyphenate artist behind Busy Being Black’s theme music. He’s a dear friend and someone I share a spiritual connection with, and I admire so much his ability to harness his creativity to create spaces, moments and music in the world that nourish, heal, provoke and soothe. Our conversation is a meditative exploration of our shared histories in the Black Church, the pursuit and expression of our individual songs, unlocking our hearts, building community, faith in ourselves and in others and the bravery and vulnerability it takes to kneel before someone else and wash their feet.About Lazarus LynchLazarus Lynch is an entrepreneur, author, musician and multimedia host. He is a two-time Chopped champion and the host of Snapchat's first-ever cooking show, Chopped U, and the Food Network digital series Comfort Nation. This year, he’s one of the chefs selected to cater Vogue’s 2021 Met Gala. He’s the creator of Busy Being Black’s theme music and his new album, Sanctuary, is released later this year.The song, Busy Being Black, was released by Lazarus in February 2021 and is accompanied by a music video, created by and starring a global cohort of Black creatives coming together to express, celebrate and centre our love for each other and our cultures.About Busy Being BlackBusy Being Black is the podcast exploring how we live in the fullness of our queer Black lives. Thank you to our partners: UK Black Pride, BlackOut UK, The Tenth, Schools Out and to you the listeners. Remember this, your support doesn’t cost any money: retweets, ratings, reviews and shares all help so please keep the support coming. Thank you to our newest funding partner, myGwork – the LGBT+ business community.Thank you to Lazarus Lynch – a queer Black musician and culinary mastermind based in New York City – for the triumphant and ancestral Busy Being Black theme music. The Busy Being Black theme music was mixed and mastered by Joshua Pleeter. Busy Being Black’s artwork was photographed by queer Black photographer and filmmaker Dwayne Black.Join the conversation on Twitter and Instagram #busybeingblackBusy Being Black listeners have an exclusive discount at my favourite publisher, Pluto Press. Enter BUSY50 at checkout. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Lazarus Lynch – The Return

Content warning: This episode explores imprisonment, police brutality, homicide, sexual violence and mental illness. Please listen with care. I believe in the abolition of prisons, and while I’m still learning about imagining and building societies that prioritise care, restorative justice, and people over profit-making, I know that we should not be locking people up in cages. Michael Tenneson, Kevin Woodley, Dane “Zealot” Newton, Phillip “Archi” Archuleta, Gilbert “Lefty” Pacheco, Jose “8Bizz” Talamantes and Frankie Domenico are seven men imprisoned at Colorado Territorial Correctional Facility in Canon City, Colorado. They are the musicians, from completely different walks of life and serving differing sentences, who make up the band Territorial. Their new album, TLAXIHUIQUI (Tla-She-Wiki), is the first recorded music to make it outside the forbidding walls of Colorado Territorial Correctional Facility into the free world since it was founded 150 years ago. TLAXIHUIQUI (which translates to “the calling of the spirits” in the Uto-Aztecan language of Nahuatl) takes listeners on a visceral journey through violence and heartache to catharsis and hope. With these deeply personal songs, Territorial shines a light on the enduring human spirit in a divided country – and asks us all to consider whether or not we are prepared to heal the societies in which we so regularly put behind bars and walls those we are unprepared to properly care for.For those who are at the start of their journey in understanding prison abolition, like myself, there are a number of places to start. There’s a wonderful TedTalk by Deanna Van Buren called “What a world without prisons could look like”. Ruth Wilson Gilmore, who has long served as a prison abolitionist, is the feature of a profile in the New York Times, “Is Prison Necessary? Ruth Wilson Gilmore Might Change Your Mind”; and Angela Davis’ book Are Prisons Obsolete? is serving as a reference point and learning for my own understanding of abolition.About Die Jim Crow RecordsDie Jim Crow Records is the first record label in the United States for formerly and currently incarcerated musicians. Their mission is to provide artists with a high-quality platform for their voices to be heard. A special thank you to Royal Young for his help in making this special episode a reality.About Busy Being BlackBusy Being Black is the podcast exploring how we live in the fullness of our queer Black lives. Thank you to our partners: UK Black Pride, BlackOut UK, The Tenth, Schools Out and to you the listeners. Remember this, your support doesn’t cost any money: retweets, ratings, reviews and shares all help so please keep the support coming. Thank you to our newest funding partner, myGwork – the LGBT+ business community.Thank you to Lazarus Lynch – a queer Black musician and culinary mastermind based in New York City – for the triumphant and ancestral Busy Being Black theme music. The Busy Being Black theme music was mixed and mastered by Joshua Pleeter. Busy Being Black’s artwork was photographed by queer Black photographer and filmmaker Dwayne Black.Join the conversation on Twitter and Instagram #busybeingblackBusy Being Black listeners have an exclusive discount at my favourite publisher, Pluto Press. Enter BUSY50 at checkout. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Territorial – The Calling of the Spirits

Ted Brown is one of our most important and formidable elders. He's an activist and change maker, who’s been fighting for the rights of black and LGBTQ people for over 50 years. An original member of the Gay Liberation Front, Ted was instrumental in organising the UK’s first pride March through London. He’s been at the forefront of campaigns to demand better treatment of LGBTQ people in the media and he’s been a vocal advocate for addressing homophobia within Black communities and racism in the LGBTQ community.Ted and I sat down for a live conversation at UK Black Pride’s 2021 virtual pride celebration, Love and Rage, to explore the sparks that ignited his activism, our shared connection to Bayard Rustin, what he’s learned about love and rage, and his advice to a new generation of activists and change makers.About Busy Being BlackBusy Being Black is the podcast exploring how we live in the fullness of our queer Black lives. Thank you to our partners: UK Black Pride, BlackOut UK, The Tenth, Schools Out and to you the listeners. Remember this, your support doesn’t cost any money: retweets, ratings, reviews and shares all help so please keep the support coming. Thank you to our newest funding partner, myGwork – the LGBT+ business community.Thank you to Lazarus Lynch – a queer Black musician and culinary mastermind based in New York City – for the triumphant and ancestral Busy Being Black theme music. The Busy Being Black theme music was mixed and mastered by Joshua Pleeter. Busy Being Black’s artwork was photographed by queer Black photographer and filmmaker Dwayne Black.Join the conversation on Twitter and Instagram #busybeingblackBusy Being Black listeners have an exclusive discount at my favourite publisher, Pluto Press. Enter BUSY50 at checkout. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Ted Brown – Live at UK Black Pride 2021

