May 3, 2022 • 50 mins
This week I’m answering YOUR questions from social media and we are covering topics from donuts to Beyoncé songs to poetry performance and writing tips. Listen in as I talk about all the things!
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:34):
Hey, everybody, welcome back to another new episode of Her
with Amina Brown. And I'm really excited about this episode
because y'all have to tell me, as the listeners, how
you feel about Q and A episodes. But I love
a good Q and A. I love a good Q
and A even when I used to do UM workshops
(00:56):
and stuff like that, or I've done a couple of
conferences in the past where I had a performance slot
and then during the part where people would go to
like breakout sessions or whatever, during that part, I would
just have a session where it was just like open
Q and A for people. And I'm sure that format
probably makes some people feel really really nervous about the
(01:18):
idea that people are just going to be throwing questions
at you and you don't know what they're gonna ask.
But I loved that format. So I thought I had
not done and asked Amina anything episode in a while,
and I thought I would do that. So I want
to say a big shout out to all of you
on Instagram and Twitter that submitted your questions. Let's get
(01:39):
into it. Nish asked a very important question. Nish asked,
you can pick one Beyonce song and one Beyonce song
only you're listening to it for the rest of your life.
What song is it? Oh, nish m hmm. I mean,
(01:59):
I'm not a lie about it. I think it's Formation
for me. Like there's just something about the the soul
of that song, you know. You know how there are
certain songs that become hits and then over time they
kind of become like oversaturated to you, and then you
(02:19):
have to go like a long period of time without
listening to them. Like I would say of Beyonce's hit
single Ladies probably falls in that category, right um or
Alicia Keys. Alicia Keys has quite a few songs that
are like that that they sort of got played so
much on the radio and so many commercials and so
many things, and then I just get like, oh, I'm
(02:42):
so tired. But then years later, when I haven't listened
to that song and so long, I go back to
it and I'm like, oh my gosh, I love that song.
Formation is not like that. Information is not like that.
Like it was obviously being played a whole lot around
the time that Lemonade was coming out, and then we're
here it again. When Beyonce released the Netflix film and
(03:05):
album for Homecoming. But I have to say Formation is
still just the same way I felt the first time
I was watching that music video before Beyonce performed at
the super Bowl. I still feel the same way about
that song. It's just this, it's this like, uh, it's
this call out there to black women, and there's so
(03:25):
many things about the way the song was written, Big
freeda right at the beginning there of that song, and uh,
it's so southern, it's so it's so New Orleans, Houston.
You know, all these things mixed together that I really
really love and quiet as it's kept. I'm a person
(03:46):
who loves to put together a playlist, and I have
playlists for all manner of occasions. I feel like I've
talked about this in a few episodes and one of
my most recent pod I'm Not Podcast, one of my
most recent playlists that I created was a get on
Up playlist, something that I can play in the morning
to like get me going, And that type of playlist
(04:09):
is great for a song like Formation. I also have
a playlist called woman Ship, and that song, that song
is definitely on my woman Ship playlist. Like it's just
a playlist of all these songs that make me feel
empowered and beautiful. That reminds me of my confidence. So yeah,
I'm pretty sure it's formation for me. Thank you, Niche.
(04:30):
That was a great question, Katie asked. If you had
to eat only one flavor or type of doughnut for
the rest of your life, what would you choose? This
pick one is really hard for a girl. It's really hard. Okay,
mm hmmm. I feel like, if I'm telling the truth truth,
(04:52):
my favorite flavor of doughnut, which Dunkin Donuts was my
original gateway into this donut, is the Eclaire. I feel
like that would be my top pick, probably eat for
the rest of my life. However, a girl gets into
her thirties and discovers that she has sensitivities to dairy,
(05:18):
a girl has to choose her donuts wisely. So probably
my second and better for my tummy choice would be
any type of a lemon diet, like almost like like
like a lemon donut situation, if I could have like
the the spectrum of lemon donuts, because there's the lemon
(05:39):
donut where it's sort of like powdered sugar or cinnamon,
not cinnamon, but kind of like kind of sugary on
the outside, and then it has like the lemon curd inside,
and then there's more of like a lemon poppy seed,
which is more like your traditional yeast doughnut, but then
it has the lemon frosting or ice seing glaze on top.
(06:02):
So anything lemon is probably better for me to be
in that zone for the rest of my life. But
if I'm being honest with y'all, it is it's it
is something if my tummy could handle it, it would
be something between any Claire and a Boston cream Pie donut,
like it would be up in there somewhere. Thank you, Katie.
That's a great question, Sharifa. Sharifa has a few questions
(06:23):
and they're all great, so I'm very excited to answer them.
Sharifa asked, what are your creative catalysts compelling you to write?
