It Could Happen Here - CZM Book Club: "Ark of Bones," by Henry Dumas with Dr. Treasure Shields Redmond (Part 2)

Episode Date: October 18, 2026

We continue our conversation with Dr. Treasure about Herny Dumas and touch on all sorts of topics from Hoodoo to Fannie Lou Hamer to being mentored by one's father.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Club. Club. Club. Club. Hello. And welcome to Coolzone Media Book Club. The only book club introduced by A. synchronous chanting and the only book club where you don't have to do the reading because I, or sometimes Dr. Treasure Shields Redmond, does it for you. And our guest this week, much like last week, is Dr. Treasure. Hi, how are you doing? I am doing quite well indeed again. Yeah. Happy to be here.

Happy to talk, you know, all things ancestral. We're happy to have you. We also have our producer Hazel here. Hi, Hazel. Hi. So last week, Dr. Treasurer read us all a story that, well, of course it's still sitting with me. It was only five minutes ago for me. But honestly, is going to be sitting with me. This is genuinely one of the most evocative stories I think we've ever had on this show. The story, Ark of Bones by Henry Dumas. And, well, actually, the first thing I wanted to talk about a little bit, because on break, we are cheating and started talking about the story ahead of time. started talking about connections with the Mississippi River and started talking about maybe like you had some thoughts on like the indigenous understandings of the river and the Gulf that obviously should not be called the Gulf of America. Yes. Yes. You know, I also have continued to live in river towns. Even though I was raised mostly in landlocked in Mississippi, water was still important to us in the form of ponds and lakes and crissue.

and the Pearl River that was fairly near us. But I later moved near the Mississippi to Memphis and lived there for about a decade. And now I've lived in the St. Louis Metropolitan near the river for about 13 years. And it's such a powerful, magical entity. The river is alive. and it doesn't mind letting you know that I'll take all this shit out if I want to. You're only here because I'm sparing you. But, you know, there was this moment when our current president decided that the Gulf of Mexico should be called the Gulf of America.

And it made me curious as to what were some of the names that indigenous people had for the Gulf. And one of them was Child to Wheatley Cue. And Child to Wheatley Cue is a jade-skirted deity. Sometimes a woman, sometimes a giant, ethereal snake. But that is what the Mississippi River was to the people who lived around the Gulf. And I just think, you know, they've always known, we've always known how important the river is. I think in Ark of Bones, before the Ark itself appears, before the protagonist understands what he's looking at, doesn't it refer to it as like looking like a snake for a moment? Like there's something in the river, you know?

And I love that it becomes all of these things, including like things that are sort of impossible, right? Like this paddle boat, but it has sails, and it's as high as the clouds. Like, I don't know. All of these things at once in the Mississippi. like it's I don't know it's just such a good image and I love sorry just to keep thinking about things I love about that story before we get into its meaning multiple times this idea that like the wind was the sermon right because the whole story obviously has very direct religious not undertones overtones but they're not the like one for one way that one would normally in a traditional

biblical sense understand the stories that it's talking about, right? And instead it's saying, like, no, this is going to be our own version of it, down to even just the like arguing about how many black people are in the Bible, you know, like that it starts off with. Anyway, I just, the image of the sermon is nature. Yes. I mean, well, you're on to something. You're on to something because, I mean, this is a surrealist story. It could qualify as a, a Y-A story because we can tell that these are youthful speakers. Of course, it's fiction. We could say it's Afrofuturism because it has a year in it that the writer never got to see. 1977. The writer never saw 1977. But it is also a hoodoo or conjure story. And Houdoo is what

African spirituality transformed itself into here on this part of the North American continent. And there was about 100 years where there wasn't a lot of direct contact with the Bible. But after the second kind of great awakening, there was a lot of proselytizing to black people. And slavers finally figured out the serviceability of Christianity. But there was about 100 years where they thought, no, because we kind of understand that Christianity has something about humanity in it. And if we make them, if we make them Christian, you know, it was a chess game for two centuries. Yeah, we might have to treat them like people or think of them as people. But then they figured out, well, we can give them Bibles that remove the liberatory elements, thus the slave Bible that's in the Smithsonian.

