Black Boomer Besties from Brooklyn
Black Boomer Besties from Brooklyn
A Time of Truth Telling with NC Poet Laureate Jaki Shelton Green
What happens when you blend the voices of wisdom, resilience, and poetic brilliance? You get an unforgettable episode of "Black Boomer Besties from Brooklyn" featuring Jaki Shelton Green, the ninth Poet Laureate of North Carolina. In this powerful conversation, Ms Shelton Green, the first African-American and third woman to hold this prestigious title, shares her journey, inspirations, and reads her evocative poem, "Daughters of this Dust." Her words set a profound tone, inviting us into a space of reflection and empowerment.
Truth-telling takes center stage as the discussion turns to Kamala Harris's presidential candidacy and what it means for Black women everywhere. Is relocating abroad a form of escape or a quest for joy and safety? The exploration doesn't shy away from the hard questions, addressing the systemic issues of racism, sexism, and ageism that affect Black people.
Our discussion on Black Women Empowerment and Responsibility reveals the intricate connection between physical and emotional health, and how stress manifests in our bodies.
The imagery of burning fields to yield vibrant wildflowers serves as a metaphor for transformation and renewal, reminding us of the power and resilience inherent in Black women.
This episode promises not just to inform, but to inspire and galvanize action.
This episode and all previous episodes are available on YouTube. Please join our Besties Quad Squad as a Patreon subscriber at the $5 or $10 monthly level. You'll receive exclusive behind-the-scenes content.
Visit Black Boomer Besties from Brooklyn website for behind-the-scenes extras.
Hey Ange, hey Leslie, how are you? Oh, it's.
Speaker 2:Leslie, now, that's because we have a guest. We have a guest.
Speaker 1:We have to be proper for about five minutes.
Speaker 1:And then I'll give us five minutes. Hey folks, welcome to our podcast. We are Leslie and Angela. We have been best friends since 1977. That's about 47 years and our work in the world right now is to bring information that allows you to expand your thinking, to think deeply and to act boldly. Welcome, we have an amazing guest today. Oh my gosh, listen the first few minutes of this recording. We've been giddy. So this is us finding a calm place after Leslie prayed and we got calm. But don't think for a moment that this is just regular degular. This is a regular degular episode. We're excited to be here. So, leslie, tell them about. Introduce this podcast. What's the name of it? What are we doing?
Speaker 2:Welcome to another episode of Black Boomer Besties from Brooklyn, brooklyn.
Speaker 1:All right. So this beautiful empress that we have here today, if you don't recognize her, you will soon be just a fan, as I am. A fan as I am. She's a friend and she is Jackie Shelton Green, the North Carolina Poet Laureate. I'm going to read her bio. I'm going to read it slowly, I'm going to give you guys time to let this information just seep into you. She's very special. We've been gifted in having her voice and her way of seeing the world expanded through her work as a poet laureate, and so I'm gonna jump in and tell you about Jackie Shelton Green. Okay, jackie Shelton Green is the ninth Poet Laureate of North Carolina appointed in 2018. She's the first African-American and third woman to be appointed to the North Carolina Poet Laureate and reappointed in 2021 for a second term by Governor Roy Cooper. She is a 2019 Academy of American Poet Laureate Fellow, a 2014 North Carolina Literacy Hall of Fame inductee, a 2009 North Carolina Piedmont Laureate appointment. 2003 recipient of the North Carolina Award for Literature. Jackie Shelton Green teaches documentary poetry at Duke University Center for Documentary Studies and the 2021 Frank B Haynes Writer in Residence at UNC Chapel Hill. Additionally, she received the George School Outstanding Alumni Award in 2021.
Speaker 1:Her publications include Dead on Arrival, masks, dead on Arrival and New Poems. Conjure Blues, singing a Tree into Dance. Breath of the Song, published by Blair Publishers. Feeding the Light. I Want to Undie you, my favorite, published by Jakar Press, I Want to Undie you, english and Latin Bilingual Edition, published by the Berg Publishers Juneteenth 2020. She released her first LP poetry album, the River Speaks of Thirst, published by Soul City Sounds and Clearly Records, and released a CD I Want to Undie you in 2021.