I’m in conversation today with Shiloh Coke, a composer, musician, actor and writer who stars in a new audio play called recognition. In it, she voices Song, a Black woman composer who stumbles upon the work of Afro-English composer and conductor Samuel Coleridge-Taylor. The play, and their conversation across space and time, asks important questions like: How do we honour the forgotten whose work was once celebrated, and who gets to decide which work stands the test of time?  In our conversation, Shiloh and I explore how she’s carving her own space in industries dominated by white people, her close relationship with her grandmother, coming into herself as a queer Black woman and how music offers her space for safety, joy and love. We discuss the importance of orienting ourselves and our work in our purpose, pursuing impact over recognition, and the conversation she hopes a queer Black woman will have with her work in the future, long after she’s gone.About Shiloh CokeShiloh Coke is a composer, musician, actress and writer. She stars as Song in a new audio play called recognition.This episode features a clip from ‘Myoho’, which Shiloh composed to accompany a short film written by Pamela Nomvete, called Sisterhood for the Sake of Happiness. The film symbolises five generations of buddhists and artists from the African diaspora.About Busy Being BlackBusy Being Black is the podcast exploring how we live in the fullness of our queer Black lives. Thank you to our partners: UK Black Pride, BlackOut UK, The Tenth, Schools Out and to you the listeners. Remember this, your support doesn’t cost any money: retweets, ratings, reviews and shares all help so please keep the support coming. Thank you to our newest funding partner, myGwork – the LGBT+ business community.Thank you to Lazarus Lynch – a queer Black musician and culinary mastermind based in New York City – for the triumphant and ancestral Busy Being Black theme music. The Busy Being Black theme music was mixed and mastered by Joshua Pleeter. Busy Being Black’s artwork was photographed by queer Black photographer and filmmaker Dwayne Black.Join the conversation on Twitter and Instagram #busybeingblackBusy Being Black listeners have an exclusive discount at my favourite publisher, Pluto Press. Enter BUSY50 at checkout. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Shiloh Coke – Recognition

One of my favourite quotes is from Civil Rights icon Bayard Rustin, who said the proof that one truly believes is in action — and there are few who embody Bayard’s words as wholly and unapologetically as Abdul-Aliy Muhammad (they/them). An organiser and activist born and raised in West Philadelphia, Abdul-Aliy has grown into a firebrand. Whether standing up for queer Black and brown communities in the face of systemic violence, or holding leaders in politics and at not-for-profits to account, Abdul-Aliy’s work is loud, considered and high-impact. Today we discuss the on-going impact of the 1985 bombing of the MOVE headquarters in West Philadelphia, the moments they were radicalised, what they learned about how people view those living with HIV, after they went on a medication strike as part of their organising action — and learning to trust when their body tells them what to do in defence of what’s right.About Abdul-Aliy MuhammadAbdul-Aliy Muhammad is a "Magical Black Queer", organiser, activist, writer and poet based in Philadelphia. They are one of the co-founders of the Black and Brown Workers Co-operative, a labor organising cooperative fighting contemporary forms of subjugation and dehumanisation in workplaces, classrooms and communities by expanding democracy and agency.About Busy Being BlackBusy Being Black is the podcast exploring how we live in the fullness of our queer Black lives. Thank you to our partners: UK Black Pride, BlackOut UK, The Tenth, Schools Out and to you the listeners. Remember this, your support doesn’t cost any money: retweets, ratings, reviews and shares all help so please keep the support coming. Thank you to our newest funding partner, myGwork – the LGBT+ business community.Thank you to Lazarus Lynch – a queer Black musician and culinary mastermind based in New York City – for the triumphant and ancestral Busy Being Black theme music. The Busy Being Black theme music was mixed and mastered by Joshua Pleeter. Busy Being Black’s artwork was photographed by queer Black photographer and filmmaker Dwayne Black.Join the conversation on Twitter and Instagram #busybeingblackBusy Being Black listeners have an exclusive discount at my favourite publisher, Pluto Press. Enter BUSY50 at checkout. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Abdul-Aliy Muhammad – My Body Leads Me

Content warning: Today’s conversation includes references to sexual violence. Please listen with care. I caught up with Taitu Heron in December 2020, as a way of bringing to a close a difficult year with one of my favourite people. Taitu is a development specialist, human rights advocate, scholar and performance poet and we first met in St Lucia in February 2020, on the eve of the onset of the global pandemic. In St Lucia, we spent long nights righting the worlds wrongs and she offered wisdom and insight that would prove so helpful as 2020 unraveled around us. She shares her thoughts on leaving behind those people and habits who no longer serve us, creating more space for ourselves and those we care about to thrive and to breathe, and how we balance our professional, personal and creative obligations. We dive into the complexities of silence, including her thoughts on what Audre Lorde meant when she wrote Your Silence Will Not Protect You. We discuss what it means have personal power, how we get it and keep it and whether or not it can be taken; and how we bring ourselves back from the brink after traumatic experiences. We touch on the uses of the erotic, the different and important forms of intimacy and how we find and even lose ourselves in the pursuit of our desires.About Taitu HeronTaitu Heron is Head of the Women and Development Unit at the University of the West Indies Open Campus and her publications and poetry focus on the girl child, gender based violence, the Divine Feminine and women’s sexual and reproductive health rights in the Caribbean.About Busy Being BlackBusy Being Black is the podcast exploring how we live in the fullness of our queer Black lives. Thank you to our partners: UK Black Pride, BlackOut UK, The Tenth, Schools Out and to you the listeners. Remember this, your support doesn’t cost any money: retweets, ratings, reviews and shares all help so please keep the support coming. Thank you to our newest funding partner, myGwork – the LGBT+ business community.Thank you to Lazarus Lynch – a queer Black musician and culinary mastermind based in New York City – for the triumphant and ancestral Busy Being Black theme music. The Busy Being Black theme music was mixed and mastered by Joshua Pleeter. Busy Being Black’s artwork was photographed by queer Black photographer and filmmaker Dwayne Black.Join the conversation on Twitter and Instagram #busybeingblackBusy Being Black listeners have an exclusive discount at my favourite publisher, Pluto Press. Enter BUSY50 at checkout. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Taitu Heron – The Year of Our Lorde

“Let yourself unlearn everything you thought you knew about yourself” is one of the many important life lessons George M. Johnson shares with young readers in their new book, All Boys Aren’t Blue. George calls the book a memoir-manifesto and in it, they grapple with sexuality, gender identity, assault, consent and Black joy – and I found it to be an utterly invigorating read. We discuss the lessons we are being called to learn and to metabolise from our journey through an immensely challenging year, the important work of making ourselves whole and love as the starting point for friendship. George shares their thoughts on vulnerability as a necessity for storytelling (and how in doing so we let other people know they’re not alone), and why they felt it so important to open the book with a rather bold affirmation: I want to be immortalised.About George M. JohnsonGeorge M. Johnson is a writer and activist based in New York. They have written on race, gender, sex, and culture for Essence, the Advocate, BuzzFeed News and Teen Vogue. Their memoir-manifesto, All Boys Aren't Blue, is available wherever books are sold.About Busy Being BlackBusy Being Black is the podcast exploring how we live in the fullness of our queer Black lives. Thank you to our partners: UK Black Pride, BlackOut UK, The Tenth, Schools Out and to you the listeners. Remember this, your support doesn’t cost any money: retweets, ratings, reviews and shares all help so please keep the support coming. Thank you to our newest funding partner, myGwork – the LGBT+ business community.Thank you to Lazarus Lynch – a queer Black musician and culinary mastermind based in New York City – for the triumphant and ancestral Busy Being Black theme music. The Busy Being Black theme music was mixed and mastered by Joshua Pleeter. Busy Being Black’s artwork was photographed by queer Black photographer and filmmaker Dwayne Black.Join the conversation on Twitter and Instagram #busybeingblackBusy Being Black listeners have an exclusive discount at my favourite publisher, Pluto Press. Enter BUSY50 at checkout. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