or we can, you know, just teach them a theology that says slaves obey your master. So after that second kind of great awakening, that second period of when Christianity made like a real big evangelical push on the North American continent, Houdou became amalgamated with Christianity. So you had people who believed in things like, John the Conquer Route, which comes up in here kind of slightly slanted, or who believed in Mojo, which is a central and West African word, Jew Jew, which is a central and West African word. But they also would collapse it with stories from the Bible. So of course, Ezekiel and the dry bones, which comes up so often, it is about Hebrew people, is about what the proto-Jewish folk.

But because, you know, a human is going to have some unspoiled part of themselves that always wants to be free, no matter how debased, no matter how degraded, there's something in you that wants to be free. So even though the Bible was used as kind of a whip and sometimes a carrot, sometimes a stick, black people were able to absorb it and alchemize it into those African ways where nature is a sermon. Nature is the teacher. So it's an interesting study in Houdou and conjure as well. When I like, I want to know more about, I'm sure someone knows, actually you might know, I know a little bit more about, and I'm going to pronounce it wrong, but Vodoo in Haiti.

and how it was related to the revolution there. And I know that's related to Houdou and both coming from like West African religions. And what's interesting to me is that it almost feels like it synchronizes in the other direction too because the Catholic idea of saints feels so much like the idea of, I think, the Loa, the idea of like spirits that will ride you

that will take control of you, right? And so it almost looks like the Catholic, Netflix were taking notes looking over the shoulders of West Africans, like rather than just the other way around, you know? Well, you just became an old school HOTEP right before my eyes. You just became one. No, Hotepe finds its, you know, animus in some truth. It just goes toward, you know, we was kings.

It just veers toward a bad place. But it finds it's animus in truth, which is the first humans were African, the first people to conceptualize the divine were African. And if we look at the timeline of where Christianity came from, then we do know that there were these foundational beliefs and religions and spiritualities. And they started to split off in different ways. but some things are, they're not coincidences. Yeah. Some similar Jesus and Zeus. Some of the similarities between Vishnu and West African and Central African deities.

And so we can tell kind of like when you listen to romance languages. Like we might not understand Romanian. But every now and then a word peeks in like, wait a minute. How did I understand that? So yes, yes, yes, yes, I do believe that Catholicism shares a root as all of the major religions do. Yeah. Yeah. No one's ever called me a hoax up before.

Look at you. Yeah, I think what you're saying about how it's, this story is this syncretic understanding of it. And I also keep coming back to this like being introduced into the secret society. that, you know, you are now part of the secret society. Your will shall be my hand when I strike, you strike. My eye shall see only thee. I shall set my brother free. Like, that's so cool.

Like, it's such a cool way of, which makes me want to ask about the author, right? Like, we know that the author was killed by a policeman. But, like, I'm under the impression that he was also involved in, like, political, radical stuff. like black power movements or what was going on there that he's writing this story about joining a secret society to set each other free? Well, you know, it's so fascinating. Henry Dumas was a native southerner who got to see the world because he joined the military. Like so many black men, he understood that this was one way to kind of open up your worldview,

get to travel, get a decent income. So he joined the military, and he was able to go to the Middle East in the military. When he came back, he took classes at Rutgers in New Jersey, and he would go to New York and hang out with all of the kind of avant-garde black folk, including Sun Ra. You can look up a conversation between him and Sun-Rah on YouTube, and it's a true. trip. Dumas enjoy psychedelia

as well. He would bend his mind every now and then with a little added medicine. And he also went and studied with Babelowos in Brooklyn, in New York

City. So there were black people and Africans in New York City who were still practicing traditional African religion, the Yoruba religion, which shares a lot with Vodon, you know, and some of the deities from Yoruba are absorbed into Haitian Vodon. He studied with them, and he thought a lot about mysticism. He thought a lot about the occult.

