00:01:30.080And if you listened to our episode this week, then you heard me quote Dr. Magloire on those
00:01:34.440things. And now I have all the thrills of getting to meet a writer whose words and way of storytelling
00:01:39.740truly opened me up and taught me things. And I'm so honored. So thank you for being here.
00:01:46.260Thank you, Risa, for inviting me and for that beautiful introduction. I don't really have
00:01:51.540anything to add to that well so since we've just met and our listeners are cozying in with us
00:01:58.580wherever they are hopefully safe and cozy and they're getting to know you too I wondered if
00:02:05.420maybe you could just share a bit about you and what brought you to the work of spiritual history
00:02:11.860of black feminism and maybe just what kinds of ideas and questions are on your mind today
00:02:16.920well I think what brought me um to this subject I think was actually I mean it's actually a bit of a
00:02:27.600um I don't know if it's the most uplifting story but um what actually brought me to the subject
00:02:33.320was kind of like a sense of discomfort and alienation I guess was what with what is supposed
00:02:38.700to be my culture um I guess a bit of background on me um my mom is from Martinique um which is
00:02:46.660a French Caribbean island, still a colony of France. My dad is from Venezuela, but he's half
00:02:52.980Haitian and half French. So I just have a lot of Black diasporic French and anti-French, I guess,0.96
00:02:59.280like blood in my family. And because of the various migrations, forced migrations, consensual
00:03:09.460migrations to America, to Europe, et cetera, I, growing up, didn't, I didn't, you know, my parents
00:03:15.400were not voodoo practitioners of any kind or practitioners of any kind of Afro-diasporic
00:03:20.740magic. Nobody in my family does that. And as, you know, I started like learning about
00:03:28.420Afro-diasporic religion in graduate school, you know, I mean, I think there was this kind
00:03:34.620of assumption on the part of my professors or, you know, like classmates that this was
00:03:40.980my culture and that I had this completely unalienated relationship to it so I mean I guess
00:03:46.080just kind of I think a big theme throughout my research is like um people like me people who
00:03:51.560grew up in the U.S. um mostly is who I focus on um I focus on kind of black feminist histories by
00:03:59.140black American writers um them having this kind of same feeling as me like them traveling to Haiti
00:04:05.380um and thinking that it's going to be like kumbaya diasporic solidarity and then they get there and
00:04:10.820they're like, oh, wow, I have to learn this culture from scratch. And it's not to say that it's not
00:04:15.660their culture, but it's not an uncomplicated relationship either. No, that shit is not0.99
00:04:20.900uncomplicated. There's a lot of layers of violence and confusion and loss and all of that. And so1.00
00:04:28.040what are you writing about these days? What are you thinking about these days? These days, I'm
00:04:32.140thinking a lot about Lucille Clifton, who I know I've shared with you, Risa, some work that I've
00:04:38.740written about her I continue to be in touch with her eldest daughter Sydney who's starting an
00:04:44.700artist residency in Lucille Clifton's or I mean in the Clifton family's house that they lived in
00:04:50.260in Baltimore from 1969 to 1980 but they have like re-bought that house significantly after it was
00:04:58.300taken from them through foreclosure so the family has kind of reclaimed that house and that is a
00:05:03.980house where that is the house where Lucille Clifton kind of developed her spiritual practice
00:05:08.920as a medium starting with starting just kind of simply with a Ouija board and then kind of
00:05:14.040expanding out into automatic writing into past life regressions into these kind of like possession
00:05:19.660experiences as well and according to Sydney her daughter the house is kind of the only place where
00:05:27.240that practice happened so like it didn't happen before and it didn't happen after I mean
00:05:32.880um Sydney thinks that her mom just kind of developed a more direct spiritual channel
00:05:37.380um after moving after moving it's not to say that she didn't communicate with spirits anymore but
00:05:42.820that kind of tangible family practice it only happened in this house in Baltimore so I'm
00:05:47.240thinking a lot about the house on Talbot Road in Baltimore that the Cliftons used to live in
00:05:52.640have you spent time there no I haven't I just started this project during COVID actually and
00:06:00.640I haven't had that wild yeah I'd be interested to hear like how you feel when you're there
00:06:06.700especially when you're spending so much time with Lucille Clifton's writing is she there
00:06:12.040is she going to talk to you okay so then I need to know how you feel about being at this
00:06:16.080intersection of um spirituality and religion and you know we talk about witchcraft I don't
00:06:23.340know how you feel about that term and then like academia like how does that sit for you
00:06:27.400I mean, I think I'm definitely like part of a long tradition of, I don't know, I don't know if I fit squarely into this. There's a lot of practitioner academics, actually. I think M. Jackie Alexander, who like in Pedagogies of Crossing, you know, like straight up said in Pedagogies of Crossing, like I am co-writing, this book is ancestrally co-written.