George M. Johnson – All Boys Aren't Blue

My conversation this week is with queer Black poet and storyteller Jubi Arriola-Headley. Among his altogether brilliant debut collection of poetry is the tremendous "Every God Is a Slowly Dying Sun" — a heartbreaking reflection on Jubi’s relationship with the late poet Craig G Harris. original kink is available now from Sibling Rivalry Press.About Busy Being BlackBusy Being Black is the podcast exploring how we live in the fullness of our queer Black lives. Thank you to our partners: UK Black Pride, BlackOut UK, The Tenth, Schools Out and to you the listeners. Remember this, your support doesn’t cost any money: retweets, ratings, reviews and shares all help so please keep the support coming. Thank you to our newest funding partner, myGwork – the LGBT+ business community.Thank you to Lazarus Lynch – a queer Black musician and culinary mastermind based in New York City – for the triumphant and ancestral Busy Being Black theme music. The Busy Being Black theme music was mixed and mastered by Joshua Pleeter. Busy Being Black’s artwork was photographed by queer Black photographer and filmmaker Dwayne Black.Join the conversation on Twitter and Instagram #busybeingblackBusy Being Black listeners have an exclusive discount at my favourite publisher, Pluto Press. Enter BUSY50 at checkout. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Jubi Arriola-Headley reads "Every God Is a Slowly Dying Sun"

I have fallen in love with the poetry of Jubi Arriola-Headley. Exploring themes of manhood, vulnerability, rage, tenderness and joy, his work speaks such truth to those of us reckoning with who we’ve been and who we want to be.Jubi is a queer Black poet and storyteller and his debut collection is called original kink. Our conversation explores his relationship with his late father and his intimate and profound friendship with the late and great Craig G Harris. We discuss carrying on a legacy, gifts and grief, how we create the thing we wish we had, and Jubi’s coming-of-age during the AIDS crisis. And in a moment of particular resonance for me, Jubi talks about what it means to bear witness to our own failures. Jubi opens our conversation with his poem Peacocking."I want to live the rest of my life with an energy that ignites and irritates, burns and bubbles, soothes and inspires until it bursts from the atmosphere, dissipating into the cosmos." – Craig G HarrisAbout Jubi Arriola-HeadleyJubi Arriola-Headley is a queer Black poet and storyteller. He’s a 2018 PEN America Emerging Voices Fellow and holds an MFA from the University of Miami. His work explores themes of manhood, vulnerability, rage, tenderness and joy – and his debut collection of poems, original kink, is available now from Sibling Rivalry Press. About Busy Being BlackBusy Being Black is the podcast exploring how we live in the fullness of our queer Black lives. Thank you to our partners: UK Black Pride, BlackOut UK, The Tenth, Schools Out and to you the listeners. Remember this, your support doesn’t cost any money: retweets, ratings, reviews and shares all help so please keep the support coming. Thank you to our newest funding partner, myGwork – the LGBT+ business community.Thank you to Lazarus Lynch – a queer Black musician and culinary mastermind based in New York City – for the triumphant and ancestral Busy Being Black theme music. The Busy Being Black theme music was mixed and mastered by Joshua Pleeter. Busy Being Black’s artwork was photographed by queer Black photographer and filmmaker Dwayne Black.Join the conversation on Twitter and Instagram #busybeingblackBusy Being Black listeners have an exclusive discount at my favourite publisher, Pluto Press. Enter BUSY50 at checkout. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Jubi Arriola-Headley – Original Kink

Today I’m in conversation with one of our elders, Jeffrey Pickering. Born and raised in Barbados, he moved to the UK at 16 to pursue further education. He went on to become a nurse and cardiac physiologist and shared his life with his partner Michael for 36 years, until Michael’s passing in 2011. Jeffrey spoke to me about his reverence for his mother, his first love, his career, his assiduous pursuit of culture and education and the moment, in 1974, he first laid on eyes on Michael.About Opening Doors LondonA survey on the impact of Covid-19 on older LGBTQ people reveals some startling and heartbreaking insights: 37% of older LGBTQ people feel more lonely than usual and 27% say they hardly ever or never have someone to talk to. Opening Doors London is the leading charity offering support to our LGBTQ elders. They run a number of essential interventions to combat loneliness and isolation, and the charity needs our help to keep their vital services running. Please join me in letting our elders know that we care by setting up a regular donation to Opening Doors London. Please donate whatever you can. openingdoorslondon.org.ukAbout Busy Being BlackBusy Being Black is the podcast exploring how we live in the fullness of our queer Black lives. Thank you to our partners: UK Black Pride, BlackOut UK, The Tenth, Schools Out and to you the listeners. Remember this, your support doesn’t cost any money: retweets, ratings, reviews and shares all help so please keep the support coming. Thank you to our newest funding partner, myGwork – the LGBT+ business community.Thank you to Lazarus Lynch – a queer Black musician and culinary mastermind based in New York City – for the triumphant and ancestral Busy Being Black theme music. The Busy Being Black theme music was mixed and mastered by Joshua Pleeter.Join the conversation on Twitter and Instagram #busybeingblackBusy Being Black listeners have an exclusive discount at my favourite publisher, Pluto Press. Enter BUSY50 at checkout. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Jeffrey Pickering – Living with Love, Pragmatism and Passion

Professor Therí Alyce Pickens is Full Professor of English at Bates College, and her newest book, Black Madness :: Mad Blackness, has done nothing short of set me alight. In it, she explores the relationship between Blackness and disability, showing how Black speculative and science fiction authors craft new worlds that reimagine the intersection of Blackness and madness. We spoke just before Christmas about her book, which led to a really enlightening conversation about analysing the spaces between what happens and what we can know; intersectionality; the trouble with allies; the multiple purposes of silence; and ghosting as a form of discipline.And before we begin, I want to send a very special thank you to my friend and co-conspirator, Lazarus Lynch, for reimagining the Busy Being Black theme music, which makes its debut today.About Professor PickensProfessor Pickens is Full Professor of English at Bates College, specialising in African American, Arab American and disability literatures and theories. She is the author of two books: New Body Politics and Black Madness :: Mad Blackness. You can find more about Professor Pickens and her work at tpickens.orgAbout Busy Being BlackBusy Being Black is the podcast exploring how we live in the fullness of our queer Black lives. Thank you to our partners: UK Black Pride, BlackOut UK, The Tenth, Schools Out and to you the listeners. Remember this, your support doesn’t cost any money: retweets, ratings, reviews and shares all help so please keep the support coming. Thank you to our newest funding partner, myGwork – the LGBT+ business community.Thank you to Lazarus Lynch – a queer Black musician and culinary mastermind based in New York City – for the triumphant and ancestral Busy Being Black theme music. The Busy Being Black theme music was mixed and mastered by Joshua Pleeter.Join the conversation on Twitter and Instagram #busybeingblackBusy Being Black listeners have an exclusive discount at my favourite publisher, Pluto Press. Enter BUSY50 at checkout. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Professor Therí Alyce Pickens – Black Madness :: Mad Blackness

