Good Life Project - A Life of Activism and Writing | Jamia Wilson

Episode Date: February 20, 2020

Jamia Wilson is an activist, writer, and speaker. As director of The Feminist Press at the City University of New York and the former VP of programs at the Women’s Media Center, Wilson has been a leading voice on women’s rights issues for over a decade. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, Elle, BBC, Rookie, Refinery 29, The Washington Post and more. She is the author of numerous books, including Young, Gifted, and Black, Step Into Your Power: 23 Lessons on How to Live Your Best Life, Big Ideas for Young Thinkers, and the co-author of Roadmap for Revolutionaries: Resistance, Advocacy, and Activism for All.You can find Jamia Wilson at: Website |Instagram-------------Have you discovered your Sparketype yet? Take the Sparketype Assessment™ now. IT’S FREE (https://sparketype.com/) and takes about 7-minutes to complete. At a minimum, it’ll open your eyes in a big way. It also just might change your life.If you enjoyed the show, please share it with a friend. Thank you to our super cool brand partners. If you like the show, please support them - they help make the podcast possible. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

My guest today, Jamia Wilson, she's an activist, writer, speaker, born in the U.S. She then spent a large part of her youth in Saudi Arabia before returning to attend high school and then college back in the States, and then launched a really powerful career in writing, editing, and advocacy. Now, as the director of the Feminist Press at the City University of New York, which is this kind of legendary institution, and the former VP of Programs at the Women's Media Center, she's kind of become a leading voice on women's rights issues for over a decade. Her work has appeared in so many different places

from New York Times, Today Show, CNN, Elle, BBC, Rookie, Refinery29, just too many places to list. Jamia is also the author of a whole bunch of books, Young, Gifted, and Black, The Introduction, and Oral History, and Together We Rise, Behind the Scenes, At the Protest Turnaround the World, Step Into Your Power, 23 Lessons on How to Live Your Best Life, and so many others. And she's also the co-author for Roadmap for Revolutionaries, Resistance, Advocacy, and Activism. She's just an incredible, big-hearted, fiercely committed, intelligent human being on a mission to give voice to ideas and communities and also step more fully into her own creative

journey in her quest to become fully expressed. So excited to share this conversation with you. I'm Jonathan Fields, and this is Good Life Project. The Apple Watch Series 10 is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch Series X is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping.

And it's the fastest-charging Apple Watch, getting you eight hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series X. Available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone XS or later required. Charge time and actual results will vary. Mayday, mayday.

We've been compromised. The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were gonna be fun. January 24th. Tell me how to fly this thing. Mark Wahlberg. You know what the difference between me and you is? You're gonna die. Don't shoot him. We need him. Y'all need a pilot. So you grew up in Columbia, South Carolina or somewhere around there.

Right. Or first four, five, six years. Yeah. So it's like your family, you were sort of introduced to the world of being socially conscious that there's a history in your parents, like your mom, your grandparents, that really was just a part of the DNA of your family and who you are and what you're about from a really young age. Definitely. I mean, I've been thinking about it a lot because so much has changed in that side of the family over the past year. My mom passed away last year on Christmas. And then right before she passed away, one of her uncles who was out of that 10, they were 10, is still alive at 85. And I called him, and it just really struck me that I thought,

oh, this is an era, right? And what does this mean also for me, always being influenced by being a part of this very large extended family unit and passing down a lot of ideals and values about faith and movements and community. But what does it mean now when the elders are passing on and becoming ancestors and you are here now realizing, oh, you're the age where they were and you will be the age where they are, and your role shifts as it relates to the next generation. And so I'm just really thinking about that a lot right now. Yeah, it's sort of like your place in the lineage of family and everybody like that. It's funny because I wonder if it's because I'll be 40 next year,

and that feels like something. I'm trying to figure out what it feels like. And I don't feel whatever 40 is supposed to feel like from what the media tells me. But I'm just thinking a lot about the reflective times and what do these transition points mean in the Kronos time, I guess, that we're in on Earth versus kind of like the Kairos time, I think it is, the Sol time, that kind of thing. So yeah, it does feel like something's brewing. And I just feel like the culture and the politics and everything that's happening now, you feel, and I feel like I'm a part of something that's going to shape history. And that's interesting to be reflecting on too.

Yeah, I feel like there's this really interesting blend of wanting to take time to really understand what's going on, not just a surface level, but a much more nuanced level. And at the same time, there's an urgency. And they kind of, they dance with each other often in an uncomfortable way. Oh my gosh. It's so interesting because I'm now coming to these moments in my life where I realize, oh, okay, the reason you know that you're turning 40 is because you feel it it's different I need my sleep in ways that I might not have needed them in my 20s I need my time just for inward connection my bonds with family who I know are getting older the way I relate to that time is different. And so that idea about the urgency too, personally just feels really interesting in which I want to pause and I want more time to pause. And I feel like the time is moving so quickly and that everything's urgent at the same time.

And I yearn for spaciousness, but I also am impatient for the kind of change I want to see in the world. So it is kind of disorienting. Yeah. It's like you've got to hold these two things simultaneously and try and find your comfort zone, although it's never quite comfortable. You shared that your mom passed about a year ago. And I know you were super close with her. And she was also, I mean, she had this very long tradition as a civil rights activist as well. It sounds like that was also something that was her feelings, her beliefs, and her actions were something that was shared with you at a very early time in life. Oh, yes. My mom was the absolute best. I think of her every moment, every nanosecond. I mean, she was just so beautiful beautiful and she's now a beautiful spirit.