Speaker 1:Jackie Shelton Green is the owner of Sister Right, providing retreats for women writers in Sedona, arizona, martha's Vineyard, ocracoke, north Carolina, northern Morocco and Tullamore, ireland. In 2021, the Arts Club of Chicago premiered a commissioned body of work in collaboration with Flutronics for the Black Is series and was performed in April 2022 by Flutronics and Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra. By the way, if you guys want to see her poetry in motion, we'll put some links there. It's poetry, music and motion. It's a beautiful combination. Through Jackie's work as a poet, she serves as the poetry editor for Walter Magazine and an appointment as the poet laureate in residence at the North Carolina Museum of Art. Additionally, she has been recognized on the Forbes Magazine 50 Over 50 Lifestyle List for 2022. Welcome, welcome, jackie.
Speaker 3:Thank you so much. Thank you, angela, and thank you so much Leslie. First of all, I really feel so special to be honored, to be embraced in this manner. I truly appreciate it. I just wanted to say there's one correction around my bio. It's an Italian, not Latin, translation of the book. I want to undie you, but thank you, and I'm so honored to be with both of you. Listen, we finally got you here.
Speaker 2:Let me jump in before because I'm going to be quiet, which is not like me. But I'm going to say that it is my pleasure to finally meet you in this way, because I've actually known you for a number of years. Why? Because Angela speaks of you so frequently, my friend Jackie, and Jackie says this and Jackie does this and I learned this from Jackie. I heard this from Jackie. So you've kind of permeated our life for the last couple of years and I just appreciate the wisdom that Ange has shared, that you've imparted to her. So I thank you. Don't make me get emotional. I do the ugly cry, but thank you.
Speaker 3:Oh, thank you, and it's been not just me. I mean, Angela is wise and full of excitement and wonderment and innovation and I mean look what you're doing. You know, it's funny how you meet somebody in one track and here we are doing something totally different. So absolutely. And same thing, Leslie, she talks.
Speaker 1:I remember there's one time, jackie, that we were actually having lunch. I think we had had lunch and we were sitting in the car and I got a call from Leslie and it was about Omari getting a call about a kidney. As you guys remember, leslie's son, my nephew, has had a kidney transplant a few years ago and I was in the car with Jackie and, oh Jackie, oh, oh Jackie, so they have, they have not met face to face but definitely they're there.
Speaker 1:All of our lives have been intertwining for a few years now. Jackie. I asked you if you would please read us a poem to start us off, and if you could just do that now, we'd appreciate it.
Speaker 3:So I'm reading Daughters of this Dust from a publication Feeding the Light. Daughters of this Dust, one Feeling real good big boned, mahogany ass, shelf, indigo, left eye, same eye grandma found rolling around in the cat's bowl. I teach geometry from unshaven armpits. Geography begins between my toes. Five different patois sing your name backwards. Two Dawn colors. My back mauve, you mistake it for Argentina. Shipwrecked soul, you pierce me with the knives of hunger. I cry a shark song for the loneliness at the bottom of your eyes. Three impregnating condensed light, weaving new pigmentation into right eye. Four only you believe the blue eye. But she said she swam with mermaids, danced calypso beneath the sand, removed o'shoon curses. Five your palms peeled back my eyes and stoned the devil's living bear.
Speaker 1:Okay, okay. So we realized that there's so much that we could talk about, and we also realized that we can't keep Jackie forever. She has poet laureate work to do. She's got a life to live Professorship and all of those things, all the things Laundry.
Speaker 3:Laundry Laundry.
Speaker 1:Wife, wife-ship, mother-ship, all the things, all the things. But this episode, which will probably be in two parts, to be honest, it's going to be entitled A Time of Truth Telling. That is a title language that I actually pulled from something that I heard Jackie talk about some time ago, and what I thought would be great is if one part was kind of truth-telling around community and the second part would be around truth-telling in a kind of personal way. So this part we're going to talk about community. We're going to talk about what's happening in the world right now in terms of Black women. Kamala is running for President, kamala Harris Let me give her her full-on government name. Kamala Harris is running for President of the United States. We will speak of her in the most revered sense of respect, as Kamala. We're going to talk about her and how it plays out.