That's a really interesting question. M M. I feel like
I feel like the first term that's coming to my mind,
(06:44):
Sharifa is my ancestors. And I think sometimes we hear
that and it can sound really generic, and then depending
on what your own spiritual true editions are, it may
sound strange to you or or not, or if it's
(07:06):
something that you're very, very familiar with. It may sound
like home to you, but I do feel like there
is something in the women in my family that came
before me, right that I do feel there are times
that they compel me to write. And I do not
(07:29):
know how to really better explain that, but I do
I feel that feeling. It's interesting because this week my
husband and I went to Genomona's book tour event here
in Atlanta for her book The Memory Librarian, and it
was interesting. You're watching her in conversation with these two
(07:52):
amazing black folks E viewing, and I don't know the
name of the person that was facilitating, but it was glorious, glorious,
And one of the questions that the facilitator was asking
was wanting to know from Janelle and Eve, who collaborated
(08:15):
on one of the stories in The Memory Librarian, which
is a sci fi book. I believe it's a sci
fi book of different short stories, and Janelle is collaborating
with other writers and amazing creatives, right, And the facilitator
asked them, if you could, with the consent of this person,
(08:39):
if you could get someone else's memories and be able
to study them, study their life even more in depth,
who would you pick? And I was thinking about my
answer to that question, and the first thought that came
to my mind was I would want my great grandmother,
(09:00):
her mother and her mother right. Because there are times
that when I'm especially when i'm writing or when I'm
about to go on stage, that I sense the presence
of my great grandmother, but I sense that there are
other women with her, and that they know me but
(09:23):
I didn't get a chance to meet them, and that
somehow they're there strength, their wisdom. There curiosities about life
are also present to me. So I do feel that
they are a part of this creative catalyst that compels
(09:47):
me to write. I think sometimes it's nosiness that compels
me to write. I'm just curious about other people's business,
and so sometimes I can reimagine what their business might
be when I'm working on a poem or working on
(10:08):
a story or something like that. Um. I think music
is a big creative catalyst for me, and especially when
I'm getting a chance to hear music live. But I
would also say they are just certain albums, certain artists
that really getting me to thinking and brooding. Brooding is
(10:30):
a big part of creative catalysts that compel me to write.
Just really thinking about life, thinking about conversations, thinking about
our relationships to each other as humans. I'm a person
who who loves to brood. I like getting to have
those types of conversations with people where you're just talking
(10:51):
about life, talking about things you wonder about, things you
don't have an answer about, things that are a mystery
to you, things you're really trying to figure out, even
if you know in your whole life you can never
figure them out. I think all those things are the
catalysts that sort of lead me to the page. Sharifa
also asked, do folks still ask you and your husband
(11:14):
if you'd like separate checks at restaurants? Because they ask me?
And the answer is yes, Sharifa, they do. We do
still get that. And for those of you who may
be new to the podcast or new to me, I
am in an interracial relationship. My husband is white, and
Sharifa and I are also friends in real life, so
(11:35):
I know that her husband is white as well, and
she's a black woman like I'm a black woman. So
it is fascinating the amount of times that people go
through a lot of mental gymnastics they're doing to not
think that this is your spouse or your partner, because
you don't air quotes look alike, right, or don't look
(11:58):
to them like you should be together. This doesn't happen
as much anymore. Um, this example I'm about to give.
The restaurant thing totally happened still, But this example I'm
about to give doesn't happen as much anymore because I'm
just not performing in churches. Um, I haven't been for
a while even um prior to the pandemic, I was
(12:19):
just slowing up on that. And then the pandemic was
sort of a great way to be like, well, now
that's done. But when I used to perform poetry and
churches a lot, and most of my career I performed
in predominantly white churches and predominantly white Christian spaces, right,
And it was hilarious to me how many times my
(12:40):
husband and I would show up to these churches because
he traveled with me a lot, and they would assume
he was my manager. I've even had it happened at
a couple of white churches where the there was a
janitor there or there was some other black man there
(13:00):
in the room that they weren't may be familiar with.
This happened probably more so at a conference right where
like they're not in the church space, but maybe they're
in a venue and there may be a black man
who's working at the venue. But I remember a very
specific time that it was a black man who was
working as a janitor. And my husband and I walk
in about to do sound check, and they look at
(13:24):
both of us standing next to each other and they
point to the random black man who's just doing his job,
and They'll say, oh, we just saw your husband. And
I'll be like, oh, I I don't know him. I
don't know him, like I think he lives in the
city here where y'all live, and I travel here with
(13:44):
my husband. So yes, that's always um an interesting moment. Sharifa,
you are You're not alone in that. Sharifa also asked
how often do you trim your ends? And she said,
I'm so bad at this. Okay, So I need to
confess right here that this is a how I approached
(14:07):
my hair care is a thing that I feel I
was taught implicitly by my mother. So I grew up
in the house for most of my time growing up
it was um for a while, just my mom and I,
and then it was my mom, my sister and I,
and then right as I was about to leave high school,
my grandmother moved in with us. So I've had just
a mostly like phem woman experience growing up. Most of
(14:33):
my influential figures were women, and not just women but
black women. Right. So my mom's rules about hair, what
I learned from her implicitly is my mom was basically like,
if your hair needs to be like shampoo, conditioned, style,
my mom was like, I can do that, but if
your hair needs cutting, if it needs color, if it
(14:56):
needs chemicals, we don't do that at home. I can
count on one hand and possibly one or two fingers
the amount of time I gave my sister a perm
at home. My mom was big on, there are professionals
who do this, and we're gonna let them do this
so that your hair doesn't fall out so we don't
do anything wrong to it. And I really adopted that
(15:18):
practice for the most part, So I still before I
went natural, when I was wearing my hair relaxed, I
was really good at like, I can shampoo, I can condition,
I could style my hair. I could curl it, I
could blow dry, and I could do all those things
at home, but if it came to cutting, I was
going to a professional because I don't trust myself. Even
(15:38):
when the pandemic started. My current hairstylist, whose styles only
natural hair, my current hair stylist, I asked her to
do like a consultation with me since we were locked
down and I could not get to her for her
to actually style my hair. And it was a wonderful consultation.