And he, of course, as we can see by the words that showed up and the ways that showed up in this story, he thought a lot about who do. Well, I think a lot about products and services that support our show. No, that's not a very good transition. But here's an ad transition anyway. You've heard the chaos. Now you can see it. Do we want to jump right in?

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Carl thought he was living a normal, drama-free life until the messages started. You will have hell to pay. For nine months, someone infiltrated every aspect of Carl's life, threatening to ruin him. Cyberstalking. swatting, extortion, impersonation. And then the text threats escalated. Someone's not going to make it out of this alive. This department.

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And I'm curious what you meant by that. Well, you know, I think it's about memory and I think it's about memories we want to create. So, you know, black people lost Rites de Passage, Rites of Passage, which are such a big deal in Central and West Africa and all over the globe, you know, young men are taking off, women are taken off and giving these essential lessons so that they know what it is to be an accountable member of the community as an adult. And so those rights were taken from us. We weren't able to be given those important rights. So it's about reconstructing those in a way, reconstructing. But I also think it's about wishful, wishing for a memory because 1977 shows up.

So he's projecting into the future that this sort of recovery of our bones, so our essential self, will continue and become standard. Like this isn't a one-off trip. That boat is going to show up. Yeah. Over and over again. It's so fascinating. I love the image of how delicately the bones are handled. Because I guess I'd say like normally, like the average story you might read where there's like, and then there's a ship made out of bones. Right? It's not going to be about pulling people's soul up out of the river.

You know? And like that is such a, oh, I really like this as a. write a passage story. I hadn't even really, I mean, obviously you have the like initiation, but like, I like that. I don't have a question there. I just, I think it's cool. Yeah. I was also thinking about, I don't know if you all came across this on social media, snippets of articles about how the trajectory of sharks changed because of the transatlantic slave trade. Oh my God, no. Because. Curious. Oh, yeah. So there, I mean, of course, there are a lot. Lots, there's lots of death because human beings aren't meant to be cooped up for months, skin to skin, surviving off gruel. Yeah.

And living in our own refuse. So there was lots of death. There was lots of suicide. People just jumping off. You can read that in slave narratives like Olidae Equianos. There are people who tried to just end it and who successfully ended it. But because of this, the patterns of sharks were changed. And we're not going to know how widespread that impact in their feeding patterns and their migration patterns was.

But when you have ship after ship dropping off bodies, it is going to, of course, cause a feeding frenzy. And then animals pass down knowledge. that's going to become good hunting ground for them. So when I read Ark of Bones, I often think about all the people inside of the Atlantic, inside of the Mississippi River. You know, they mention a lynching later on, which also makes the reader wonder,

was head I even alive? Did you guys, did that cross your mind? It's interesting because I came into it knowing it was a ghost story. And the way that head eye is described includes like things about how he looks different out of the corner of your eye than he does head on. You know? So I was like sort of thought head eye was the ghost at the beginning. But I didn't put it together until you say just now that there is kind of a like head eye is the like maybe the transition was a very different one. What about you, Hazel?

No, I hadn't put that together, but, you know, reflecting on how it's described that, like, his eyes are bulging and his head is enlarged. Oh, my God, yeah. Yeah, that would be consistent. And that's haunting. Yeah. It's making me go back and look at the placement of the lynching and them asking where he is. Yeah, because I know that they asked about the lynching because they were like, hey, you all didn't come home until late. We were worried.

someone got lynched down by the river. Mm-hmm. You know. And disappearing off with the dog that don't hunt. Right. Which I just, I love a dog. I'm glad a dog got to. And you know, that to me is also a nod to indigenity.

Part of Mississippi I'm from is where chock tall people used to own the whole state, used to steward the whole state, of course. But one foundational part of their origin story has to do. with a white dog who led them to Mississippi. And that dog every now and then will appear. It comes out of fires. If you set a fire in the woods, it'll come and lay by the fire. And sometimes it just comes out of the fire, Phoenix-like.