Speaker 1:Black woman saving the world again at sea, and all of those ideas is what we're going to kind of jump into as we talk about truth telling in community. So I want to start with Leslie and I have been exploring moving abroad, right, and I know, jackie, you do a lot of a lot of traveling. How do you feel about? Do you feel like we're abandoning America and our right to be here and our responsibilities to stay here by thinking about moving abroad. What do you think about that?
Speaker 3:Well, the globe was built to be explored and to be inhabited, and I don't have any feeling that I am neglecting the united states or abandoning anything. Um, I think the question itself comes from that place of being colonized for so long that we feel like we have some sense of I'm abandoning my country. I remind myself this is a country that I love very dearly, but it does not always love me back, and I remember that James Baldwin said something very poignantly, you know many years I think, that I mean his voice is just resonating from the grave now, with so much wisdom and so many things that I just point on for right now is that the United States needs to fall in love with itself again. Like, like, you cannot love others if you cannot love yourself, and I think I have to love myself enough and love my family enough and love the ones around me enough to want to flourish, to be nourished, and so I don't have a restriction around geography. You know, like, like, where I receive that, that nourishment that I need to thrive, and living right now in the south and north carolina, uh, I'm, I'm very frightened by many, many realities that are real, gun toting folk, of just going to the grocery store and there aren't people in the grocery store and I'm always like you know, I almost want to walk up to people and say why do you think you need a gun in the grocery store?
Speaker 3:You have a three-year-old on your hip right above your gun. Her foot is touching the top of the gun, why. You know, like, why is this a necessity for you? And the thing is that person does not owe me anything to even answer that question, you know. But I have to ask myself how do I want to? And it's not a way that I want to live, and you know it is a. It is a question because I am now 71 years old, my husband is 79. These are questions that you know. At our age we think about a little more than if we were still in our 50s.
Speaker 3:Yeah yeah, you know, and we have family, and what does that look like? But I would like to live outside of the country at least three to four months out of a year. I would like to be somewhere else and that's about. That's about my, my resistance. My resistance is thriving. Yes, you know, because every day something tried to kill me and my sister Clifton said that every morning I get up something has failed again and every morning that I can do that. But I worry right now and the thing is we don't know where that that thread is going to come from at any given time. But I want joy. I want joy. I want joy for my children. I want joy for our grandchildren, for our great-grandchildren. I want joy for my neighbors. I want joy for people who even know that they need joy. I want joy.
Speaker 1:I want a want for them, right, they might have given up on it. You want it for them, right, they might have given up on it. You want it for them.
Speaker 3:Right. So that's kind of my response is no, I don't have any unpatriotic or feeling that I owe somebody anything or that anybody owes me anything. That's the other piece. You know, that's the other piece for me, because, whatever I do, feel that's oh, it ain't coming, it's not happening, right, yeah, it's not happening.
Speaker 1:And if you leave, it's not that you give up the right to it. If you leave, you know if something is coming. You're.
Speaker 3:That's right. That's right. And the thing is, is that, why am I? You're still a united states citizen. You know what I mean exactly. People who don't look like me leave every day yes, every day and become an expat. No one's asking that question, yeah, so I don't ask myself those questions. They're. They're far more important questions like like where, how far my money's going to go, safety issues, politics Is it? You know? Is this a good place for me, as a Black woman, to thrive, as an elder, to thrive? Because ageism is real. Sexism, racism in this culture they're real. They're real in other cultures also.
Speaker 3:Yes, yes, but I think that we need to be revived, restored and find our places and our spaces where we become refueled. I think we're all so exhausted that that, you know, stepping aside, stepping away, is a way to restore. I mean, we have been fighting for so long that this is like this is not a new fight. This is just more of the fight, yes, and a more intensified way and a more really and a more fierce, exhausting way, because it's more than just the physicalness, the physicality of the fight. It's emotional and spiritual wear, absolutely, and the indoctrination. I mean. You know, our bones carry memory, so we're already carrying in our DNA, you know, memory of the Middle Passage and carrying, I believe, in something called genetic deja vu, called genetic deja vu. You know, like my spirit, my DNA sometimes dials up memories that I realize I was never in that place. This is an ancestor's recessive memory that's flowing through me.
Speaker 1:And it comes through in your writing all the time, you know all the time, you know all the time. It's like how, how could you possibly have this imagery?