She talked me through, like, you know, what I should
(16:00):
be doing in addition to my basic kind of shampoo,
deep condition, leaving condition, or whatever my routine was. I
told her what I'd been doing. There's a few things
I've been doing that she told me not to do anymore.
And then she told me, like, you need to have
some times that you do some deep conditioning. You need
to have some times that you do some protein treatments
on your hair. Like she walked me through all these things,
(16:22):
many things that she would do when I would see her,
but things that would help my hair to like remain
healthy until I could see her. And then right at
the end of the consultation, she was like, oh, you
should go and order some shears and you can just
dust your ends until I see you. And I knew
as soon as she said it that I was not
gonna do it. I just don't have whatever that sort
(16:44):
of visual visual gene is, like, I just I don't
have that. I don't have that. I can't draw, I
can't paint. I'm not good at interior design. I am
not great at fashion. I don't have visual giftings in
any way. So I do not trust myself to trim
(17:04):
my own end. So I don't do that. But I
go see my hair stylist about every eight to ten weeks,
and I let her trim it. I'm going to tell you,
and for anyone listening that is black and has natural hair,
and even for some of you that may not be black,
but you may have like really really tight, curly hair,
(17:28):
it's really hard when it's time to get a trimp.
But I can say from my experience as a black
woman with natural hair, it is really hard when it's
time to trim, because every time your hair grows, it
feels so like hard wand you know, you feel like
you have worked so hard to get that you know,
half inch or that inch of growth that you have
(17:50):
and you don't want to be told by a professional
that what you are thinking is your hair growing. Now
they have to cut that half inch off of there
because it's time for to trim your ends. So among
my black woman community, I do have many friends who
are natural that avoid trims for that reason. They only
get their hair trimmed like twice a year because they
(18:11):
really don't want to deal with losing the length of
their hair that they love. But I have gone through
some changes with my hair. I entered being natural with
getting my hair colored. My initial hair stylist that was
with me when I did the big chop, and you know,
she's the one who cut off the last little bits
(18:33):
of my relaxed hair on the ends. She um dyed
my hair that first time. So for most of my
time being natural, I've always been in and out of
hair color, and sometimes my hair was healthier doing that
than other times. Right, So now I'm really about doing
everything I can to keep my hair healthy, and I
have a hair stylist that's very focused on that, so
(18:54):
it's a little more. I think it's easier for me
to go in and know that every eight ten weeks
I'm gonna get it trimmed. Then actually, I would have
to say doing that more often is helping my hair grow.
Like I'm I'm probably have the longest hair that I've
ever had, I ventured to say in my entire life
(19:15):
right now because I am trimming more often. And if
you have access to a professional, especially a professional that
specializes in natural hair on black women, like, I think
that is a good thing when you have access to that,
when you can treat yourself to that, I think you should.
(19:36):
But some of you listening that are black women with
natural hair or black folks with natural hair, like some
of you listening are really good at like dusting your
own ends and trimming your own ends. And if that's you,
if that's you, then yes, I think you should probably
try to trim your hands every two to three months.
(19:58):
Try that, you know, that really helps your hair to grow.
And I do think even if you're very good at
caring for your hair, maybe if you're great at doing
your color and your cut and everything yourself, I think
it's good if you can to have sometimes that you
go into a professional, let them sort of assess how
your hair is doing. They can even while they're you know,
(20:20):
doing your hair appointment. They can give you some consultation
on you know, what you can do for your hair
to make your hair healthier even in the process. So
shout out to that Sharifa. I apparently had a lot
to say about trimming ins, didn't I. Okay. Sharifa also asked,
what is the one car you cannot do without? Mm hmm.
(20:43):
That's a love one girl. I'm like one car, And
I'm gonna tell you what I'm what I mean when
I say carb. This is not a scientific definition because
I know that technically, like fruit, there are some fruits
that are also carbohydrates, right there are some vegetables are
also carbs. I really technically mean flower based carbs. I'm
(21:06):
not even thinking about rice when I say this. I
mean flower based carbohydrates. That really, for me falls in
the pasta cobbler, you know, k brownies. I mean a
lot of it's sweet stuff. But it could be a
shepherd's pie, it could be a pot pie, you know,
(21:26):
it could be all the different various pasta dishes that
we love. Okay, So just so y'all know what I
mean when I say a car. I guess the one
carb I could not do without? I feel like it
would probably have to be just in general desserts. I
think because I was trying to think to myself, is
it dessert or pasta? And I feel like if something
(21:50):
happened and my doctor was like, you are allergic to pasta,
you can still eat dessert, but you're allergic to pasta.
Or if my doctor said you're allergic to dessert, but
you can still eat pasta, I feel like I would
be most disappointed about the desserts. So overall, it's the
dessert for me. It's the dessert for me, Like that's
(22:12):
that's the carb that I need. I think I could
have zucchini noodles and just be like, yo, that's gonna
be my pasta. But that ain't gonna replace a good
crime brewlet. It's gonna be hard to you know, like
you can't be like here with this banana, I will
make a crime brulet, like that's just not that's not
(22:35):
gonna do here with this, you know, carab bean. I
will make a chocolate cake, like you won't do that,
Like the chocolate cake is delicious, like flower is delicious,
and I'm not gonna stop eating it. So that's my decision.