But she's just someone who one of her friends recently described her in a text to me kind of understanding that Christmas Day when my mom passed was coming and my mom's birthday was in December. So I've been getting a lot of messages now from folks. And someone said, yeah, we miss her kind elegance. And she had that and she was strong and she was very visionary and strategic a political animal but always just uh always mindful but also always fierce and just watching her being hearing her walk her talk and seeing that had a great deal of impact on me. And just seeing her never be afraid to be the first at something, never be afraid to lead, never be afraid of what other people thought about her doing something different or shining more brightly than they thought she should or speaking up when they would have rathered for her to be quiet. The fact that she could do it, the fact that she could roll it off, something I very much admired.

And the fact that she was an empath also, and I find that knowing that that's something that I'm really trying to reconcile, that those things that some people in my life have made me feel are not my strengths or actually my great strengths, I get them from her. And she always cultivated that in me. Her big concern was that she didn't want me to emulate her too much. So when I started dedicating books to her and things like that, she would always say, oh, put other people in the dedication with me if you insist on doing that. That she very much wanted me to feel like I am, I was, I am my own person. And that she's my mom and we're glad that we chose each other in this life.

But also that she knew I came here to do what, from our spiritual belief, what God sent me here to do. So I think that that was an always present too in terms of her social values and how she approached my activism. She'd say, don't do it because it's what I did, but here's the reason why we did it. And if that aligns with your values, then that's what you should do. But you've always got to do you, even if that means that you disagree with me or your dad or your grandparents or your teachers or other authority figures. Yeah. What a powerful way to model strength at such a young age also. And not just strength, but also respect for individuality. Those two things, I mean, I think it's, we struggle, so many people struggle with those

two things in all the years of life, let alone having a sense of the importance of those two at the youngest age and coming from your parents, where very often it's in the name of your parents that you feel you need to subjugate both. Yeah, it's really, it's so interesting because I feel like I never felt like I had to be anyone but myself, even though my parents were demanding, you know, they had a high bar for what they saw as excellence because of what they had to go through. I think there was a level of hypervigilance around me needing to do well in school. So that would be the place, you know, that and with religion, making sure to say, hey, you can choose whatever path you want to go, but this is a family in which we are deeply spiritual, we are deeply faithful, and while you live here, you're going to study this faith

and you're going to do the things that this faith says that you should do to live, and then you can make your decisions when you don't live here. And so that was also that was a true element too but I think that my mom was always sort of open to knowing that I was I was gonna go and do what I was sent here to do no matter what and I think that my dad would be more the one who would try to impose more of an order around that. But I think it's also because he was the son of a single mom who had eight kids to raise. And he found a lot of solace in the structures of school institutions, the structures of the church and dogma, whereas the way that I kind of approach spirituality is less liturgical, even though I'm also interested in that. So I think that they did, they kind of said, okay, we want to give you these tools. We want to give

you these exposures, but we kind of know you're going to do whatever. And my dad still says it now that he'll say, you know, I try to get you to do this, or I try to get you to do that, but you're your mother's daughter and you're you to do this or I try to get you to do that, but you're your mother's daughter and you're going to do what you're going to do. And I've always, I think when I was younger too, I think I might've taken it for granted a little bit because I didn't realize that a lot of people who, when they are parented, don't have the freedom to talk to their parents about anything. And that was not something that I experienced. That if it was really important, I could always go to my parents about anything. Yeah, that's amazing. I've heard you share also that when your mom passed, the time around that

and the way that you experienced it, that you came away from it. And I won't get the language properly, but I know essentially saying that you no longer fear death, which I'm curious about. It's been really strange for me because I felt kind of obsessive about fearing it when I was super young, when they told me about it, when I think they first had to explain to me why something died and what it was. And then I found a poem on my parents' fridge last time I was home with my dad that was about how much I loved my mom and dad and how I acknowledged that all things die. It must have been when they taught me about it and they kept it. A poem that you'd written as a kid.

As a kid. And I'd colored little pictures of them and had drawn myself in a Girl Scout uniform on this picture. But that I said, yeah, that things die, that I actually had the line in there that things die. And I was thinking about that because I thought, oh, my journey around this has shifted tremendously. And I think I spent a lot of time worrying about what would happen if my parents died because I had a deep family unit as an only child and we were always three and my parents were married almost 50 years. And so we were, as one of my parents' students had said, that we were always a heartbeat away from each other. And I always worried about that. Like, oh, if we have to go, we should all go at once. That's kind of what I would think about.

And my mom always was someone who talked about what would happen if I died. You need to know. These are the things I'd want you to do. And her mom was like that. So I think that's why I feared it initially, actually, because they were so different than what our culture is like in the broader US culture about how they talked about death. But my mother felt as if, and her mother felt the same, that it's something that everyone goes through and you have to know what to do. And so even though we were horrified, traumatized, terrible to see her pass and the brutality of seeing someone pass from

cancer and hospice and all of that. But then, and on Christmas, as soon as I went down and we saw her and had the experiences we had, I knew exactly what to do. I got the scarf that she said, if when I pass, wrap me in that burnt orange scarf because that was our mutual favorite color. And I just thought about how I just started doing the things that she wanted to do and what a gift that was, even though it was difficult. And I've been able to do that throughout my grief journey, which I'm early on. But I'm doing that now and I'll be doing that on our first anniversary of her death too. We're going to be commemorating her life by going on a trip to Antigua, a place where my mom always wanted to travel with us and we'll be putting her ashes into the ocean. Yeah, it's beautiful.