It just emerges. So when I saw this mystical comrade, I thought, oh, that makes sense. This is the part of the country where, yeah. that spirit dog I think as we're sort of talking about haunting and ghosts I think that I probably read this of one of the articles that you'd written about the piece earlier but talking about the kind of way of looking at this piece

of doomist, you know, transcending and becoming an ancestor and your father taking up the legacy of remembering him and keeping, you know, his work alive, keeping his work in print and continuing to tell a story. I'm wondering if you could talk a little bit about kind of that aspect of, you know, our literal ghosts that are with us.

Yeah, and someone writing this story, I think, kind of shortly before himself being killed. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah. You know, it is a blessed burden to kind of steward the legacy of Henry Dumas. And my father talks about being a young professor with him. He met

Henry Dumas when they were both teaching for Southern Illinois University at Wersfield here in the region that we now live. And he was teaching for this kind of special program called EHE Experiment in Higher Education, which supposed that you could get more. first generation students and students of color to persist and graduate if the curriculum were like interesting. What if it was interesting? And so. Right. So they shook up the entire general education curriculum, like what you take the first year, first year and a half of a bachelor's degree, you know, like that first psychology class, that first science class, that first sociology class. And they changed them not just to psychology, but psychology of the black family. Not just to U.S. history,

but history of the region, history of labor, history of unions, history of the Rust Belt. And it had amazing results, as you can imagine. So Dumas threw himself into educating black young people along with my dad. And it was a total shock. to hear that he had gone to New York to go to a friend's wedding and was killed. And what year was this? This was 1968, I believe. Okay. Check me on that.

So he didn't even leave in the city where he got killed. No. He was just there to go. Like any young man, you're at that stage of life where your friends are getting married. So you go up there to, you know, support them and witness. And he was killed in the subway by a subway cop. And my dad talks about the intense mourning. Because you can imagine, like, we're talking about a boutique program that has this small, tight-knit, really loved-on group of students.

You know, none of them have been to college. But they are so bright-eyed. They are so ready to change. their family story. They know how much this degree is going to mean. And, you know, my dad and Henry Dumas are from where they're from, you know, up south, you know, black men, not just a few years older than them, proving the worth of this endeavor. And then to hear that your beloved teacher has been murdered, he talks about everyone crying

and them not being able to have classes, of course, and how everybody took up money for him to go and attend Duma's funeral. And he talks about showing up at the airport with a suitcase full of cash, like a bank robber, to give to Duma's family, because they just threw money at him. Everybody, they just fundraised and threw so much money at him. Because he left behind two young sons. He left behind two sons under the age of five.

So my dad struck up a friendship with his widow, and she gave him permission to get the work published. And one day, his good friend, Quincy Troop, the poet from St. Louis. My dad's from East St. Louis. His good friend, Quincy Troop is from St. Louis right across the river. was in his apartment in New York. And this person named Tony Morrison came by. She was a young editor at Random House.

And she asked Quincy Trute, what are you reading? She was always looking for new black people to put on. And she had, you know, edited Angela Davis's autobiography. She was very, you know, not hiding the mission with her publishing choices. Yeah, I like that way of putting it. And Quincy Truth was like, there's this guy named Henry Dumas. He's amazing. He was just killed a couple years ago.

You should check him out. And from Quincy's view, he said that she just sat down, cross-legged, and read until the sun went down. And that's how it moved from a university press to Random House. So it's just been a wonderful journey to watch. then to join onto, as my dad has shown me how to, you know, best take care of the work out here in the world. Yeah. I also love that you do it with your father and, you know, we're kind of tying in this other

aspect of legacy and lineage too. Like I first emailed you and you were like, let me ask my dad because I still run everything past him and we're having breakfast tomorrow. That's so amazing and special. Could you tell us a little bit more about what it's like to be mentored? by your father? Well, you know, it has been a blessing. And I think, I mean, you know, we have these Western ghosties in our head that have

something to do with edible complexes and da-da-da. I don't have a problem with that. Maybe because we're different genders. But, you know, it's so fascinating to be the daughter of someone who has such a great reputation. So everywhere I go, people are like, wait a minute, I know somebody named Redmond. I know Eugene Redmond.