But yes, the one carb category for me would be dessert.
(22:56):
Natalie asked, how do you rehearse for your poetry and
do you get nervous um. I feel like there's two
different categories of how I would rehearse, and I think
the one category is how I would rehearse poems that
I know already, and how I would I would rehearse
when I'm working on a new poem. When I'm rehearsing
(23:20):
poems I know already, A part of it is sort
of this. I'm not in any way saying that performing
poetry is athletics, but I think because I participated as
an athlete when I was in high school, I think
some of the routine of what you are doing to
sort of tune your body back into your sport. I
(23:45):
think I kept some of that type of routine as
it relates to my poems. So some of it for
me is about warming up my voice and getting my
voice opened up ready to project. A lot out of
that is about hydration. I can't practice my poems or
practice performing them if my throat is dry, if my
(24:09):
body overall is really dehydrated. So typically when I would
be rehearsing some poems, I knew, I would start out
just kind of opening up my voice. I would start
out maybe performing a poem or two that I knew
really well and getting in the rhythm of them, saying
(24:31):
them loudly so that I can also get myself back
used to projecting. But I think that also plays a
role in sort of opening me up to sort of
getting relaxed into what it's going to feel like to
be on stage. I think that another part of that,
(25:03):
especially when I'm not at home, like if I have
a gig and I flew out of town to go
to the gig, and I'm in the hotel or I'm
in the green room, like I'm within an hour or
two hours from a performance, I do sing to warm
up my voice, to ground myself. UM. A lot of
times I'll sing him, and I typically sing hymns that
(25:26):
I learned from my great grandmother, Like UM, I'll sing
leaning on the Everlasting Arms that to Him that my
great grandmother taught me when I was a little girl.
And UM, I learned the him Greatest Lie Faithfulness when
I was when I was a kid, But I learned
it in church, like singing in the choir. So sometimes
(25:46):
I'll take like a to me, what is in part
it is? It isn't part of spiritual practice, I think,
because whether I am performing poems that are explicitly about
God or not, there's something very spiritual to me about
performing poetry. And now in the way my career is,
I'm very rarely performing poems in any sort of a
(26:08):
Christian or faith based type of setting. Um, I'm getting
to do a performance and do pieces about my life,
about my husband, about my hair, and whatever else, you know.
So sometimes I might still sing, or sometimes I might
sing an India Are song, But I think the singing
is about this opening up of the voice, opening up
(26:30):
of my soul. It's about grounding me. And I like
to sing what I would call like a memory song,
like a song that I have really wonderful memories about,
and something about singing that like it does the physical
work I think of helping me rehearse, but it also
is doing some soul work for me too. And then
a lot of times I will rehearse the poems, say
(26:52):
them out loud, I paste a lot. And then now
the way my poetry sets are. When I first started
in my rear, I was performing my poems one at
a time. Well, now I'm doing sets of poetry. Could
be thirty minutes, could be an hour long. Right, So
I'm practicing the poems, but I also have to think
about what is the set of poetry I want to do, So,
(27:13):
say in an hour, i want to do six poems,
and then I'm going to tell stories in between the
six poems. Then a lot of times when I'm rehearsing,
I'm thinking through, like what's the usual story I tell
to get between these two poems? Do I have a
new angle I want to take on that I want
to try, And then I kind of gott to fumble
through that and talk through that a little bit um
out loud to myself, and then kind of once I
(27:36):
talk it together, I can kind of get it together
enough to try it out on stage. So I would
say that's one way. And if it's a new poem
that I'm memorizing and rehearsing, I typically do that. In
these twenty minute rotations, I start out by handwriting the
piece three times and then I will take So when
(27:57):
I say twenty minute rotations, I mean like twenty minutes
on and twenty minutes off, right, once I've handwritten it
then when I come back to my twenty minutes on,
I'll start kind of reciting the poem from the page
and just keep going at it line by line, stands,
up by stands, until I think I've got most of
it pre pandemic. You know, when all the open mics
were around, I would take that poem out to an
(28:19):
open mic too, try to take it out a few
times before I bring it to like the stage where
I got booked to perform this thing. But sometimes I
didn't get to do that. So I also just reserve
the right as a poet to say to the audience, Hey,
I've got this new piece. Is it okay if I
try it out in front of y'all. You know, all
the performances don't have to be they don't have to
(28:42):
feel so like super produced. I think the most important
part for my performances is that they feel conversational. I
say to you all, as listeners of this podcast, that
I always want the podcast to feel like a living room,
like our her living room. But I think a living
room is in my mind all the time when I'm performing.
I almost want the audience to have like relaxed enough
(29:02):
that no matter where we are they sort of felt
that they leaned back into a couch a little bit.
And I think there is a certain way I like
to bring myself to the stage to make people feel
that sense of warmth, feel that sense of belonging. I
think that's a big part of it for me. And
Natalie asked, do you get nervous? Natalie, I get nervous
every time, no matter what the size of the crowd is,
(29:24):
no matter who is in the audience or not. If
I had to perform that poem in front of two
people or two thousand people, I would still be nervous.
But the interesting thing about it is I'll feel nervous
like an hour before and right up until I stand
there and start talking. And then once I've started talking,
I don't feel nervous anymore. But I feel nervous leading
(29:46):
up to it every single time. And I think that's
a good thing. I think it's good to feel nervous.