You were born in South Carolina and spent your early years there. But around five or six, the family moved to Saudi Arabia. They did. Tell me about this. Yeah. So most of my most vivid memories come from, you know, maybe a year or two before we went to Saudi Arabia, my most vivid early memories and then Saudi Arabia, all of that in full color, because

it was just such an adventure to go there. And I remember needing to be informed about where that was and how did that relate to the small town, the college town, the historically black university that my parents taught at, how did this relate to Saudi Arabia? And it was initially going to be a sort of sabbatical experience that my dad was going to do. He went for a year. Oh, no kidding. So it was supposed to be short term originally. And he went and taught at King Saud University. And they said, we really want to build out this department in speech language pathology and speech science.

My parents were in those fields and we need a project development person who can really understand how you can deal with different communities with communications disorders and who understands autism. And he said, well, you really need my wife because we've worked on these really cool projects in South Carolina with people who speak the Gullah dialect. And we've done these awesome things that we've been able to get support to do. And we're adventurous enough to kind of go where other people won't go. And the tricky part about saying, oh, you need my wife in Saudi Arabia at that time was an adventure from what I've heard from both of my parents. But, you know, my mom was a feminist and was also saying, hey, if I'm coming over, I'm going to have a contract like he has. I'm going to make sure that he signs documents that gives me the rights to travel

and the rights to move without guardianship and all of those things that Saudi women face. And she refused to have to teach male students behind a barrier, which was one of the things I heard was initially proposed to her. But she also recognized that she wanted to be respectful of the culture as well in ways that weren't going to be dehumanizing too, and wanted to learn about the culture and the language. And so just by seeing my parents kind of take that adventure on and bring me there with an open mind and heart, but also really a value for the country and a value for meeting people and getting to know Saudis and living in our first years there in a community that wasn't just Westerners, but also people from

all over the world, expats from all over the world in the global South and Saudis. That has shaped me. It'll never leave me. And I'm still really close with so many of the people that I grew up with. I mean, it's amazing also to have the experience of going there, having your mom, who's a fierce feminist, existing in a culture, which may have some values, which are profoundly different, but also like participating in a way where it's sort of like i'm saying yes but i'm bringing my values with me and and like certain it's almost like certain boxes will have to be checked for this

all to be okay but but at the same time wanting to figure out how to navigate that line of being culturally sensitive while contributing what i'm here to contribute and also really staying true to my values and beliefs and what I really hold dear. Did you, as a young kid then, did you feel like you had to navigate things similarly or not so much? Yes and no. I think as I became older,

so I observed a lot of things about the lives of women when I was young that I think very much shaped the feminist work I do now. And there were things I didn't like, like at the time my dad could go into a music shop sometimes that would say men only, and I'd have to stand outside. And I'd often say, oh, I don't know why you're standing for this because you both have told me stories about how you fought this very same dynamic in the South when you all had to drink out of different water fountains or couldn't go to the bathroom at a restaurant. You had to go somewhere else, that kind of thing. memories of questioning that and memories of having to ride once in the back of the bus as women and my dad at the front of the bus and thinking, wow, you all have had to live this twice in these different ways. And yet it also explained to me how my parents could go to a place where there were some dynamics that might not align with them and also be able to make their way and be their way and help grow things too

and be there to contribute in the way that they came but also to maintain their own values and their own dignity and I saw that a lot I saw that when my mom was street harassed once in front of me by a man who propositioned her on the street and it was before I had the language of street harassment and I've written about this but it really struck me and her having to very matter-of-factly explain to me why this man would approach her in such a way and I have thought a lot about just also when I had my own click moment of when it was happening to me because it is such a culture there that children are very valued and that was something I loved. Children are very valued and I noticed that the minute that I started to look less like a child

and more like a woman, there were dynamics that I had to face and there would be things like customs officials saying, oh, she looks like she has her period. Shouldn't she be dressed more modestly? And to have grown men saying that about you with your dad, discussing that as if you're invisible. And I thought, oh, okay, this is going to be more where this comes from. And it's going to get worse now that I'm a woman. Not to say that girls are not also imperiled, but to just say that there was a lot. But it's also, there's another flip side to it too, because Saudi Arabia actually has laws against street harassment. So I also like to

tell people it's nuanced because, you know, I'll never condone human rights abuses but i also think that we have to really look at the human rights abuses here too and we have to also look at the places in which saudis have some policies that we could benefit from like some of the ways in which charity is embedded in their banking system so i i think i learned to have an appreciation for nuance being there not to ever overlook or to rationalize, but to understand why nuance exists, I guess. Yeah, it's easy to sort of, I think we all try and find the binary

because it just makes things easier. You know, if there's a clear yes and a clear no, it's just easier to live that way. But rare is the chance, you know, where human beings are involved where it's binary, where, you know, it's just one or the other. I think especially, we live in a world of such complexity and nuance that it's almost like I feel like the skill set that's going to be most needed as we move into sort of like the next season of society

is the ability to live in a space of complexity and nuance and figure out how to find some level of ease without ever really having clear binary options. And at the same time, sort of like you said, without necessarily, that doesn't mean surrendering your convictions and what you truly believe in. Oh, absolutely. I mean, I was thinking about it because I had a trusted adult in my life who was a teacher at my school growing up in Saudi Arabia

who I stayed in touch with. I just adore him and his family so much. And he said, you know, I want to go take you out one day and talk. There's something I've been meaning to tell you about me and my life. And I kept wondering what it was because I thought, oh, you know, he's so wonderful. I wonder what it is. And his family's wonderful. And he said, you know, because now you're someone I consider a friend and we've, we're no longer in Saudi Arabia without the nuances of the political climate there

and the dynamics about religion and everything. He said, I really want you to know that I'm a New York Jew who was living in Saudi Arabia. My wife wanted to go there at that time. I couldn't put that on my documents based on Saudi Arabia's relationship with Israel. And I put my wife's religion on my documents. And I just felt that you should know. And it was such an interesting conversation because I said, this helps me understand so much more about why I like you and why we get along so much about the ways that we look at spirituality, the ways we looked at intellectual inquiry in terms of how he would talk about the world and social movements and things that helped me understand that. Because I know that some of