And I go, yeah, that's my dad. What? I love him. So usually people are like, I love him. But I will say that he shared with me that after Dumas died and he got some of the work published. And then Morrison said, is there anything else he has? And my dad said, well, he does have this unfinished experimental novel, but he never finished it. And Morrison was like, well, why don't you finish it?

And he says that he had a total breakdown about it. Yeah. It just caused a schism. It just the weight of that. And then he really wanted permission from Henry. But that was not possible. Yeah. So he talks about, you know, the sort of spiritual work that he had to do to be able to bring that novel to fruition.

So it's called- He did, Genoa and the Greenstone. It is not in print now, but let me tell you, it's a weird trip, man. All right. You should check it out. I mean, I want to read more by Henry Dumas. This is amazing work, so I understand, you know. Yes, yes, yes.

So, Stewarding Dumas' work has not been without its tensions for my father. because, you know, there has been survivors guilt. You know, there was that moment. I write about it in the article that you referenced. It's like a 36-month period where everybody got killed. It was insane. They healed the president on camera. They healed his brother on camera.

They killed King. I mean, you know what I'm saying? It was like, it's just, I know it had to be a feeling of, okay, well, the world's just ending. So I try to remind myself of that if I ever feel my revolutionary optimism waning that there are people who have been through terrible times before. Yeah.

Well, we've been through ads before. I got nothing. But here they are anyway. You've heard the chaos. Now you can see it. Do we want to jump right? and watch all your favorite podcasts from start to finish right inside the free iHeart radio app make some noise whooie catch every laugh and eye roll on shows like bestie listen hey Jonas and lost culture he says

now with full video i'll just leave that there it's the same hosts and the same chemistry with all the hilarious moments you've been missing right on your screen open the free iHard radio app search video podcasts and tap watch i'm melissa jeltson and in my new podcast what happened to her i'm bringing you new stories and conversations every week. Stories about women whose deaths were too quickly ruled as suicide. She was starting to get worried and get scared for her safety. Stories of survival. The only difference between me and her, frankly, was a little bit of luck, because by all rights, I should be dead. Cases that everyone else called closed. They can't convict her, right? Like, she has so much evidence.

These stories all start in the same place with a woman failed by a system that didn't believe her, that didn't protect her, that didn't see her. No child should ever experience that. And we were babies. She did all of these brave things and came out and spoke about it

and he got a year. You never know who that devil is because he's wearing the disguise. Sometimes it's a police uniform. Listen to what happened to her on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you're, get your podcasts.

Lisa, we should tell them about our new show. Oh my God, Lexi. We have a new podcast. It's called Don't Lie to Me. I'm Lexi Youanu. We're two best friends, 22 years apart, but so close at heart. And I'm Lisa Di Giulio, the old one, which means we have wildly different references, occasionally different opinions, and at this point in my 50s, I've lived it all.

I'm not going to get anywhere fighting. That is wild. I learned that about you today. Now in my 30s, being the founder of new shoes, good taste is my business. And I've always got something to say. If men were just honest about this, there would be so much more peace in the world. We're going to talk about dating, relationships, beauty, getting older, and a little wiser. We're best friends, but we don't always agree.

Because you told us how accommodating you are. Obviously, I would do what I think I could do to fight the fight, but there's only so much fight I can fight. Don't lie to me. Don't lie to me. Don't lie to me. Don't lie to me. Don't lie to me. Don't lie to me.

Lyer. Listen on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. I don't really care. Didn't catch the latest Roland Martin unfiltered podcast? Here's what you missed. And the argument is, do you want to win? If you don't win, you have no power. It's real.