As part of this special series funded by the European Cultural Foundation, I’m delighted to be working with artist and activist Isaiah Lopaz to share exclusive first-listens to his new project, Anthology/Appendix. Anthology/Appendix is a multimedia project centred around queer Black fiction and includes readings, rituals, discussions and performances.Today’s story is “Me and My Old Man”. The love that they have for one person places two men – one a friend, the other a lover – in constant conflict with one another. While waiting to celebrate the achievements of a person they both love deeply, two people have the most honest conversation they’ve ever had. What are the unspoken words hiding behind half hearted greetings, snide remarks, and silent displays of resolve? “Me and My Old Man” explores class, ageism, jealousy and the secrets which often remain quietly kept – and is voiced by Isaiah Lopaz.Find out more at isaiahlopaz.com. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Anthology/Appendix: Me and My Old Man

In this final episode in this series supported by the European Cultural Foundation, I'm in conversation with Dr S Chelvan, a globally recognised legal expert on refugee and human rights claims based on sexual or gender identity and expression. His Difference, Stigma, Shame and Harm (‘DSSH’) model is a positive tool to determine an LGBTQ asylum claim, which is now used globally and is endorsed by the United Nations High Commission for Refugees. In 2014, Newsweek Europe described the DSSH model as ‘a simple starting point that cuts across borders’.We explore Dr Chelvan’s entry point into the UK and into law, and he shares with us his motivations for defending the human rights of LGBTQ asylum-seekers. He discusses his adolescence – a young brown man encountering his sexuality in the age of Section 28, his role as storyteller and translator, the development and importance of the DSSH model and how he’s learned to be human from those he empowers and serves.This conversation forms part of and concludes a special series funded by the European Cultural Foundation to explore queer Black solidarity across Europe during the Covid-19 crisis. Thank you for investing in our stories.A special thank you to our newest funding partner, myGwork – the LGBT+ business community. Thank you to our community partners: UK Black Pride, BlackOut UK, The Tenth and Schools Out. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Viral Intimacies – Dr S Chelvan

As part of this special series funded by the European Cultural Foundation, I’m delighted to be working with artist and activist Isaiah Lopaz to share exclusive first-listens to his new project, Anthology/Appendix. Anthology/Appendix is a multimedia project centred around queer Black fiction and includes readings, rituals, discussions and performances.Today’s story is “The Return of the Prodigal Father”. An email from a long lost father consisting of four words – “Hi I love you” – conjures worry, doubt, anger, and unrest. What does he want? The son’s theories point to one answer which consistently appears after each equation: whatever his father asks of him, it shall be done. The “Return of the Prodigal Father” explores loss, unyielding love, family, and forgiveness and is voiced by Isaiah Lopaz.Find out more at isaiahlopaz.com. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Anthology/Appendix: The Return of the Prodigal Father

Professor Fatima El-Tayeb is professor of Literature and Ethnic Studies at the University of California, San Diego. Her work deconstructs structural racism in “colorblind” Europe and centers strategies of resistance among racialized communities. She’s the author of three books, was active in Black feminist, migrant and queer of colour organisations in Germany and the Netherlands and was one of the co-founders of the Black European Studies Project.Today, she expands upon the connection between Black uprisings in Germany in the 80s and the movement for Black lives now; the differences between European and American racism; the moments she was radicalised and the importance of correcting the historical record. She explains the importance of a queer of colour critique in our thinking, organising and action; sheds light on the construction and function of Islamophobia in Europe; and shares a story about meeting and turning down a dinner invitation from the late and great Audre Lorde.This conversation forms part of a special series funded by the European Cultural Foundation to explore queer Black solidarity across Europe during the Covid-19 crisis.A special thank you to our newest funding partner, myGwork – the LGBT+ business community. Thank you to our community partners: UK Black Pride, BlackOut UK, The Tenth and Schools Out. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Viral Intimacies – Fatima El-Tayeb

Today’s conversation is with iki azaid funes, a Venezuelan migrant and anti-racist activist currently seeking international protection in Spain. She’s a survivor of Covid-19, and her experience fighting Covid-19 and the regime of white supremacy in Europe offers important insights to help us all understand how people like iki, and many in our communities, so often fall outside the bounds of what is considered human and thus protection, solidarity and citizenship. She describes her experience in Europe so far as existing within a plantation reloaded and says that the notion of human rights is a fiction reserved for white people. She suggests the pandemic we’re living through now began with the voyage of Christopher Columbus in 1492, pushes back against assumptions of the inherent radicality of Black trans bodies and says that pursuing love and pleasure is an essential part of her resistance. Throughout this conversation, iki and I speak in both English and Spanish, a testament to our communities’ on-going commitment to communicate across borders, language and experience.Read iki's essay, "Nosotrxs no escogimos este futuro", here. For those with the means, please consider donating to her PayPal.This conversation forms part of a special series funded by the European Cultural Foundation to explore queer Black solidarity across Europe during the Covid-19 crisis.A special thank you to our newest funding partner, myGwork – the LGBT+ business community. Thank you to our community partners: UK Black Pride, BlackOut UK, The Tenth and Schools Out.Busy Being Black listeners get an exclusive discount at Pluto Press, an independent publisher of radical, left‐wing non¬‐fiction books. See Busy Being Black's curated booklist here, and use code BUSY50 for 50% off. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Viral Intimacies – iki azaid funes

As part of this special series funded by the European Cultural Foundation, I’m delighted to be working with artist and activist Isaiah Lopaz to share exclusive first-listens to his new project, Anthology/Appendix. Anthology/Appendix is a multimedia project centred around queer Black fiction and includes readings, rituals, discussions and performances.Today’s story is “On Not Dying in Germany”. While waiting for her sons to visit, an old woman speaks to her long-gone husband about the secrets shrouded in their union, her desire to die at home and her fear that she will be buried not once, but twice. “On Not Dying in Germany” explores secrets, assimilation, colorism, and loss and is voiced by Isaiah Lopaz.Find out more at isaiahlopaz.com. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Anthology/Appendix: On Not Dying In Germany

My conversation today is with artist, author, legal scholar and activist Olave Nduwanje. Working across anti-racism, LGBTQ rights, anti-capitalism and disability movements, Olave brings to this conversation a wonderfully expansive understanding of Blackness, queerness and trans identities. Olave calls us to an understanding of Blackness that is capacious, that contains within it the possibilities of everything we are and can be – and she offers that so many of the ideas we’ve internalised about our Blackness are inherently anti-Black.Olave discusses how her trans body is read by white and Black people alike, as an indication of some promised future; how she’s using her artistic practice to explore intra-communal conversations about intimacy and race; and why solidarity isn’t solidarity, unless you’re willing to give something up. Olave suggests that when we die, we’ll care more about whether we showed up for people than the things we surrounded ourselves with.Be sure to check out "Olave Talks".This conversation forms part of a special series funded by the European Cultural Foundation to explore queer Black solidarity across Europe during the Covid-19 crisis.A special thank you to our newest funding partner, myGwork – the LGBT+ business community. Thank you to our community partners: UK Black Pride, BlackOut UK, The Tenth and Schools Out.Busy Being Black listeners get an exclusive discount at Pluto Press, an independent publisher of radical, left‐wing non¬‐fiction books. See Busy Being Black's curated booklist here, and use code BUSY50 for 50% off. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Viral Intimacies – Olave Nduwanje