my mom's closest friends who weren't black in South Carolina when she was in the civil rights movement and in college were often Jewish people who were experiencing their own discrimination in that context. So it was really funny to me because. I just felt like I'd always known, but I didn't know. And that was just a real lesson for me too, about also the fact that, you know, he knew that I would never care, that it would never make anything different between us, that I'd love it, but that he felt like he wanted me to see all the complexities of him. And the thing that made me most sad was that he had to ever experience many years of not being able to tell people in his life who loved him the fullness of him. And so a few years ago, I saw on Facebook him posting a picture of one of that now you're in a time in the world where something like religion would be something and especially I mean thinking about him and his religion and then

having to hide it knowing the history of what it meant for Jews to have to hide it I think there was something there that I really just have always wanted to talk with him even more deeply about, you know? But yet again, I really understand his empathy. I really understand his support for civil rights, for people of color. Yeah, it's just the complexity is the nuance, right? And I'm glad that we were able to get to such a deep relationship of correspondence for many years because he was living all over the world after that and me, other places, different ages. And keeping in touch where he said, you know, I just I really want you to really know about me. That's great. Yeah.

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Tell me how to fly this thing. Mark Wahlberg. You know what the difference between me and you is? You're going to die. Don't shoot him. We need him. Y'all need a pilot. You didn't stay in Saudi Arabia, though. You end up back in Maryland for, I guess, most of high school, right? Yeah, from 10th grade to senior year, I was at St. Timothy's School.

Which is an all-girls school. All-girls school in Maryland. It's a school started by blue-stocking feminists from the Episcopalian Diocese. And it started in 1881. First black student to go there came in the late 60s. And I found out early this year that the award that I won as a senior, the Nanette Bailey Award, was actually given to the school and named for her. She died around the time my mom died. And the school had their first Black History Month alumni panel this year. School where when I went there, I was one of 12 black students. Now the school is about 50%

people of color. And I got to meet Nanette's family and it was amazing. So I'm now on the board of governors at St. Timothy's and it feels like a full circle also because although I was going back to Saudi Arabia during high school holidays and things I was technically an international student although I was American uh St. Tim's was a really important place for me and I loved it and I loved to complain about it too when I was there and all of it and now I feel even deeper in my connection to St. Tim's knowing that although Nanette went there in the 60s and she was kind of chosen as the one black girl who was, I think they said the colored girl, the thing I read, who would be integrating the school because she'd been selected to go, that she ended up becoming an editor for a socialist publication. She ended up becoming a part of the women's liberation movement, went to Brown, was doing

all sorts of amazing progressive work throughout her life. And I just chuckled when I thought, wow, they gave me this award in 1998. And then here we are a decade later and she transitions and my mom transitions. Then I find out that I'm not so different from this woman who also, by the way, grew up as an expat. She spoke fluent French because she lived abroad. Full circle moment. Yes. I mean, it must have been so interesting for you too, because early, early days, you're in South Carolina. Then you spent about a decade in Saudi. Then you come back to Maryland. So it's like you're jumping from culture to culture and then back to the US, but in a very different environment, a very different culture, a very different set of expectations.

And almost like having to keep relearning. Okay, so where is my place in the order of things here and now and in this moment with what this is and with who I am, you know, like in this particular window? It's so interesting. I feel like kind of like what you said about the struggle between really liking spaciousness and also wanting urgency. I feel the same about sometimes craving roots and also wanting freedom. As I ponder whether or not I'm going to have children, that's a big thing heavy on my mind because I'm actually, my friends all think's a big thing heavy on my mind because I'm

actually, my friends all think it's kind of nuts because they're saying, you know, you don't have that much time. You need to figure this out. But yet there's this thing where I say, well, there's part of me that wants to have this freedom that is provided by having the time and spaciousness to go wherever I need to go when I need to go. And the itchy feet of growing up sort of on the road. And there's another part of me that because of moving often in my life and having to readapt and reinvent and all of that, wanting to root myself. And I think a kid is a symbol of that to me. So I'm just thinking a lot about that right now. And I'm thinking also about how I can have both elements in my life, the nuance, what it would mean to have a kid that I could take on the go.

Because that's what my parents did. They took me all sorts of places people didn't think I should have been, including Saudi Arabia. Yeah, I mean, you have the model. It's sort of like, okay, at least I don't have to entirely make it up if I decide to go down this path. Oh my gosh. It's so true. I mean, I think about it now and I'm kind of like, wow, I don't know that I would do some of the things that they did. And yet I love them for it. So you know I had a doctor ask me that not far from here maybe a couple blocks away he said why would they ever take a girl's child to Saudi Arabia and I said well one might ask why they might have a black child in America

and yet we're here we prevailed and so I'm thinking a lot about that too, about kind of my own misgivings about, should I be rooted? Should I fly free? And thinking, okay, whichever one I choose, I'm going to figure it out. Yeah. And maybe it's actually a yes and. Maybe it's not a true dichotomy. The binary, right? Right, right.

We keep going back to that place. Exactly. From there, I mean, it sounds like a lot of clearly strong roots in social justice, a sense of fairness and feminism in the early days, but also sounds like St. Tim's was where a lot of that really became much more alive and central to sort of like who you were and what you were about. Yes, St. Tim's. Oh my goodness. I mean, especially now, I never would have thought that they would have ever let me near this board of governors when I was at St. Tim's, you know, I was on the Amnesty International Club.