I know every artist doesn't, so it's not a bad
thing if there are performers who just don't feel nervous.
But for me, that's a good thing. That's that's that's
a good sign to me that I'm still like in
my I'm in my humanity, you know, I'm in the
part of me that is still that kid that never
(30:09):
knew anybody was gonna pay any money to see me
do anything, you know, And so I get nervous, But
the nervousness totally fades away once I say whatever that
first word is on stage. Then after that, I just
feel like I'm I guess I would say I feel
like I'm at home, but I feel like I'm making
myself at home and somebody else's home. Typically, right, if I'm,
(30:32):
you know, performing someplace that I was asked to come there,
I'm like, it's not technically my home, but they were like, here's,
you know, a big old living room. Make yourself at home.
That's what I feel like I'm doing. Great questions Natalie
Christina asked what is your advice for an aspiring youth
writer for figuring out a path after high school? Wow, Christina,
(30:53):
this is a really great question because you'll you'll have
to share with me and any of you saying that
are in high school or our high school age or
college age, You'll have to share with me your thoughts
about what you think a writer is at this stage
of your life. When I was in high school. I
(31:13):
thought a writer was in their forties, and I thought
that I needed to find something to do from seventeen
until I turned forty. I just needed to find something
to do to bide my time. And for some reason,
all this good writer early stuff was going to come
to me in my forties. But I mean, in certain
ways that's kind of been true, but in other ways not,
(31:36):
because that meant in my mind, I thought there was
no use for a young writer. I thought there was
no use for my thoughts at seventeen or nineteen or
or twenty two. I thought that my thoughts weren't going
to feel important to anyone until I was grown, grown.
And I don't believe that's true, and it proved to
(31:57):
not be true in my career because I started in
my career professionally at twenty two years old, when I
didn't expect that that was going to happen. So what
my advice would be for an aspiring young writer, especially
figuring out what they want to do after high school?
I think there are many options for you after high school. Um,
(32:20):
I came from a family where it wasn't really an
option about college. It wasn't like, you know, you could
do this, you could do this, you could do this,
or you could go to college. It was like, once
I was a little kid, everyone just referred to that
as when you know, when you get to college, you'll
see this. When you get to college, you'll experience that,
you know. So I really just didn't have any other
(32:42):
thoughts other than attending college. I don't believe necessarily the
college is the path for everyone. I think it can
be a good path if that turns out to be
right for you. And I'll tell you what the pluses
of that can be. As a writer, college can be
a fantastic training ground. You're going to get exposed to
so many other writers, so many other authors that you
(33:03):
didn't know about. You know, I graduated from Spellman College.
I'm actually celebrating my twenty year college reunion this year.
Who can believe it? Who can believe it? And when
I think about that, I think about, especially having gone
to a historically black and historically woman all women um college.
(33:25):
I think about all the writers that I either was
exposed to or took a much deeper dive into them.
I mean I got to read Sorrah, Neil Hurston, and
Langston Hughes, one of my professors. Shout out to Dr
Harper was and is a Lankston Hughes scholar. I got
to read France, fain No and Chinua Chebe, I got
(33:47):
to read Beverly got Chef Tall and Audrey Lord. You know,
I mean I was. I was reading so many amazing
UM writers, you know. So, I think one of the
pluses to college is that it kind of forces you
into this spot that you are typically doing more reading
than you might have done by yourself because you sort
(34:09):
of have the structure of classes and different things, essays
to write and all that. So I think college can
be a wonderful experience for a writer. I think also
a writer has to live. A writer has to live
and experience life and think about the stories and their
own family, think about the story that they've experienced, you know.
(34:31):
So I would say, if college is something that's possible
for you, I would encourage that anything that you have
that can bring you more learning, whether that's college, whether
that's UM certifications, whether that's trade school, anything like that
will do nothing but enhance your writing. And I think
(34:52):
the plus now for the generation of folks who are
graduating high school is that you have access to so
many ways to do the work of your writing. When
I was coming out of high school, it was sort
of like if you were a writer, people were just like, okay,
so you're going to put out a book. You know,
there weren't really blogs that existed that much at that
(35:15):
time in the late nineties. There definitely wasn't social media
as we know it today. So I would also say
to a young writer, think about think about the ways
that you can air quotes publish your writing that may
not even be traditional publishing. I think there are some
places where the playing field has been leveled where you
(35:39):
don't have to wait for some institution or some publishing
entity to come and say you you are worth publishing.
You actually get to decide that your words are worth sharing.
And there are a lot of platforms that you know
you can do that. And if you are a writer
that is interested in perform it's writing like spoken word,
(36:02):
like playwriting, and and the type of things that are
going to lead you to stage or to television or
to film, I think it's really important to try to
find that sort of communal space where you can share
your work, whether that's an open mic that could be
a virtual type space where you can share your work
with other writers. I think, even if you're not a
(36:24):
performance based writer, having community with other writers in general,
and in particular having community with other young writers. You know,
how can you gather together with some other young writers?
You know, maybe y'all can start a little writing workshop.
You can share work with each other and help each
other to become better. Maybe you have a book club,
or you'll read different books to help you become better writers.