As part of this special series funded by the European Cultural Foundation, I’m delighted to be working with artist and activist Isaiah Lopaz to share exclusive first-listens to his new project, Anthology Appendix – a multimedia project centred around queer Black fiction which includes readings, rituals, discussions and performances.Today's story is "In the Eyes of Our Mothers". On opposite ends of the city, one mother attempts to atone for not accepting her daughter as they play tv catch up, while another battles and belittles her daughter at a family dinner. Both daughters live peacefully and poetically together, but must separately navigate the visions of the women who carried them. "In the Eyes of Our Mothers" explores love, compromise and family ties, and is voiced by Isaiah Lopaz.Find out more at isaiahlopaz.com. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Anthology/Appendix: In the Eyes of Our Mothers

Adeola Aderemi is a multilingual Afro-Greek and multi format artist, scholar, activist and healer, who spends a great deal of time amplifying the voices of and fighting for marginalised women. She is the editor in chief of Distinguished Diva – a community of Black women storytellers – and is currently working on raising awareness among the general public on issues such as human trafficking, gender equality, women's health and equal representation for Black women in media. We discuss her research on violence against women, her key learnings during her John Lewis Fellowship in Atlanta and the moment she became Black. Adeola is now based in Brussels and pushes back against the narrative of Europe as a post-racial project. She suggests that Europe does its Black citizens a disservice by pointing to problems abroad it has yet to address at home. As well as her insights about fighting for and defending the Afro-Greek identity and the ways conversations about citizenship and representation differ in England and in Greece, she also calls us to ancestral healing and to realise that our softness is our birthright.This conversation forms part of a special series funded by the European Cultural Foundation and exploring queer Black solidarity across Europe during Covid-19.A special thank you to our newest funding partner, myGwork – the LGBT+ business community. Thank you to our community partners: UK Black Pride, BlackOut UK, The Tenth and Schools Out.Busy Being Black listeners get an exclusive discount at Pluto Press, an independent publisher of radical, left‐wing non¬‐fiction books. See Busy Being Black's curated booklist here, and use code BUSY50 for 50% off. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Viral Intimacies – Adeola Aderemi

As part of this special series funded by the European Cultural Foundation, I’m delighted to be working with artist and activist Isaiah Lopaz to share exclusive first-listens to his new project, Anthology Appendix – a multimedia project centred around queer Black fiction which includes readings, rituals, discussions and performances.Today's story is "A Wednesday Affair". In a foreign land two women vow to remain together as they discuss flight, rescue, tragedy and chance while waiting in line to see if they will be admitted into an exclusive club. A Wednesday Affair explores migration, faith and mental health, and is voiced by Isaiah Lopaz.Anthology Appendix launches 1 October 2020. Find out more at isaiahlopaz.com. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Anthology/Appendix: A Wednesday Affair

Liz Fekete is the Director of the Institute of Race Relations and head of its European research program. She has worked with the Institute since 1982 and specializes in contemporary racism, refugee rights, far-right extremism and Islamophobia across Europe. She is advisory editor of the Institute’s journal Race & Class and is the author of A Suitable Enemy: Racism, Migration and Islamophobia in Europe and Europe’s Fault Lines: Racism and the Rise of the Right. We discuss her nearly 40 years working for the UK’s leading race relations educational charity, her mentorship under the late and great A Sivanandan and how the anti-racism movement here in the UK has changed since the 1980s. Importantly, she provides some necessary historical and sociopolitical context for our current moment, including how the rise of the far-right in Europe over the last 30 years has made our communities more vulnerable to Covid-19 today.This conversation forms part of a special series funded by the European Cultural Foundation and exploring queer Black solidarity across Europe during Covid-19.Thank you to our partners, UK Black Pride, BlackOut UK, The Tenth and Schools Out. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Viral Intimacies – Liz Fekete

Dr Eddie Bruce-Jones is a legal academic and anthropologist, based in London. He is the Deputy Dean at Birkbeck School of Law, the author of Race in the Shadow of Law: State Violence in Contemporary Europe (Routledge, 2016) and serves on the Board of Directors of the Institute of Race Relations and the UK Lesbian and Gay Immigration Group. He’s on the advisory board of the Centre for Intersectional Justice in Berlin, and the Editorial Board of the Journal of Immigration, Asylum and Nationality Law. And he’s an Essays Editor at the literary magazine, The Offing. His research, writing and our conversation focuses on migration, racism, sexuality, colonialism, state violence and citizenship.---Busy Being Black is the podcast exploring how we live in the fullness of our queer Black lives. If you like what you hear, please take a moment to rate, review and subscribe; doing so lets others like us hear the voices amplified here.---Thank you to our partners, UK Black Pride, BlackOut UK and Schools Out. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Eddie Bruce-Jones: Race in the Shadow of Law

BL Shirelle is a hip-hop artist and activist who uses her music to share her experiences with police violence, addiction and the realities of prison for Black women. Her debut album, Assata Troi – which translates to “she who struggles is a warrior” – is described as a timeless hip hop classic that speaks of hope in our era of mass incarceration and systemic racism. In addition to her own music, BL is the Deputy Director of Die Jim Crow Records – the first record label in the United States for formerly and currently incarcerated musicians. We explore how 20 years in and out of prison has shaped her identity and informed her activism, and the lessons she’s learned from her elders within the prison system, who helped inspire and nurture her throughout her adolescence.---Busy Being Black is the podcast exploring how we live in the fullness of our queer Black lives. If you like what you hear, please take a moment to rate, review and subscribe; doing so lets others like us hear the voices amplified here.---Thank you to our partners, UK Black Pride, BlackOut UK and Schools Out. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

BL Shirelle: Assata Troi

A self-titled bad Buddhist, Lama Rod Owens is an author, activist and authorised Lama (Buddhist Teacher) in the Kagyu School of Tibetan Buddhism. He's a comforting, honest and straight-talking queer Black man, who’s considered one of the leaders of his generation of Buddhist teachers. His new book is Love and Rage: The Path to Liberation through Anger – and he opens the first chapter like this: “Since the 2016 presidential election, shit has been hard for some of us. For the rest of us, shit has been hard for a while.” From his rearing in the Black Church to his self-discovery through Buddhism, our conversation is one of deep reflection and a frank exploration of the ways in which our unaddressed anger prevents us from not only a psychic and physical liberation, but from connecting meaningfully to ourselves and to others in every imaginable part of our lives.---Busy Being Black is the podcast exploring how we live in the fullness of our queer Black lives. If you like what you hear, please take a moment to rate, review and subscribe; doing so lets others like us hear the voices amplified here.---Thank you to our partners, UK Black Pride, BlackOut UK and Schools Out. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Lama Rod Owens: Bad Buddhist