Those are the very people who I always say vote against their own economic interest. And they complained about the very thing they're receiving. It's raw. I knew that the issue of transgender athletes was not going well with a lot of black men. Roland Martin unfiltered. I went off, I said, this is exactly what I'm talking about. Y'all going to scream at Chanel, but you don't want to see a black luxury company in the same vein. Catch Roland Martin's daily commentary on the Black Information Network.

12 seats, those are moving south. So if you Democrats, you don't wait to 2030, you better be hitting the ground going hard in the south now. And download Roland Martin Unfiltered on the IHart Radio app, Apple Podcasts. Wherever you get your podcasts. You broke me. You do not deserve happiness. I'm Andrea Gunning.

On this season of betrayal, we meet Carl Bryant. Carl thought he was living a normal, drama-free life, until the messages started. You will have hell to pay. For nine months, someone infiltrated every aspect of Carl's life, threatening to ruin him. Cyberstalking, swatting, extortion, impersonation. And then the text threats escalated. Someone's not going to make it out of this alive.

It's playing out in real life, not just on the phone. Every piece of evidence pointed to one man. But every piece of evidence was a lie. He was not going to stop unless we stopped him. Listen to Betrayal Season 6 on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And we're back. I want to hear about revolutionary optimism. Come on, revolutionary optimism.

One of the things that this story points to is a world. of black people past the incredible violence that they are experiencing. And in my personal practice, that is what I am always pointing to as well. A world past this one that we're being shown. A new world is possible. We know that it's possible because indigenous people have already endured their world being destroyed. Yeah. And yet they are still here. So when I talk about revolutionary optimism, of course I am, you know, using the terms of socialist and communist activists who believe that this current capitalist system is a death cult and that unless we, you know, take control of the resources, institute total regime

change, that we will be in this cycle of a few people hoarding all the resources and the rest of us being told to vote our way out of it. I don't dismiss voting as harm reduction. Yeah. But I do think that the world that this story points toward and the world that most of us envision is going to take more than voting. When I strike, you strike my eyes, you'll see only thee. That's right. That's not when I vote, you vote.

That's right. That is right. Yeah. Dr. Treasurer, you touched on this a little bit, but I'm wondering if you could talk about how sort of stewarding this legacy has impacted your own work, how, you know, sort of the work of community

memory and keeping our ancestors' legacies tending to that. You know, how that's impacted your writing, your community work. Yes, I love that question. You know, I keep saying it's all ancestors all the time with me. You know, some years ago in 2015, a book of poems of mine was chosen to be published in a contest, and it's called Chop, a collection of Kwancivas for Fannie Lou Hamer. And it's a collection of poems that are all in the voice of this incredible activist and proto-feminist, Fannie Lou Hamer, incredible Mississippian and, you know, standard bearer. But even before that, I got the form because my dad had a writers club in East St. Louis for almost 30 years.

And in that writers club, they came up with the form called the Kwan Saba. It's made from mixing the words Kwanza, which is a harvest festival. And Saba, which means seven. So it's a holy little form that's seven lines, seven words per line, and no word is more than seven letters unless it is a proper noun. And it's a praise poem form. So there are lots of Kwan Saba's out there that are about ancestors. I feel like I was raised up, even in the deep south, with a deep homage to ancestors.

If you go to black people's homes, there's always an area where all the obituaries are. And there's a picture of that one uncle who died in Vietnam. and there's the big picture of the matriarch or the matriarch and the patriarch and people maybe even bring their high school diplomas and put them in grandma's house. But it's all in this one place kind of to celebrate those who've gone on and achievements. So, you know, my work continues that. My poetry continues that. My teaching continues that.