(36:46):
You know. Any of those things I would say are
great places to start with figuring out what your path
will be after high school and just accept there may
not be this established path for you. You may feel
like you're taking some of it up. You may feel
like you're trying a bunch of things and just seeing
what comes out, and that's okay. So many people that
(37:07):
you look up to, their journey to where you are
looking up to them was very rough and tumble. They
did not know, they did not have it all figured out,
And it's okay if you don't know. It's okay if
you don't have it figured out. But it can be
fun and interesting and curious just to see where life
takes you, to try out some things to try some
(37:29):
different jobs and get some different relationships and connections to
folks whose work you love and admire, and let all
those places be places that you can learn. So I
hope that helped Christina, and we look forward to being
able to read more of your work really soon. Lizzie asked,
what piece did you recently do that gave you an
(37:50):
overwhelming amount of joy? Um. The first piece that comes
to my mind to answer this question, Lizzie is my
poem never Tell a Black Girl How to Black Girl.
I love that poem so much. I actually kind of
finished that poem during the pandemic. I had started it
and it was kind of refining it, but it never
really I never really got the chance to pre pandemic,
(38:13):
like do what I would have done with it, take
it out to the open mics and do all that.
And I got a chance to do that poem on
a television show called Social Society, so big shout out
to Social Society on All Black Network. You can see
the clip of that on my Instagram if you haven't
checked it out already. But I love that poem. I
(38:35):
love that poem because I love the reaction I see
in black women when they hear it. Sometimes it makes
them cry, sometimes it makes them laugh. Sometimes I can
look in their eyes and see that I made a
reference that they're like, Oh, that's me, that's my black
girls stuff, you know. And I love the idea of
black girls and black women continuing to be released from
(38:59):
what people expect us to be, that we get to
be just who we are. And there is no singular
way or monolithic way to be a black girl. They're
all sorts of ways, and I love that for us.
So yeah, that poem gives me a lot of joy
every time I perform it. Jay asked, what advice do
you have for someone who is scared but interested in
(39:21):
spoken word? Actually get this question a lot, And I
can understand the being scared because spoken word has this
additional element for those of you listening that maybe poets,
but you're not necessarily interested in performing those poems. Right.
There's a there's a nervousness itself and writing. But because
(39:42):
spoken word is being written to be done in front
of a crowd, that sort of becomes a barrier for
some folks that they're just like, I don't know, I
I kind of want to do that, but I'm really
really scared, and so I just want to say, first
of all, the being scared is totally understandable. I mean,
the thought of taking something you've written that's likely very
personal and taking it to this room full of strangers
(40:03):
and just reading it out loud, that that is really
scary and kind of goes back to the earlier question
than Natalie asked about getting nervous. I think most poets
that you love at one time were that scared poet,
or have had times where they were scared. So I
would say, if you're interested in spoken word, but you
feel afraid, I think one of the beautiful things about
(40:25):
spoken word, at least in my experience, spoken word is
built in community, and I feel it's best built in community.
Spoken word is not something that is best done when
you are just isolated away from other poets and away
from that sense of community, and I think that's a
part of how we help each other. You know, you're
(40:46):
going to have moments where the poet next to you
is like scared out of their boots, you know, but
you're there just to egg them on, to heckle them
in a positive way. My sister and I when we
used to go to open mics to other we would
say we were positive hecklers. You know, when someone we
loved get up there to perform, we would yell wonderful
(41:07):
things at them before they started their piece, just to
let them know, like, there's a love out here in
the room. So any way that you can get involved
in the community of other poets, that will help you
to start feeling less and less scared, because then it
may not feel like a room of strangers. It may
feel like a room of some people that you might
actually know, I might actually know you, and you won't
(41:30):
feel so alone because at any open mic situation, whether
it's in person or virtual, there's always somebody there that
it's their first time, and we can all remember our
first time, and we want to give that person all
this love, you know, and so you get to give
that love and you also get to receive that love.
So that would be my advice to start there. And
(41:51):
maybe if you live in a place where maybe there
aren't open mics, you know, see if there are virtual
spaces like that or kind of like I was talking
about with Christina, think about are there other writers that
you know? You can also build your own community if
you don't have access to one, so J you're gonna
feel afraid, but it doesn't mean you should not try
(42:14):
doing your spoken words. So I'm hoping that some folks
get to hear those pieces really soon. TM asked. Do
you sit down to write and a poem comes out
to you and then you write, okay. I have a
smaller number of experiences where I sat down and the
whole poem just came to me. Typically, the poems come
(42:37):
to me in layers. I get maybe a couple of lines,
and then I wait several months, and then I get
a few more lines, and then a few weeks go by,
and then a few more lines, and then I'll have
a conversation with someone and the rest of the poem
will come. Most of my poems are written in some
iteration like that. Every now and then I've had a
(42:59):
poem that I just It's very rare that I have
a poem and I have an idea and I sit
down to write it and then it just comes to me.
It's typically more like all of my poems sort of
start as either one liner kind of things, or I
do have sort of a concept or an idea, and
then I kind of have to come back to that
(43:20):
concept later, and then months later or weeks later, the
poem will just show up. So that that's the interesting
thing about poetry. Of all the genres of writing that
I've done, I've written as a journalist, I've written as
a nonfiction author. You know, um, I've written essays and
(43:41):
poems are different in how they come about. They will
not be controlled. You will not go to a poem
and say today I will write five undred words. You
sort of have to go to the poem and see
which poems want to be written. So that's part of
why I say that for me, writing poetry is a
very spiritual act because it does feel very connected to
(44:04):
this mystery, you know, of what some of my friends
would call the divine, what some of us would call God,
or just some force that's unexplainable, and how creativity happened,
you know. And I really do believe in that because
I I sit down to write and I don't always
know what in the world is going to come out.