For the sixth and final episode of Theory in the Flesh, I’m in conversation with Dr Oni Blackstock, the Assistant Commissioner for the Bureau of HIV at the New York City Department of Health. In 2018, doctors diagnosed 1,917 people with HIV – a 67% decline from the number of diagnoses in 2001.---I reached out to Dr Blackstock to understand what precipitated such a historic drop in new HIV diagnoses in New York City and how she and her colleagues at the Bureau of HIV have been able to intervene so successfully in the lives of those disproportionately impacted by HIV. We discuss the years-long work of building trust among marginalised communities, the many ways the city addresses and accounts for structural inequalities and disparities in HIV outreach, and the parallels between Covid-19 and the ongoing HIV epidemic. Dr Blackstock makes clear that it takes large teams working at the city level, substantive funding at all levels of government and consistent engagement with and funding of grassroots and community organisations to deliver health interventions that work for all.---Busy Being Black is the podcast exploring how we live in the fullness of our queer Black lives and Theory in the Flesh is made possible with funding from the British Podcast Awards fund and Wellcome Trust. Please show your support for Busy Being Black, by taking a few minutes to share your feedback at podcastviews.com.---Thank you to our partners, UK Black Pride, BlackOut UK and Schools Out. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Theory in the Flesh – Dr Oni Blackstock

Bakita Kasadha is a writer, researcher and poet. She is a Black woman living with HIV and as a health activist holds different national and international advisory roles. Her recently completed dissertation critiques and challenges knowledge production at the research level, and asks important questions about who is and is not involved in research that aims to uplift and support at-risk and marginalised communities.---We explore the problematising of Blackness, the laziness of those who call Black and other marginalised communities hard to reach and how top-down approaches to health research, that do not contextualise lived experiences, limit the success of interventions and can even cost lives. She believes health researchers, medical practitioners and funding bodies should be ethically engaging communities in the shaping, delivery and involvement of healthcare initiatives.---We open with Bakita’s reading of her poem, Numbers Game.---Busy Being Black is the podcast exploring how we live in the fullness of our queer Black lives and Theory in the Flesh is made possible with funding from the British Podcast Awards fund and Wellcome Trust. Please show your support for Busy Being Black, by taking a few minutes to share your feedback at podcastviews.com.---Thank you to our partners, UK Black Pride, BlackOut UK and Schools Out. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Theory in the Flesh – Bakita Kasadha

In a powerhouse TedTalk, The Problem with Race-based Medicine, social justice advocate and law scholar Dorothy E Roberts says: “Race is not a biological category that naturally produces health disparities because of genetic difference. Race is a social category that has staggering biological consequences, but because of the impact of social inequality on people's health.”The novel coronavirus, COVID19, is not racist. It is a highly contagious virus that moves with ease from person-to-person and which takes advantage of compromised immune systems. COVID19 is hitting Black and Minority Ethnic communities the hardest because of racism. As long as medical institutions, scientists, researchers and the public continue to ignore the institutionalised, structural and everyday racism that makes us vulnerable to ill health in the first place, our communities will continue to be disproportionately impacted - as we have been historically - time and time again.Today, I’m in conversation with Camille St. Omer and Martha Awojobi, two of the ten team members leading Charity So White. The organisation was founded in 2019 to call attention to the racism in the charity sector and to provide a pathway to a sector representative of the vulnerable and at-risk communities it exists to serve and support. Charity So White has issued a live position paper, which is being updated every week, that offers not only crucial insight into the disproportionate impact of COVID19 on Black and Minority Ethnic communities, but practical and important suggestions for the necessary way forward. Camille and Martha remind us that in the midst of a crisis, we have an opportunity to redress the systemic injustices that continue to leave so many of our people behind.---Busy Being Black is the podcast exploring how we live in the fullness of our queer Black lives and Theory in the Flesh is made possible with funding from the British Podcast Awards fund and Wellcome Trust. Please show your support for Busy Being Black, by taking a few minutes to share your feedback at podcastviews.com.---Thank you to our partners, UK Black Pride, BlackOut UK and Schools Out. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Theory in the Flesh – Charity So White

In countries like England, where young Black boys - irregardless of sexuality - are disproportionately impacted by school exclusions, where the prison population is full of Black men and where mental health services for Black people are increasingly rare, how are we as queer Black people and queer people of colour acknowledging and showing solidarity with our presumably heterosexual Black brothers?Cathy J. Cohen’s seminal essay “Punks, Bulldaggers and Welfare Queens” cautions us against a queer politics that does not include those whose sexuality may be different to ours. She writes, “My concern is centred on those individuals who consistently activate only one characteristic of their identity, or a single perspective of consciousness, to organise their politics, rejecting any recognition of the multiple and intersecting systems of power that largely dictate our life chances.”And so my conversation today is with Ben Hurst, who is doing transformative work with men and boys around the country, helping them understand feminism, intersectionality and masculinity. We discuss our friendship as an example of coalition-building across sexual identities, embracing emotional literacy as Black men, and the patience and understanding required to show men and boys a different, positive version of masculinity.--Ben Hurst is the Head of Facilitation and Training at the Good Lad Initiative, an organisation teaching young men and boys about gender equality, feminism and intersectionality.--@_busybeingblack is the podcast exploring how we live in the fullness of our queer Black lives. Theory in the Flesh is made possible with funding from the British Podcast Awards Fund and Wellcome Trust. Find out more at: busybeingblack.com.--Thank you to our partners, UK Black Pride, BlackOut UK and Schools Out. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Theory in the Flesh – Ben Hurst

On the 26th of March, Frances Webber, the Vice-chair of the Institute of Race Relations’ Council of Management and a former barrister specialising in immigration, and refugee and human rights law, wrote of the self-isolation required to prevent the spread of COVID-19: “Those without homes or privacy cannot distance or self-isolate; nor can they observe strict hygiene, without access to hot water and soap. For homeless people in night shelters or on the streets, for prisoners and immigration detainees sharing overcrowded cells or rooms, toilets and communal canteens, and for asylum seekers living in destitution there is no escape from the infection.”Today, I’m in conversation with Moud Goba of Micro Rainbow, the charity working in service of LGBTQ asylum seekers and refugees in the UK. From a culture of disbelief at the Home Office to having to survive on £37 per week, Moud takes us through the many hurdles our LGBTQ siblings encounter when they come to England seeking refuge. Moud discusses her own experience as an asylum seeker, how Micro Rainbow helps combat economic disempowerment, homelessness and isolation, and the work we must all do in looking after the most vulnerable in our society. And a trigger warning: the conversation today includes mentions of both sexual and physical violence. Please listen with care.--Moud Goba is a project manager for Micro Rainbow and one of the founders of UK Black Pride.The impact of COVID-19 and the attendant lockdowns and isolation is especially difficult for our siblings seeking asylum in the UK. Micro Rainbow has a wish list on Amazon, which allows those who can to send food to Micro Rainbow’s safe houses.--Thank you to our partners: UK Black Pride, BlackOut UK and Schools Out. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Theory in the Flesh – Moud Goba