00:06:48.500and that was very respected work that you know like even non-believers and non-practitioners
00:06:54.100took very seriously so I think that really opened the way for um that opened the way for a lot of
00:07:00.940practitioner academics I would not I don't know if I necessarily consider myself a practitioner
00:07:06.280academic not because I don't believe or don't have my own practice but because um I don't have
00:07:11.280a community I don't have a spiritual community yet um you know I know Mambo Mood's community
00:07:17.980um, in Boston actually has a lot of like academic, um, like practitioner, academic, um, black women
00:07:25.240who, um, all practice voodoo as part of this congregation. I don't know. So I feel, I feel0.92
00:07:30.980happy that I feel happy that there's precedent, um, but I didn't necessarily have to do the hard
00:07:37.300work of saying like, you know, like this is a valid field of study and all that, you know,
00:07:43.440or like the hard work of positioning myself as a black person you know because I think there's this
00:07:49.980way where um I think there's this way sometimes in academia where it's just assumed that you as
00:07:56.540a black person you know like believe things or I don't know like you that like I as a black person
00:08:04.140like believe things that I don't know like get to like get to believe I mean just like kind of the
00:08:10.600same I guess phenomenon that I described when I was in grad school and was learning about Haiti
00:08:16.380there's like this assumption that black academics just are part and parcel of like the people that
00:08:24.720they are studying sometimes in other countries or in other historical time periods so I don't know
00:08:31.080sorry that's like a long long tangled answer to that oh my gosh no I want all your tangents about
00:08:37.920that because I think so many people can relate to this anyway to the the feeling of being like
00:08:47.020what am what do what do we are what are we allowed to to talk about what what do I have access to and
00:08:52.780what communities can I can I let myself like kind of approach and feel a part of and like you know
00:08:59.220where do I get to have a spirituality if I don't have a community or you know and and people making
00:09:05.240assumptions about all of us, you know, and, and what, what that means about our faith and about
00:09:11.540what we're going to write about. Yeah. And that's my own like sort of blurry tangent.
00:09:17.380It's not super well thought out either. Oh my goodness. Oh yeah. No, no. I'm so glad. I mean,
00:09:23.460I still feel understood in this feeling for sure. Yeah. I mean, we talked to a lot of people who
00:09:30.040like maybe don't identify with the word witch but um or maybe they do but it's like very private
00:09:36.800or and a lot of people I interviewed somebody yesterday who is like a food historian um who's
00:09:43.740talking about like her her relationship to kind of being witchy as coming from like a fermentation
00:09:49.620practice like and working with food and how being like closer to food and closer to our experience
00:09:56.140with food is kind of a spirituality for her I love that I love that too oh well actually you
00:10:07.040know maybe that's maybe another that brings me to another thing I think about like why I hesitate
00:10:12.220necessarily to call myself a practitioner or I definitely would not call myself a witch just
00:10:19.340because I mean although I do you know like I definitely think even when people didn't chose
00:10:23.980not to use the word witch. I think there's definitely like really distinct traditions
00:10:27.920of like Afrodiasporic witchcraft. Like I don't like, you know, I don't not use the term witch
00:10:33.060for myself because I think that it's like for white people or whatever, like definitely0.94
00:10:37.600black people do the practices that are associated with witchcraft. But I think to me, I feel like
00:10:43.920what I know of Afrodiasporic witchcraft is about changing, manipulating, intervening in the physical1.00
00:10:51.880world, like, like your will having tangible effects in the physical world. And I don't know0.95
00:11:00.120if I have, if I have those kinds of gifts necessarily. So I don't know. So that, I mean,
00:11:07.700also, I mean, for the longest time, I just thought that I was very spiritually opaque or something
00:11:13.000like very spiritually dense, you know, like I definitely, I definitely respect and believe
00:11:17.760like everyone who's ever told me like about spirits communicating with them through a variety
00:11:22.940of channels but I'm just like I don't know if that's ever happened for me um but like kind of
00:11:27.960recently I started to think that um maybe spirits communicate with me in the way that I feel