I was co-head of the Black Student Union, all of these things. I mean, and that was controversial because there were some parents who wanted it to be Black Awareness Club and not Black Student Union. And there was concern about too many white girls joining the club, which we loved because it was important to say, yeah, these, I mean, we didn't have the language of Black Lives Matter then. But that's what it was about. And I just loved it there because there was academic rigor that you get in an independent school environment. But it was so small when I was there too.

There were only 22 girls in my class. And I know each and every one of them. I could tell you all their favorite foods. I could tell you where they're from and how many siblings they have and whether or not they're close to their parents, you know, all those things. And they know all those things about me. And so it was a really special place that taught me a lot about relationship and collaboration and spirit. And I learned how to stand on my own there, too, because there weren't a lot of people like me, because I was a black woman there who was American, but I didn't grow up similarly to some of the day students from Baltimore.

And I remember, I remember one woman telling me once, and she said, I really tried not to like you because I had these thoughts about you coming from Saudi Arabia and that you must be extremely privileged and that maybe you'd have more in common than the white girls than you would have with me being here on scholarship and coming from a neighborhood where she was really care whether or not we were going to let you in intrigued me and that was truly black and I remember laughing about that because I said yeah you know my parents were you know very truly black all the time in that way because they grew up I mean I think that's a big part of blackness is kind of, you know, when I think of like the political identity of blackness, I own it and I own its beauty no matter what society tells me about myself that I know that I come from a lineage to be proud of and I respect it and the earliest lineage. So I think that was a really important moment for me that didn't happen in the classroom, but kind of

helped me see how I was going to be there saying yeah you've moved around a lot and you can be a chameleon in the sense that you can adapt but you stay constant you're the compass you still are your own north star and so I'm just kind of myself and that is a good thing some places and sometimes it rubs people a whole lot of the wrong ways. But I've learned for myself that it's how I want to be because life is so short. And I think what I've gone through with losing my mom has also shown me that, that my mom was 100% who she was and authentic. Nobody could ever say that she was not. And same with my dad. And so I think about that a lot, that when I went to St. Tim's, I got to try that out without having a safety net because I was here from age, how old was I there? I think I was 14 and a half when I started there by myself. It was boarding school, right? It was boarding school. So you're on your own. I'm on my own. My parents live like across the world. And they give you a roommate who you don't know, who I love.

And yeah, I just had to figure it out. Yeah. I mean, it seems like something that would have touched down around then also, which you kind of referenced, which has become a bigger and bigger part of the conversation culturally over the last five years, is this kind of like the distinction between allyship, advocacy, and activism. And when you're talking about this notion of, well, we start the Black Student Union, first of all, we call it, and then that these white girls want to start joining. It's like, okay, so yes. And what are the sort of like relative roles that we each play in the conversation, in the level of action taking and support based on both what we believe and where we come from. And that conversation, this sort of like three different ways to participate, I think that has been a consistent part of your conversation, your life's work. And the bigger Zyka is the conversation that's been going on in a huge way lately.

Thanks. I feel like I, and that's like student union context. I learned a great deal because I remember thinking, wow, we're only 15 and yet we're having to grapple with these ideas that the adults haven't figured out yet. And one of the things that we did was that one of my roommates who was a white woman who cared a lot about these issues, but also recognized that, you know, she could have her voice heard a lot in the school environment based on her privilege and her family's access and things, was the co-student union head and would come to everything with me in a show of solidarity. And that really helped us advocate a lot. So it taught me a lot about strategy and solidarity.

It taught me a lot about allyship. She said, these are my community, these are my people and this is what I see happening. And she could sometimes say that with different outcomes than maybe if I said it, or I would say sometimes because if I had economic privilege that other people who might have been on scholarship didn't have, I would be the one to speak out because I knew that I didn't have an institutional connection to my being there if there was some issue about speaking out. And I think those were really important things to learn early on because I didn't have words like coalition building to understand, but I really believe in coalitions.

And I have learned a great deal from people like Bernice Johnson Reagan, you know, from the civil rights movement, from early second wave Black feminist movements as well. But I think just having to practice that and being in these diverse environments, school with 57 nationalities in Saudi Arabia, I believe, and then going to a school where there were a lot of different international students, not so many black students and kind of thinking, okay, here's our opportunity to make sure that our voices are heard and to speak truth to power based on the values of this school. So I think it's also was an education for me to

find other allies who you might, because of the binaries we're taught, not expect to be your allies. So I remember there was a group of Jewish girls who went to our school and some of them were saying, you know, we respect that this is a Christian school in terms of its origins, but we are expected to stand during these hymns. And why is that? And we want to have a group where we can talk about the interests of Jews who attend this institution. So they came to me as the head of the Black Student Union. I remember at the time thinking, okay, what are we going to do? And then there were some queer students at that time saying, hey, we need to have our voice. And they came to me and the Black Student Union and my co-head,

and we went and the school was saying, oh, well, maybe we should start a diversity club, but then we shouldn't have the diversity. We shouldn't have these other groups. And I remember, and I'm proud of my younger self then thinking, no, it's not that we erase. We have a diversity club coalition and each of us have our affinity groups within them so that we can work on the things that serve our collective highest interest

and also support each other as we need, as we know what our communities need. And that was controversial because of the same reasons we hear there's controversialness in people's minds about affinity groups that people say, oh, well, that's divisive. Or if you name that race is a conversation that that people say, oh, well, that's divisive. Or if you name that race is a

conversation that makes people uncomfortable, then that somehow is racist, right? When in actuality, if you pretend to be blind to the realities of the illusion of race kind of shaping all of our systems, then more harm is done because you can't address the problem. If you can't call it out, you can't really shift it or transform it. So I got to learn a lot in high school doing that. And then I was really jazzed up to take those skills to American University, in which I joined every single club I could be a part of. And that led to internships at Progressive Orgs, which then led to me working at Progressive Orgs. And so I think it was just always something that I didn't have a

word for. And then my cousin one day just said, oh, you know, sometimes I think you feel outsider, but what you really are is a bridge. And I've just thought a lot about that in the years since and embracing it more. Yeah. From your time in American, then NYU, then in sort of like a series of organizations to where you've landed now at CUNY Feminist Press. I want to talk about some of that work, but also one of the big coming through lines is through all of this is you writing. And I was surprised to discover that, and I guess you were surprised to discover that actually you wrote your first book when you were five years old. Yes. My mom, she saved it for me.