When Lady Phyll and a busload of Black lesbians travelled down to Southend-on-Sea in 2005, they couldn't have imagined what UK Black Pride would become. I called Lady Phyll, the executive director and co-founder of UK Black Pride, to understand how she's feeling after the recent announcement that UK Black Pride 2020 is postponed.--@_busybeingblack is the podcast exploring how we live in the fullness of our queer Black lives, If you like what you hear, please take a moment to rate, review and subscribe; doing so lets others like us hear the voices amplified here. #busybeingblackThank you to our partners, UK Black Pride, BlackOut UK and our newest partner, Schools Out. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Lady Phyll and a Busload of Black Lesbians

Much is researched, written and said about sexual racism in our communities. "No Blacks, no fats, no femmes, no Asians" are all terms any of us who’ve used dating apps have seen and those of us caught in the racist, fat- and femme-phobic crosshairs, we feel the pain acutely. My guest today, Professor Rusi Jaspal, is finding that what has become an ostensibly casual digital discrimination has real world implications on the lives of those that discrimination impacts.Professor Rusi Jaspal began his research career trying to understand how British Pakistani Muslim men reconcile their religion and their sexuality, and has since gone on to lead the way in the UK on research specific to the lives of LGB BAME people. Professor Jaspal is truly unmatched, both in the scope of his research and the depth of his understanding of what it means to live - and oftentimes be invisible - as queer people of colour in Britain.Among much else, his research finds that Black and Minority Ethnic men who have sex with men, who experience rejection from those they love, respect or admire, then enter into a gay scene that does not recognise or validate their lived experience, which makes them more prone to depression. That depression, in turn, makes those men more vulnerable to sexual risk-taking, like chemsex and condomless sex.This conversation is big and rich and eye-opening. It adds some much needed context and texture to the conversations we have about the importance of coming out in our communities. Namely, that we have to create around queer people the environments, the societies and the cultures that accept them for who they are.--@_busybeingblack is the podcast exploring how we live in the fullness of our queer Black lives and Theory in the Flesh is made possible with funding from the British Podcast Awards Fund and Wellcome Trust.Thank you to our partners, UK Black Pride, BlackOut UK and Schools Out. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Theory in the Flesh – Professor Rusi Jaspal

After our conversation on stage at OUTing the Past exploring queer Black histories, Sea Sharp and I took a walk through the countryside to continue our conversation. I had a particular question about themes in their work that speak to a desire for invisibility, but as we approached a group of fenced-in and curious cows, our conversation took quite a turn.--@_busybeingblack is the podcast exploring how we live in the fullness of our queer Black lives. If you like what you hear, please take a moment to rate, review and subscribe; doing so lets others like us hear the voices amplified here. #busybeingblackThank you to our partners, UK Black Pride, BlackOut UK and our newest partner, Schools Out".--OUTing the Past: The International Festivals of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Trans History is an international celebration through a series of events throughout the year and around the world, and a conference and gathering for academics and activists once a year in February. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

What's Wrong, What's Worse?

In their poem Misogynoir, Sea Sharp writes, Maybe mama knows I’d rather burn my leather / than wear it another day for her, would rather / slice this skin in slivers, rip off my flesh like a grapefruit peel. In this poem, which explores a contentious relationship between mother and child, between Black skin and freedom, Sea touches upon one of the profound conflicts queer Black people can contend with when confronted with the trumpeting of the importance of coming out and LGBTQ pride: telling the world we’re queer hardly helps us if we don’t even want to live in our Black skin. Sea Sharp is a Pushcart Prize-winning poet whose latest collection of poems, Black Cotton, is a powerful interrogation and soaring exploration of the wild and vast interior of a queer Black person coming to terms with their identity, sexuality and race, against a backdrop of rural Kansas and south England. Sea’s work is emotionally-charged, confrontational and humorous, gut-wrenching and healing - all at the same - and while reading through their work, I found myself on the verge of tears or laughing in recognition or just pausing to catch my breath. I cannot recommend their work highly enough. We sat down at the Charleston Trust in Lewes on the invitation of OUTing the Past to add some much-needed visibility for queer Black people within British LGBTQ history. We open the show with a graphic account of violence against enslaved people, which some may find hard to hear, so please listen with care.--@_busybeingblack is the podcast exploring how we live in the fullness of our queer Black lives. If you like what you hear, please take a moment to rate, review and subscribe; doing so lets others like us hear the voices amplified here. #busybeingblackThank you to our partners, UK Black Pride, BlackOut UK and our newest partner, Schools Out".--OUTing the Past: The International Festivals of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Trans History is an international celebration through a series of events throughout the year and around the world, and a conference and gathering for academics and activists once a year in February. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Sea Sharp: Black Cotton

In my conversation with Chantelle Lewis, she shares with us some of the initial findings in her doctoral research into Black mixed race families in the midlands. I thought it a great opportunity to sit down with my mum, Josephine, to find out more about her experience married to a Black man and raising mixed race children. She discusses her first encounters with racism, the moment she realised what her children would contend with and the parallel journeys we've been on to understand our responsibilities in the world more fully.--@_busybeingblack is the podcast exploring how we live in the fullness of our queer Black lives. If you like what you hear, please take a moment to rate, review and subscribe; doing so lets others like us hear the voices amplified here. #busybeingblackThank you to our partners, UK Black Pride and BlackOut UK. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Did You Know You Were Marrying a Black Man?

How do we have more nuanced conversations about being mixed race that account for more than an internal struggle with the binary Black and white? Chantelle Lewis is an activist, researcher, sociologist and podcaster based at Goldsmiths – and this her beat. Chantelle’s work is focused on structural racism, accountability, and class inequality and her doctoral research explores Black mixed race families in a predominantly white town in the Midlands. She takes us through some of the initial findings in her research, including how a lack of racial literacy in these families results in children who don’t speak about the racism they encounter in the world. We discuss what led her to this research, what she’s learned about how she navigates the world as a mixed-Black woman and names the people and comrades who have helped expand her understanding and her scholarship. She says that we must look beyond our individual identities to understand what our mixed-race identities afford us, what our proximity to whiteness subjects us to and her thoughts on why it’s important that we mixed Black people reflect and think critically about our mixed-ness.https://discoversociety.org/2019/08/23/please-can-we-stop-talking-about-mixed-race-identity-on-its-own/https://leadingroutes.org/--@_busybeingblack is the podcast exploring how we live in the fullness of our queer Black lives. If you like what you hear, please take a moment to rate, review and subscribe; doing so lets others like us hear the voices amplified here. #busybeingblackThank you to our partners, UK Black Pride and BlackOut UK. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Chantelle Lewis: De-essentialising Mixed Race