Speaker 1:and and you just kind of answered that for me I've been consuming a few of your books that I that I, I'm kind of, I'm kind of into you, um, and that is the that, when you just said that it answered so many questions about the imagery that you paint in your writing, about you know where the, the, you put two words together, you put, you put fierce. And what was the other one? Fierce and gosh. I forgot the other one. But it's kind of like we always think about the fierceness of black women but we don't think about the, the, that, that, that, where the fatigue, the wearing of a fatigue of black women, for sure, for sure, yeah, oh, know, the wearing of us the fatigue of Black women.
Speaker 2:For sure, for sure.
Speaker 1:Ooh, fierce and fatiguing. We got to put those together.
Speaker 2:But not just that, but the need to give ourselves permission to rest. Yeah.
Speaker 3:You know, that's a big right, that's a big big. The word permission is a word, that, um, the word what we, what we ask permission of ourself for and what we require of ourselves. You know, those have been two big things for me, like what do I require of myself and what do I grant myself permissions for? And those become things that that, especially when I'm working with with I don't want to just say writers, but creative makers, those are the two questions I pose with them.
Speaker 3:You know, what is your relationship with your writing? You know, and I think when we're talking about leaving a place, I ask people so what is your relationship with the place that you're leaving? You know, are you leaving because it's a cool thing to do right now, is it? You know, like, what is your relationship with your creativity? What is your relationship with your grief? Um, because I think that sometimes we get into reactive mode. Yes, things are happening so fast that we go into reactive mode and I think that's when we started creating diseases, diseases. I remember when um oj simpson's mother had the heart attack, you know, during his, I think it was during a trial and I remember my mother, her response. We were watching the news together and she said of course, what else could she do? Wow, you know like that that you know her heart.
Speaker 3:Yes, her response, but she had a heart attack. Right, you know, this is my child and I just, I never forgot. Thinking about that, how the body will react on your behalf, for sure For not processing.
Speaker 2:Thinking about that, how the body will react on your behalf, for sure Whether it's as a physician, obviously I see all types of pathologies. But there are some things you know. When people go into a doctor or whatever, and they say you know what something's just not right or something's wrong, and we look for the physical, organic things, that a test or lab test can come up and sometimes you don't find it Right. You know, and it might be more in the emotional realm or, as you just said, in our bones, in the genetics of our systems, that there is ill feeling and dis-ease.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and I think sometimes we create so much disease in our lives. Yeah, I mean, it's almost like sometimes when I think about just this pathology of this whole conversation you know choreography of it, of it all how, in someone's lifetime, you have all of these external forces that shape who you are and it should be the other way around, shaping the world around us to be what we desire of it in order to live in it in a positive way. And yet all of that external energy and these external crises that I have, they shape us. And how do we, how do we get out of that? How do we break that, that pattern? You know, how do we walk away from that? And when the whole nap ministry came out, I was like, okay, well, somebody just said it. Yeah, how are we dressed?
Speaker 3:Our resistance is taking care of ourselves. Our resistance is stepping in these spaces where, when we walk into the door, people look at us like, why are you here? Our resistance is to take up space. Yes, you know our voices, our bodies, taking the children to all the places that were denied to, to our, you know, four mothers and four fathers, and, and, and helping them to understand you can be anywhere in this world where you want to be Wow, you know that's. The other piece of it is there is a globe out there. Why should black people be?
Speaker 3:stuck in America. I'd like to ask I mean, you know what I mean Like, ok, we did the cotton, for you know, I had a big thing of cotton behind me. Yes, yes, comes from a, a black owned um, what was a cotton plantation. This family, uh, generations later repurchased it and they grow cotton.
Speaker 1:I think I've heard of them. I think I've heard of them as well they, they, they, it's almost like it's I forget, it's like a cotton gold it's some imagery around the valley.
Speaker 3:They're in North Carolina. I didn't know they were in North Carolina. Yeah. So I mean we've done your cotton, we built your buildings. You know what I mean. It's like I can go now, yeah, yeah, I mean I, you know like, how do we become untethered to a country that really isn't my country?