I mean, just a few years ago, she gave it to me as a Christmas present when she knew Young, Gifted, and Black was going to come out, which was my first children's book. And in the book, and I actually was really, it showed me that I was always a lover of beauty. So if you believe in astrology, I'm a Libra through and through. I'm a full-on Libra. And I had tied ribbons around it and bound the book myself, and it was beautiful. And, you know, kind of worn enough, not perfect enough, because that's the kind of beauty I like. Something's got to be a little off. Something's got to be a little quirky.

But she had saved that. She said, I was always going to keep this for you for when you published your first book. She knew even then. She knew knew she said she always knew and i whenever i miss my mom now which is all the time i go to my bookshelf and i will pick a random book and often it's a book in which she has written something to me in it and my parents home is full of those too and also for other people in her life like my dad and my mom's sister and her mom she She just would write into books, but often for the ones for me, it would say, think, ponder, reflect, write.

How is this going to affect your writing? And so now I look back at it and I think, wow, she knew. And she was a great writer. I wish she had been able to publish her book. She had wanted to publish a memoir. And then we wanted to do a great writer. I wish she had been able to publish her book. She had wanted to publish a memoir. And then we wanted to do a book together. But I'm going to, I know one day I'm going to do a book for her.

I mean, many of my books are for her, but. Yeah. The Apple Watch Series 10 is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch Series X is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest-charging Apple Watch,

getting you eight hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series X. Available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone XS or later required. Charge time and actual results will vary. Mayday, mayday. We've been compromised. The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were gonna be fun.

On January 24th. Tell me how to fly this thing. Mark Wahlberg. You know what the difference between me and you is? You're gonna die. Don't shoot him, we need him! Y'all need a pilot? Flight Risk.

The, I mean, you came out, you've been, it seems like you've sort of had this model where you've got your full-time jam. Yes. Which is strongly rooted in advocacy

and publishing and feminism. So, so like that is the central focus. And at the same time, you've always had substantial, either writing gigs on the side, whether it's for The Times or for Rookie or for WAPO, whatever it may be. And you've kind of had these sort of like two things weaving in and out of each other, where I would imagine they inform each other in really meaningful ways. And then like you shared, at some point you're like, no, now it's time to actually go bigger and start writing books.

Young, Gifted, and Black being the first one. Which, by the way, the minute I saw the title, so I'm a kid of the late 70s. So I grew up in a household where Nina Simone was on 24-7. That was the soundtrack of my childhood. So the minute I saw that, I literally, sitting here now, I can't say Young, Gifted, and Black without hearing her voice in my head singing it. Because it's just such a powerful part of my own sort of history. It's just knowing knowing that seeing the family dance around to that and Baltimore and like, oh, this is just amazing, amazing. You know,

I learned at a very young age that she was a high priestess of soul. So I loved seeing that. What was it that made you feel like this is a book, this is the thing that I actually want to devote myself to, to make the jump from writing articles, writing pieces to saying, okay, this needs to actually be a book. So when Corto, a publisher for this beautiful series, approached me, I had already had in my vision board, I had, you know, all in in my diaries I've always been a diarist and I've always had vision boards I'm believe in manifesting I believe in kind of setting intentions I'm a list maker and I'd always said I want to write a children's book just one before I die that's what I'm going to do so when quarto said oh we're looking for an author

who would want to write a book about these luminaries around the world, not just a US-centric book, but a book that would focus on Black luminaries and how their youth informed their adulthood greatness. And, oh, by the way, we want to work with this artist, Andrea Pippins, who I had known from the interwebs and had all these mutual friends with. I said, 100% yes. And Andrea and I had connected years before because she had interviewed me for her blog, the Fly Girl blog that she had. So I just knew everything about this consciousness also. But I was really interested in her as a study of sort of the body as a border and moving through the nuances of different identities from an expat black American experience. And to look at someone else's life to help me understand a little bit more about how black women like myself take ourselves up in the world. And also my mom was from this town in upstate South Carolina

that is very close to Tryon, North Carolina, where Nina Simone is from. And my mom had met Nina Simone when she was younger. My mom was at a friend's party and she had said that Nina Simone had taken off her wig to almost kind of scare her or something like that in a menacing way. And then she laughed and greeted her, which sounded very much like Mina Simone and that my mom loved that experience and just found her very fierce and fabulous. And so I had had a fascination with her too. So with all of that coming together and then also thinking, wow, this is really the book that I needed when I was younger. And Andrea saying, I needed this book when I was younger.

It had to be done. And we had no idea that it was going to lead to us doing a second book and a third book now. And I'm doing another book with Corto. That's not a part of this series, but it's for younger readers that'll come out 2021 about feminism. And that's going to be like a more young adult book too. So it's been a beautiful journey. I love writing for young people. What is, I'm so curious because you kind of referenced that earlier. What is it about the idea of being able to plant these seeds and sort of like create moments of discovering inquiry in young minds?