Liv Little is the founder and tour-de-force behind gal-dem, an online and print magazine written by women of colour and non-binary people of colour for all to explore. Today we’re in conversation to discuss the genesis of gal-dem and how she’s learned to separate herself from the business she’s built. We explore how gal-dem is helping women and non-binary people of colour navigate our fraught political moment, and why she and the team at gal-dem published I Will Not Be Erased, a project offering words of wisdom to their teenage selves. Liv discusses baking, feeding people she cares for and falling in love with writing again, and how she stays focused on gal-dem’s ultimate mission of revolutionising the publishing industry. She also discusses living life unafraid to love, and how she’s unlocked the little box she put away when she was sixteen after having her heart broken.--@_busybeingblack is the podcast exploring how we live in the fullness of our queer Black lives. If you like what you hear, please take a moment to rate, review and subscribe; doing so lets others like us hear the voices amplified here. #busybeingblackThank you to our partners, UK Black Pride and BlackOut UK. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Liv Little: Unafraid to Love

Today’s conversation with Rav Bansal is a beautiful exploration of the private and public considerations we make on our journeys of self-acceptance and self-love, and what it can mean for ourselves and the communities we represent if we decide to come out. Rav is a baker and broadcaster who rose to fame as a contestant on Great British Bake Off in 2016. In June of this year, he came out publicly, after years of questioning and exploring who he is, what he believes and what he wants to achieve in the world. Rav discusses his parents’ reaction to his coming out, the incredible emotional support he received from his sister, and why he decided to share himself with the world. We explore the role Sikhism has played in his life and his outlook, his work with the UK Lesbian and Gay Immigration Group and why he’s embarked on his newest broadcasting venture, Do You Wear That in the Shower?, a podcast where he and his guests challenge some of the widely held myths and misconceptions about Sikhs and Sikhism. Importantly, Rav shares with us the steps he took for himself to move closer to himself so that he could live in service of others. — —@_busybeingblack is the podcast exploring how we live in the fullness of our queer Black lives. If you like what you hear, please take a moment to rate, review and subscribe; doing so lets others like us hear the voices amplified here. #busybeingblackThank you to our partners, UK Black Pride and BlackOut UK. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Rav Bansal: Encountering My Divine

PJ Samuels is a poet, educator and LGBTQ human rights activist whose work interrogates issues of race, gender, patriarchy, identity and belonging. I first encountered her searing, moving and beautiful poetry in the Sista! Anthology, a collection of essays and poetry from women-loving-women of African and Caribbean descent. She is an emotional and intellectual force. Today, we discuss her relationship to God and with Christianity and the way both religion and Blackness have historically been weaponised against Black people. She elaborates on her refusal to make her life and her Blackness performative, and how she does this through a tenacious yet gentle pursuit of joy. She takes us back to her origins in rural Jamaica, how her experience as a refugee made her reevaluate all of her relationships, how she remembers to engage her wonder and her curiosity, and her thoughts on roots, freedom and love.This conversation is big and it is beautiful. There are some long pauses throughout this conversation because PJ literally rendered me speechless with her thoughts, passion, intellect, and her absolute commitment to Black women. https://pjsamuels.wordpress.com/— — @_busybeingblack is the podcast exploring how we live in the fullness of our queer Black lives. If you like what you hear, please take a moment to rate, review and subscribe; doing so lets others like us hear the voices amplified here. #busybeingblackThank you to our partners, UK Black Pride and BlackOut UK. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

PJ Samuels: Black She

Few people have touched my soul as tenderly as Jeffrey Williams. From late-night cross-continental FaceTimes to voice notes full of support and encouragement, the friendship Jeffrey and I have cultivated is a testament to the very real connections that can form across cyberspace. Jeffrey Williams is a designer, stylist and creative director whose visions of beauty are made manifest most regularly on the bodies of musical duo Lion Babe. We begin our conversation with Jeffrey’s memories of childhood and late mother — a person Jeffrey describes as a beautiful, kind woman who helped Jeffrey understand how to listen and love. We discuss Jeffrey’s life-changing years in Italy, embracing our fears, the mantras Jeffrey uses to survive and, of course, spirituality, creativity and finding beauty within ourselves and in the world. Jeffrey is a spiritual and beautiful wonder in a world in desperate need of more people like Jeffrey. This conversation was recorded in New York City during World Pride 2019. Thank you to the team at Acast NYC for all your help.— — Jeffrey Williams is a designer, stylist and creative director. Follow Jeffrey on Instagram to be dazzled and enchanted.http://www.jeffreycwilliams.com/— — @_busybeingblack is the podcast exploring how we live in the fullness of our queer Black lives. If you like what you hear, please take a moment to rate, review and subscribe; doing so lets others like us hear the voices amplified here. #busybeingblackThank you to our partners, UK Black Pride and BlackOut UK.— —New York’s LGBTQ Film Festival, New Fest, is coming up from October 23-29. The festival features over 160 films from more than 30 countries and promises to be a week of queer cinematic excellence. Busy Being Black listeners get discounted tickets on all screenings. Head to newest.org/festival and use the code NFCP19. Author Marcellas Reynolds has released his new book, SUPREME MODELS: Iconic Black Women Who Revolutionised Fashion. It's the first-ever book celebrating black top models, and is filled with revealing essays, interviews, and stunning photographs. https://www.abramsbooks.com/product/supreme-models_9781419736148/#  See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Jeffrey Williams: Pilgrimage

Hip-hop is a cultural touchstone both misunderstood and rightly held to task for misogyny, homophobia and sexism, but are the problems of hip-hop reflective of issues in society at large and what space is there for queerness in hip-hop? Today, I’m joined by Peter “PJ” Johnson, more widely known as the Repeat Beat Poet, for a discussion exploring hip-hop’s radical roots, the queering of the genre and how hip-hop has allowed, in the past and the present, a confrontation with expressions of Blackness that have historically been (and continue to be) policed. We explore where and how PJ finds inclusivity in hip-hop, reckoning with the many valid criticisms of the genre, the capitalist interest fuelling the continued and remarkable growth of the art form, hip-hop’s political importance and finding freedom for people to speak. We also explore poetry as a vehicle of investigation and archiving, echo chambers and moving away from an implicit heterosexuality.— —Peter “PJ” Johnson is the Repeat Beat Poet, a hip-hop poet who confronts, queers and investigates hip-hop's evolving and ever-important role as an expression of a vast and varied Blackness.This episode includes PJ reading What Does Black Power Mean? and Barbershop Cuts, as well as a clip from Deep Dickollective’s "For Coloured Boys". — —@_busybeingblack is the podcast exploring how we live in the fullness of our queer Black lives. If you like what you hear, please take a moment to rate, review and subscribe; doing so let's other likes us hear the voices amplified here.Thank you to our partners, UK Black Pride and BlackOut UK.— —New York’s LGBTQ Film Festival, New Fest, is coming up from October 23-29. The festival features over 160 films from more than 30 countries and promises to be a week of queer cinematic excellence. Busy Being Black listeners get discounted tickets on all screenings. Head to newest.org/festival and use the code NFCP19. Author Marcellas Reynolds has released his new book, SUPREME MODELS: Iconic Black Women Who Revolutionised Fashion. It's the first-ever book celebrating black top models, and is filled with revealing essays, interviews, and stunning photographs. https://www.abramsbooks.com/product/supreme-models_9781419736148/#  See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.