And my commitment to revolutionary change continues that. I remember it wasn't the first time I heard about Fannie Lou Hamer, but the first time I really read a lot about her was about, sorry, that's not the only thing that you said, but just that I know the book was dedicated to that. And I was thinking about, like, she was such an important woman in this movement, a person in this movement, and is like not talked about quite as much, right, specifically some of the men,

which I actually don't think is necessarily the men's fault. And I had read about her because I was doing research about the fight for birth control, but also the fight to be able to control one's own reproductive system. And then learning about how Hamer was forcibly sterilized by the government. And like how much, oh, I don't know if I have anything to say about that, I was just like, it's fucking horrible. And how much work she did despite because of, I don't know, being so incredibly mistreated by like such a fucked up thing.

I don't know where I'm going with this. I just, it's a story that I think about a lot as just like what it means to actually fight to control your own body. I don't know. Yeah. I mean, her fingerprint is in so much revolutionary thought. in the deep south and throughout the U.S. You know, as you were saying, she's not talked about as much

as some of the male activists, organizers, revolutionaries. And I do think that we have a story that we've been given. You know, we've been given a story of how revolutionary change is supposed to look. And specifically, I'm talking about with black folks. And it has truly become, a story that we retell ourselves despite evidence to the contrary. Yeah, okay.

So we're like, yeah, it's going to happen when this guy with a suit who has a PhD from Boston University and great enunciation stands up and leads us. And even when you look at the history of King, you realize it's all these women making sandwiches and it's all these queer people planting, you know, running mimeograph flyers. And it's all kinds of things happening. And he was the person that, you know, they checked his mustache and straightened his coat and then put him out there because people could hear him better than they might hear a Bayard Rustin or a Fannie Lou Hamer. but I think that we've definitely outlived that,

especially when the people in power show us that their standards are not those standards. Yeah. Yeah. Everybody wants a revolution, but no one wants to do the dishes. Right. Well, like, the other thing that she did

that has ended up impacting so much, sorry, I just get excited about her sometimes, the cooperative work. that she did about building workers cooperatives and farm cooperatives. And like I used to work for an organization that funds workers cooperatives. And it was so beautiful because the two primary inputs into that was Argentinian workers who had taken over their factories and the history of black farming cooperatives and black cooperatives in America that gets like left out of the story of cooperativism but has like really

direct impacts. And this is, I don't know. And she wasn't even like the start of it. She's like 70 years into the history of all this. Sorry, I got really excited about history. This is not what we're talking about today. I apologize. No, that cooperative. And it went on for almost a decade. Yeah. Something. Yeah. Like it wasn't a flybine. It wasn't like, oh, for 24 months, people claimed they were paying into something. No. For like eight years, seven, eight years, you had a pig bank. You had people. Yes, the pig bank.

You were growing food. And it was so affordable. And people just bartered labor. It was just a dream. Yeah. It was really a dream. Yeah. Anyway, sorry, I just, I got really excited about some of that stuff.

I apologize. No, you and me both. Well, okay, so I want to ask a bit more about your own work outside of, I really appreciate. what you talk about, about how a lot of your work is holding onto and continuing narratives of people who've come before. But I also am curious about your own work as well. And I know you talked a little bit about that with poetry, but if there's anything that you want to talk about, the stuff that you do. Yes. So I am someone who is quietly being tortured by the publishing industry. I finished a novel.

And, you know, every few weeks my agent sends me a nice little rejection note, and I weep and screaming to the void. But I wrote this novel that I'm really proud of. It's about three queer black boys from Meridian, Mississippi, set in 1989. It's a coming-of-age story about these kind of like new adults and all of the craziness that goes on when, Your community's foundation is the homophobic black church. So it's loving and cruel. So it's about all of the mixtures of that. I'm also working on a series of poems about water and how water is representative,

which is why I even knew that about the Mississippi River and Chautau Wheatley Cue. So I write poems about the Mississippi and about the Niger River and about indigenous communities that were flooded over and turned into reservoirs and about lynching victims being dragged out of rivers in Mississippi, like what is referenced in our wonderful Duma story. I even wrote a poem about the amniotic water that exists in women who are caring children. So that's been a wonderful journey, something that has been fun to return to. And I would say that I'm about 80% of the way with that collection. I also have a public banishing practice on Instagram. So if you go to The Doctor Treasure on Instagram, every Sunday I get up and cast a hoodoo banishing.