Speaker 1:Yes, yes, you talked about James Baldwin and there's so many who in the, the, the, the, the, another time of extreme racism when they left and went to Europe. And, as you said, it's not like these things don't exist in other places, but sometimes it's just the idea of at least let it look a little different. You know what I mean. We know where this is cutting us. You know, let's just try something else, and knowing that we have the agency to pick ourselves up and go elsewhere, you know, just the empowerment of that is, in and of itself, something that we deserve know what I mean.
Speaker 3:Granting ourselves permissions to not have to have permissions. I mean, like you know, like, whose permission do I need other than my family? Do you know what I'm saying? To do? Uproot myself? Yes, it's a very, very notion of a nationalistic kind of presence that I have to have permission from.
Speaker 3:Yeah, those are kind of way about it, right, right, and slave my ancestors. Yes, you know, worth them here, unwillingly, so you know what? What are the permissions we also need to be untethered from, and and the systems and the people you know, and I think, when I think about you know, like that word, like I've heard a lot of Americans say well, I would like to leave, but we, you know, we have to stay here and fight for America. Yes, yes, what does that mean? Like, what does that translate into, though? Like, tell me, tell me what that looks like, because we've been doing it since we came out of the womb. It's fighting, yeah, not just for our own breath, but for everybody else's breath too, and that notion you're talking about, you know, black women again at this vortex of saving the world. I've never seen myself that way and I don't want to see myself that way to be honest with you?
Speaker 3:is that that? That's. That's not a responsibility I'm willing to take on, that. It's my responsibility as a black woman to save the world yes, it's, you know.
Speaker 2:It's this time to stand down. I mean at the age where we are, where you know, I'm 62 years old. At this point it's like one. What more do I have to prove to others and to myself? But two? As a human being, I'm tired.
Speaker 1:I get that, les, I feel it, I know it, I know it and I also know that there is such a sense of man, if not. That is why I'm excited when I saw how many black women got together whatever the number is, 40,000 black women on the call to, to in support of, of Kamala. That knowledge of our power allowed me to, to, to, to, to wake up with with a little more lightness today, because I believe in the power of Black women. Do you know what I mean?
Speaker 1:So, it's kind of this duality around the responsibility. But also I know that when we unite we win. So let's talk about that a little bit.
Speaker 3:Well, I, I hear where you're coming from and it's a beautiful thing that we're at this juncture to witness the power of black women. So my forecast is she will win. Obama want to. Yes, she cannot be more as a black female president. As a black female president, she will never be more than the entities, the cabinets, all the different branches. Then they will support her in doing so. This is what we forget. We can get us there, but it's more than her being, just like it was more than Obama being. He didn't become our president. He was the president of the United States. He couldn't do more for me and less for somebody over here correct, and I'm gonna say this.
Speaker 3:It'll probably annoy a lot of people, but politics is still politics, amen. Capitalism, industrialism, is driving this culture. That is the only thing. That's the only thing that's driving this culture. So, yes, I'm right there with all the sisters. The other part of that, though, is I don't believe, when we get her elected, we're going to save the world. Amen, I mean, yeah, I pray that she can get some things done, that she'll have a platform and that there will be people that would help her uplift and execute a platform that serves all the people of these United States in the best way. I will wait and see what happens yeah when she's elected.
Speaker 3:Yeah, but see that. See everything gets branded. Can we elect her? Yes, can we save the world?
Speaker 2:I hope, I hope we, you know and do we need to?
Speaker 3:I mean I took my tape off when I left the hospital earlier. What world are you? You know, it's kind of like what world are you talking about?
Speaker 1:Yes, yes. What world are you?
Speaker 3:talking about? Can we save the world?
Speaker 1:Is it worth saving? Is this the world? There is that.
Speaker 2:Yes, yes.
Speaker 3:Is this what we want to?
Speaker 2:preserve and save you know. There are people that say tear it all down.
Speaker 3:Yes, amen, preserve and save you know there are people that say, tear it all down. Yes, amen. I think that there is a lot of of beauty and power inside of the fire. Yeah, you know to to start over. To start over, do I had? Can I translate that into a vision? No, but I do believe that there is power and reformation and restoration and transformation. You know, we know, we all know, we all know that I guess this metaphor of you know, people, people burning off fields, just fabulous fields, and I could never understand. And then the next spring it's the most glorious, vibrant wildflowers you've ever seen in your life. And I get it. Sometimes we've got to burn the field.