You know, they always talk about this in different meditation classes I've been in, in Buddhism, right? Where it's the beginner's mind. That's where I want to reach my readers. And I love young adult because when I think I had the most open, critical inquiry, curiosity without the muckety muck of all the institutional things that would tell me to dim my light, all of that completely clouding myself. Some of it's there because you're in society, but that there was still this fire of curiosity, a fire to still be oneself despite the pressures to shrink. I found myself in books like the Diary of Anne Frank. I found myself in books like everything written by Judy Blume. And I found myself in these beautiful, beautiful books that like Nikki Giovanni's Spin a Soft Black Song, that was poetry about everyday Black kids and watching their parents go out for ice cream or fight or see somebody playing in a drum line.

But also that being a metaphor for beating and marching to your own drum. So I just, I know that those things are things that got into my soul. And it's because those authors knew that I, as a child, needed that kind of nourishment. And that's what I want to give kids. And I don't want them to become indoctrinated with my beliefs at all. I want them to be curious and I want them to question and I want them to challenge and to explore and dream. Yeah. I love that you're also, you're creating, you're creating devices for adults to have conversations with kids at the same time. It's have the conversation around individuals, around ideas, around history, around beliefs? Because it's, and especially in this day and age, it's increasingly infrequent that you just sit down and say, can we talk about this? Or like, let's have a conversation

about this. You know, people don't sit around the dinner table nearly as much as they used to, or just those moments seem to be vanishing. So it's almost like you're creating these social objects that are serving as prompts, not only just for young adults jumping off point for their own discovery, but also a jumping off point for adults and young adults to co-discover, not just ideas, but the world and themselves together. Oh, thank you. I love that. I mean, that is one of the things that I love about these books. So the Step Into Your Power book, which really came out of a lot I'd written about around

lessons I'd learned in life and lessons I'd learned from people like my mom, like teachers that I'd had, like authors, from my friends, from musicians who I know, because I'm lucky to have a lot of musicians in my life. My partner's a musician. I just have a lot of creative, beautiful people in my life. And I hear from adults a lot who use the activities and prompts in the book. And that makes me so happy because I am an almost 40-year-old adult who created those prompts. And many of the things that I wrote about are things that I'm exploring and looking back on now. And they're human experiences.

I'm just making these conversations accessible for younger readers and understanding that younger readers are intelligent. And they need this information earlier. They need this information earlier. They need this inquiry earlier. And I just did a workshop at the Bust Craftacular in Brooklyn where there were a lot of adults coming to just work through some of the questions in the Step Into Your Power book. And it was great. They could apply the same ideas about stepping into your power, about how to really listen and learn from the bummers in life and define the silver lining, but just those things like that to apply to things that were happening at work, for example. Kids use it for school or their afterschool activities. So I just,

I think a lot of these concepts actually translate between the generations. And what I love the most is just getting video or pictures from kids who are doing these activities with their parents. And I've gotten so many beautiful gifts of that just from all over the world. And I love it. I'm just tearing up now thinking about it, but it's great. I love because I, I am especially step into your power, which is such a fun, I mean, you look at the exercises and they're, they're great and they're, they're real and there's so much great work to do. And it's such a fun to end like between you and, and, and Andrea's illustrations. It's just, it's like an experience to read it. And the back of my mind is also thinking, there's a little bit of subversion going on here. Because clearly the parent is buying this for the kid. But like you said, this is all the same stuff that almost every adult, whether you're 30, 40, 50, 60, is still struggling to figure out for themselves. And it's almost like, well, if I get the parent to buy this for the kid and then they kind of like do it together, then I'm going to get them both sort of engaged in this process.

And it sounds like that is in fact bearing out in the experience of what you're hearing, how people are interacting with it. I love it. I mean, you know, part of one thing that I've learned in my life is one way you kind of know that you're onto something is when it ticks people off. And I came across an article about the danger of progressive children's books and the burgeoning industry of progressive children's books that was in the Federalist recently. And not usually an imprint that I read often, but I saw that a book that I had written had been included in this list. So you're doing some APO research? So I was doing a little bit of APO research, and it was the book that I'd written about Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez.

And it was called The ABCs of AOC. And it was really in the book was interesting because the way that the book was done was it was a biographical book. I wrote about AOC saying this is a young person who made history. These are the things she was interested in. And this is how government works. Right. she was interested in. And this is how government works, right? So nothing in the book is actually, from my mind, controversial because it's kind of saying, this is what an underdog is. She was an underdog in her election because this person was expected to win for these reasons. And this is what she does. This is what lobbying is. This is what grassroots is. This book was listed

there because the person who wrote it was an anonymous publisher who works at a publishing house, but feared being named to say that books like that and many other books that I really like and admire are dangerous because they might make young people become too liberal and open-minded. And I found that really interesting because when I thought about why I was writing that book, the things that people were fearing about it were the things that I thought made them strong. So I thought, yes, I want five-year-olds to read this book and ask, what does it mean to lobby? Or why is L for Latinx? What does that mean? What is I for immigrant?

Because I remember being a kid and asking all the questions. So for me, it's funny because I think that it's inherently subversive, but often the way that these books come about comes from me just thinking, I had all these questions. I wish I had the answers to. And then I realized because there's not a proliferation of this kind of content for young people, it becomes something bigger. And so I just thought about that a lot that I actually thought maybe I should retweet that post because I thought, you know, I set this out. I set out to do this kind of book, as did most of these authors, all of them, I'm sure, to help make the world more inclusive for all of us. So it was just really interesting to me and to think about, wow, the power of a children's book. So it made me think I want to create even more of them when I read it, because I thought this is, this is something that the thought that I thought I was going to write one children's book in my life, it was just something I wanted to try.