It's a spell. It's a poem. And people have been so receptive and so complimentary. I banished homophobia. I banished capitalism. I banished the U.S. state. I banished white feminism. Yes.

I've just banished everything. I keep thinking, should I banish Trump? But I feel like, and I feel like you all agree with me, I don't want to make him the problem, even though he is totally the problem. But if we focus on, oh, we need a better president, then we stop critiquing the system in which we have presidents. So he keeps doing things, though, and I'm like, should I? So we'll see. It can be like the system and him are the problem. Right. That's what I'm thinking.

It's going to have to be a combination. It's combo platter. But, yeah, I talk about Houdoo. I give Houdoo story times. This month is Houdoo Heritage Month. So every day I'm posting a fact about Houdoo. It's a lot of fun. So you guys should check me out there.

Hell yeah. Join me. All right. Well, people should check out more of your work. People should check out more of Henry Duman. his work. And yeah, I don't know. I'm so honored that you came on to talk to us about the story. I, well, people have already caught on. I really like this. This is just my shit. Like, it's like when I write weird horror, I want it to be spooky and meaningful at about

cults of people who try to make the world better rather than about like just people being flayed alive or whatever. And so this is just like, it's just so my shit. And I feel this like incredible loss, like selfishly, that when, like, every single person who is killed by the police is like someone who had something to offer our society other than killing people, which is what the police do, whatever, anyway. Yes. But, yeah, thank you so much for coming on. Thank you, Paisal, for making all this happen.

And we will be back next week with more stories in Spooky Month. It Could Happen Here is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com, or check us out on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can now find sources for It Could Happen here listed directly in episode descriptions. Thanks for listening. I'm Melissa Jeltson, host of the What Happened to Her podcast.

We're kicking off the season with the Sandra Birchmore story, a case the police rode off as a suicide, in a snowstorm. Her family never bought it and the man they suspected wore a badge. You never know who that devil is because he's wearing in disguise. Sometimes it's a police uniform. And you can get access to all episodes 100% ad-free with an IHeart True Crime Plus subscription exclusively on Apple Podcasts, available only to IHeart True Crime Plus subscribers. So don't wait, head to Apple Podcasts, search for IHeart True Crime Plus and subscribe today. Lisa, tell them about our new show.

We have a new podcast. It's called Don't Lie to Me. I'm Lexi Youanu. We're two best friends, 22 years apart, but so close at heart. And I'm Lisa DiGulio, the old one, which means we have wildly different references, occasionally different opinions. And at this point in my 50s, I've lived it all. Now in my 30s, being the founder of new shoes, good taste is my business. Listen on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

You broke me. You do not deserve happiness. I'm Andrea Gunning. On this season of betrayal, Carl thought he was living a normal drama-free life until the messages started. Someone's not going to make it out of this alive. Every piece of evidence pointed to the wrong guy. He was not going to stop unless we stopped him. Listen to Betrayal Season 6 on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

I'm Stacey Vanek-Smith. I'm Max Chaffkin. We are both journalists at Bloomberg Business Week. And our podcast, Everybody's Business, finds the meaning behind the numbers. Things like, why is ice cream so expensive right now? Is Polly Market the new stock market? And Max, will we ever retire? Because decoding the money, power, and influence that moves the world is everybody's business.

Listen to everybody's business on the I-Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. On recent episodes of the Questlove show, I chatted with Jojo about her music and Wallo 267 about his story, everything in between. Don't invite me to karaoke. I'm going to make it weird. Someone's going to try to sing, leave it out, or too little, too late, or baby, it's you. Oh, no. And I'm going to be like, okay, cool. Check out my conversation with Jojo, Wallow 267, and more on the Questlove show.

Listen to the Questlove show on the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. Peace. This is an I-Heart podcast. Guaranteed human.