And sometimes I sit down to write and nothing comes out,
(44:24):
and those are very frustrating days. But that doesn't mean
just because nothing came out that I shouldn't keep going
back to the work and just go back and try.
Sometimes I will have had a poem idea. This has
happened to me several times that I've had a poem
that I had an idea for, like years ago, and
I could just never figure out exactly how to get
it written, And all those years later, the poem will
(44:48):
show up. I'll be about to go to sleep and
I'll get all these lines and I'll be like, well,
that's interesting, you know, and just try to keep track
of it. So yeah, I very rarely sit down and
a poem just comes out. It sort of comes to
me like in fragments, until I start to see like
the picture of the poem becoming whole, and then I'll
start refining from there, if that makes sense. Okay, this
(45:12):
is our last question for this episode. TM asked, this
is a very important question. How do you use the
bathroom while wearing a jump suit? In the podcast, you
asked this question, but you didn't answer it. Tim. I
want to thank you for bringing this up right now
because this this is a part of what kept me
from wearing jump suits for so long, because I would
(45:32):
look at other women wearing them and I would be like, man,
that looks so good on her, Like, I love how
that looks on her. Yes, you know. Then I would
be like, how does she go to the bathroom? And
I'm gonna say something and it's gonna be a little
easter egg for those of you that are fans, so
I'm gonna get you, sucker. But I really was like,
how do you go to the bathroom when all this stuff? Want? Anyways,
(45:52):
this is the deal with jump suits and going to
the bathroom that I have learned. The best jump suit
to make it easier to go to the bathroom is
for me, a jumpsuit that doesn't have a zipper, or
if it has a zipper, it has to be easy
to get in and out of it. But I really
(46:12):
recommend jumpsuits that don't have zippers when possible, because they
are the easiest to go to the bathroom. Now, it
might feel a little weird for you if you know,
you're pulling your jumpsuit down, and you know, for those
of us with breasts, it's like you're pulling your jumpsuit
down and you're like, am I naked? Am I naked
(46:34):
in the bathroom? And then sometimes I have some jumpsuits
that are bag ear, so it becomes an interesting sort
of strange bathroom yoga post that I'm doing to like
try to do the squat that one does when you're
in a public restroom, but I'm trying to hold my
knees in a certain way to keep my jump suit
from falling down to the ground. So your best case
(46:58):
scenario when going to the bathroom wearing a jumpsuit is
that you're wearing a jumpsuit that doesn't have a zipper,
so you can really just pull down the straps, or
if it's strapless, that you can pull down whatever the
tube top of it is, but that it's snug enough
in the middle in the waist that it still stays
up on you while you like do whatever arrangements you're
(47:20):
doing when you go to the bathroom, and then that
when it's time to put it back on, it's easy.
Where it's a problem when you're trying to go to
the bathroom wearing a jumpsuit is when the jumpsuit has
a back zipper and it's one of those zippers that
either it would be better if you had a second
person to zip you up, or that you have to
get in some sort of strange ego pigeon pose in
(47:41):
order to get that zipper up by yourself. I have
some jumpsuits like that. I don't wear them as much anymore,
but when I was traveling a lot and doing a
lot of events, it would literally be that I would
have to time how I drink water so that I
could not have to go to the bathroom that often,
(48:03):
because I wasn't sure how long it was gonna take
me to get out of the jumpsuit to go to
the bathroom and then to get back in it. Now,
sometimes you could just receive the kindness of a stranger
in the bathroom if you if you feel up to
this and just have to walk out and be like,
get somebody help. But I don't like to be in
that situation. So I feel like, if you're gonna do
(48:25):
a jumpsuit, jumpsuits can be so wonderful on so many
different body types. I feel like everybody type can find
a jumpsuit that works for your body. You know, I
really do feel that way. But I feel like, if
you in a place where you can try on this jumpsuit,
you should try on what it feels like getting out
of it and getting into it, and if it's complicated
if the zipper is sticking. If you can get the
(48:47):
zipper up so far by yourself, but then you gotta
bend your head down and try to fold up your
arms and do all this strange stuff like really try
to find some jumpsuits that look good on you and
that makes you feel feel good when you wear them,
but also that you can get in and out of easily,
because let me tell you, it's nothing like the panic
of having a bladder that is super full and knowing
(49:10):
that you've got a little bit of a journey ahead
of you trying to get out of your clothes. No
one wants it. No one wants it, Okay. So that's
my jumpsuit advice. That is how I use the bathroom
while wearing a jumpsuit. Thank you Tim for bringing that
back up, because I didn't want to leave y'all out there.
I don't want to leave those questions unresolved. I want
to thank you all for your wonderful questions. I hope
(49:31):
to do one of these again soon in the next
couple of months. So I hope you all have a
great rest of your week, and this week I want
you to try to do something that I'm trying to
give as a gift to myself. Give yourself the gift
of a slow morning this week, if you can get it.
Give yourself the gift of a morning where maybe you
(49:51):
don't have to schedule that meeting right first thing. Maybe
you give yourself that little bit of time. Maybe it's
a Saturday, maybe it's a Sunday, Maybe it's a day
off from work that you have. Maybe you only get
one of these days a year based on what your
schedule is. But give yourself the gift of a morning
that you don't have to meet anyone's expectations but your own.