Yeah. And now you're a children's book author. Yes. Many, many and a growing catalog of them. In addition to also, you know, like more traditionally grownup-ish books, Together We Rise and Rules for Revolutionaries. Flipping into sort of like the mainstream gig that's been paralleling this for a while, the last couple of iterations, you were executive director at Women Action and the Media, which is an interesting organization

because it's really focusing on sort of like the role of media and the responsibility of media in telling the story of women, female identifying people in society today. And, you know, I think that's something that is certainly in the last year or two become much more of a focus. But this organization has been around for, I don't even know when it started, but for quite a while. And now at Feminist Press. Yeah. Yeah. So Feminist Press is like 50 years. We'll be 50 in a week because in 2020 we'll be 50. Yeah. So when, I mean, there's this whole side, like on the one side, you've got the, I am a writer. These are ideas that are fiercely important to me and I want to create my own thing. And also on the organization,

this is where I sort of like spend my full time advocacy and activism energy and leadership energy. Do you feel like sort of like living these two parallel things? This is a hard question. So I don't even know if you can answer it. Do you feel like you could get everything you need to get out of the way you contributed to the world if you really just said yes to one and not the other? It's really tricky. I think about this a lot. One thing I have observed, just being around a lot of people who are 100% sort of in the freelance economy

and doing their art and their writing which I so greatly admire and sort of people like myself who might have a high be a multi-hyphenate hybrid many different things is I don't depend on my art in the Maslow's hierarchy of need of survival in a way that I think could draw me into certain projects if I really needed to do a project. And I'm not saying that there aren't people who are discerning who aren't because there's people who have really amazing freelance careers and who are doing that. But there was always something for me that has said, you know, until I get to a certain point in my life, and I will know when that is, I think it's going to be a feeling. It's not going to be a number. It's not going to be anything like else. I just know it's going to be a feeling. I'm going to continue to learn

what I need to learn within the frameworks of these institutions and experiences. But I also know myself and I know I've always got to have a thing that's mine. I think part of it comes from the fact that my mom was a big believer in the perpetual side hustle. It's just from a sort of thinking of, you know, hey, you've got to have a plan A, a plan B, and a plan C, she'd always say. But then two, there's something that I feel that once I started to have my writing make some income for me, in addition to things I was passionate about, that there is this idea that any of the pressures I had or fears around my job security in certain jobs, the relationship to that changed, that I could focus on the marrow of the contribution I want to make and what I can also learn and grow from in each experience, while also knowing that, yeah, it would be hard if something were to happen to change that relationship,

but I would always know that my identity would be intact around what it is I do. And there's so many things I've tried to unpack about that and what it means. But it's something that I just know about myself. And it's so funny. I've often thought, okay, if the books become the full-time thing, I'm sure I'm going to have like a tea and cupcake business or something. My husband's kind of like I'm sure I'm going to have like a tea and cupcake business or something. My husband's kind of like already wondering what that's going to be, you know? And I think it's just in my blood. We'll see.

But there's always just something about me liking to have multiple pots cooking at the same time. And I went to this workshop once where Parker Palmer, have you ever read his writing? Huge fan, huge fan. Beautiful, beautiful man. Parker did a workshop for my friends, Courtney Martin and John Kerry, and they brought together a lot of creatives and activists and writers and people they knew together. And I was lucky to be one of the people to go and he made it accessible for all of these young professionals to really come together and do a weekend and learn so many of his amazing social justice Quaker teachings. And the theme of this workshop from the Center of Courage and Renewal that he started that was specifically

focused on us was how not to live a divided life. And so he brought us together saying, I'm going to, let's talk about living an undivided life. And we had to write letters to ourselves afterward and read them. And they mailed them way after we got there. Right. And I hadn't moved jobs after that because I thought, oh, I'm living a divided life. I want to live undivided. And so I also think I've been making my way into that. I haven't fully gotten there, but to living an undivided life, that is what Parker was trying to get us to do and giving us the tools of beautiful Quaker wisdom and clearness committees and using your community to ask you open-ended questions and to really reflect and sit and think about what it would mean to have your work and your life be fluid, not separate intention. So that's just something

that I think about around how I hold all the things I do. And I think that my clear feeling of purpose or spiritual purpose is informing that greatly because I see a lot of alignment in what I write and what I do. And my writing helps my job and my job helps my writing and the people that I work with, I can help them because of the connections I've made in writing. And I just, I want that for everyone. I think about it. I want everyone to be able to kind of think that they can do all the things they want to do. And that just because you do this one thing doesn't mean you can't do another. And it's something that I used to tell myself I couldn't do.

And when I started doing it, I realized, oh, you can actually do it. So let's add another thing. Oh, and you can do that. And you didn't die. So add another one. Oh, and you can do that and you didn't die. So add another one. Yeah. Sort of like a series of experiments. Yes, exactly.

Like a little bit here, a little bit there until you find that sweet spot. And it sounds like for you, knowing when, and you said this, right? Knowing when you found that sweet spot, it's not so much an analytical thing. It's an intuitive thing. You've used the word spirit or the phrase spirit numerous times. It's funny, when I think about you, your path, the way you bring yourself to the world, it's almost like you're guided by spirit but grounded in action in everything that you do, which feels like a good place, I think, for us to come full circle in our conversation as well. So sitting here in this container of the Good Life Project, if I offer out this phrase, to live a good life, what comes up?

To live a good life, be true. That's all I want to do in my time here is I want to be true. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much for listening. And thanks also to our fantastic sponsors who help make this show possible. You can check them out in the links we have included in today's show notes. Thank you. that's S-P-A-R-K-E-T-Y-P-E.com or just click the link in the show notes.

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