00:11:34.700comfortable which is through archives and through books like I've definitely like yeah I mean yeah
00:11:42.900I've definitely gotten I have definitely read books where I have gotten like gotten like I feel
00:11:49.960like I've definitely read books where I have gotten such an expanded spiritual sense of the
00:11:55.160person behind them that it seems like you know not everybody gets from that book I guess it feels
00:12:02.540like some kind of like special insight that I've gotten either from an archive or from a book that
00:12:08.220you know I know other people have visited those archives and read those books but nobody has ever
00:12:12.360it doesn't seem like anybody has ever like felt that person's presence in the way that I do
00:12:17.860but maybe that's maybe that's egotistical to say I don't know maybe that's narcissistic to say1.00
00:12:24.220well first of all we fucking love arrogance in a woman it's one of the1.00
00:12:28.860like quotes from from one of the first witches we wrote we wrote about0.98
00:12:33.400love that but oh my god yeah I lit up when you're describing that like I totally relate to that
00:12:39.940that way of experiencing a spirit or ancestors or or ghosts or voices or whatever like for me
00:12:48.580it was very clear like I was not comfortable with them with whatever that feeling was I was
00:12:53.620not comfortable with that feeling of like uh that that like I could be intruded upon or seeing a
00:12:59.500ghost so that was a very clear hard pass for me you know I don't want that and so then I felt like
00:13:05.300those experiences maybe became more accessible to me in, in reading and writing. And you definitely
00:13:11.460changed the material world with your writing, I would say. And I think, you know, Clifton does as
00:13:16.700well. Oh, thank you. Yeah. That's a speech more than a question though. Sorry.
00:13:28.580Well, I, I, I hope so because I mean, as much as, as much as I feel like, you know, as much as I feel
00:13:34.920like maybe with some regret that I, I don't often feel like I changed the material world. I do feel
00:13:40.460that the material world is so important, you know, just like the space of this house that
00:13:45.580Lucille Clifton was, was creating this spiritual practice in, or like the space of, you know,
00:13:51.340I'm the kind of person who like, if I study someone, if I study like a forgotten black woman,0.53
00:13:56.700writer, artist, performer, I will, I will literally go to their grave. I will literally0.88
00:14:02.600hang around where they lived even if it's a parking lot now or whatever um and even you know
00:14:09.840like sometimes you know like when I've lived near cemeteries and when I was in grad school
00:14:15.740in Durham North Carolina I used to live right across the street from a cemetery uh and it was
00:14:21.540uh it was a black cemetery under segregation and it was just in complete disrepair it was like
00:14:26.240it was kind of like woods it was basically woods with kind of like little tombstones covered in
00:14:31.660leaves that like you would occasionally see if somebody would come leap low but otherwise they
00:14:35.840were just buried in leaves um and the tombstones were like cracking and falling over and stuff
00:14:41.060but there was there was one grave of this woman called Hallie Mae Meadows she lived from 1902 to
00:14:48.4401919 I'm assuming maybe she died of um the influenza pandemic in 1919 and her headstone
00:14:56.080just said gone so soon um in very like faded writing and Hallie Mae was like I don't know I
00:15:02.360mean I still I still think about Hallie Mae I don't know I don't know what exactly she was trying to
00:15:07.380tell me but she was somebody who you know she was somebody I would visit time and time again I mean
00:15:13.400she and she was somebody who like it was like a neighbor or something she was literally right
00:15:18.140across the street from my house and you know I would celebrate her birthday celebrate her death
00:15:23.180day leave her little things every once in a while and although I don't know if I ever saw like I
00:15:29.060don't know if there was ever some clear sign in my life of Hallie Mae responding or saying thank you
00:15:34.480or something um I it's hard sometimes to feel like I simultaneously can't influence the physical world
00:15:41.860But I get this kind of indefinable feeling being being in a place where someone who has passed but is significant to me for whatever reason has been.
00:15:56.780Yeah, there's something to that idea about being changed or lit up or possessed by partially by like the bits of the story that we get from them and partially by our own imagination, you know, which is an incredibly powerful spirit in and of itself.