(50:12):
And that's what I wish for all of you. Thanks
so much, see you all next week. Heart with Amina
Brown is produced by Matt Gowen for slob Fit Productions
(50:33):
as a part of the Seneca Women Podcast Network and
partnership with my Heart Radio. Thanks for listening, and don't
forget to subscribe, rate, and review the podcast.
Hey, everybody, welcome back to another new episode of Her
with Amina Brown. And I'm really excited about this episode
because y'all have to tell me, as the listeners, how
you feel about Q and A episodes. But I love
a good Q and A. I love a good Q
and A even when I used to do UM workshops
(00:56):
and stuff like that, or I've done a couple of
conferences in the past where I had a performance slot
and then during the part where people would go to
like breakout sessions or whatever, during that part, I would
just have a session where it was just like open
Q and A for people. And I'm sure that format
probably makes some people feel really really nervous about the
(01:18):
idea that people are just going to be throwing questions
at you and you don't know what they're gonna ask.
But I loved that format. So I thought I had
not done and asked Amina anything episode in a while,
and I thought I would do that. So I want
to say a big shout out to all of you
on Instagram and Twitter that submitted your questions. Let's get
(01:39):
into it. Nish asked a very important question. Nish asked,
you can pick one Beyonce song and one Beyonce song
only you're listening to it for the rest of your life.
What song is it? Oh, nish m hmm. I mean,
(01:59):
I'm not a lie about it. I think it's Formation
for me. Like there's just something about the the soul
of that song, you know. You know how there are
certain songs that become hits and then over time they
kind of become like oversaturated to you, and then you
(02:19):
have to go like a long period of time without
listening to them. Like I would say of Beyonce's hit
single Ladies probably falls in that category, right um or
Alicia Keys. Alicia Keys has quite a few songs that
are like that that they sort of got played so
much on the radio and so many commercials and so
many things, and then I just get like, oh, I'm
(02:42):
so tired. But then years later, when I haven't listened
to that song and so long, I go back to
it and I'm like, oh my gosh, I love that song.
Formation is not like that. Information is not like that.
Like it was obviously being played a whole lot around
the time that Lemonade was coming out, and then we're
here it again. When Beyonce released the Netflix film and
(03:05):
album for Homecoming. But I have to say Formation is
still just the same way I felt the first time
I was watching that music video before Beyonce performed at
the super Bowl. I still feel the same way about
that song. It's just this, it's this like, uh, it's
this call out there to black women, and there's so
(03:25):
many things about the way the song was written, Big
freeda right at the beginning there of that song, and uh,
it's so southern, it's so it's so New Orleans, Houston.
You know, all these things mixed together that I really
really love and quiet as it's kept. I'm a person
(03:46):
who loves to put together a playlist, and I have
playlists for all manner of occasions. I feel like I've
talked about this in a few episodes and one of
my most recent pod I'm Not Podcast, one of my
most recent playlists that I created was a get on
Up playlist, something that I can play in the morning
to like get me going, And that type of playlist
(04:09):
is great for a song like Formation. I also have
a playlist called woman Ship, and that song, that song
is definitely on my woman Ship playlist. Like it's just
a playlist of all these songs that make me feel
empowered and beautiful. That reminds me of my confidence. So yeah,
I'm pretty sure it's formation for me. Thank you, Niche.
(04:30):
That was a great question, Katie asked. If you had
to eat only one flavor or type of doughnut for
the rest of your life, what would you choose? This
pick one is really hard for a girl. It's really hard. Okay,
mm hmmm. I feel like, if I'm telling the truth truth,
(04:52):
my favorite flavor of doughnut, which Dunkin Donuts was my
original gateway into this donut, is the Eclaire. I feel
like that would be my top pick, probably eat for
the rest of my life. However, a girl gets into
her thirties and discovers that she has sensitivities to dairy,
(05:18):
a girl has to choose her donuts wisely. So probably
my second and better for my tummy choice would be
any type of a lemon diet, like almost like like
like a lemon donut situation, if I could have like
the the spectrum of lemon donuts, because there's the lemon
(05:39):
donut where it's sort of like powdered sugar or cinnamon,
not cinnamon, but kind of like kind of sugary on
the outside, and then it has like the lemon curd inside,
and then there's more of like a lemon poppy seed,
which is more like your traditional yeast doughnut, but then
it has the lemon frosting or ice seing glaze on top.
(06:02):
So anything lemon is probably better for me to be
in that zone for the rest of my life. But
if I'm being honest with y'all, it is it's it
is something if my tummy could handle it, it would
be something between any Claire and a Boston cream Pie donut,
like it would be up in there somewhere. Thank you, Katie.
That's a great question, Sharifa. Sharifa has a few questions
(06:23):
and they're all great, so I'm very excited to answer them.
Sharifa asked, what are your creative catalysts compelling you to write?
That's a really interesting question. M M. I feel like
I feel like the first term that's coming to my mind,
(06:44):
Sharifa is my ancestors. And I think sometimes we hear
that and it can sound really generic, and then depending
on what your own spiritual true editions are, it may
sound strange to you or or not, or if it's
(07:06):
something that you're very, very familiar with. It may sound
like home to you, but I do feel like there
is something in the women in my family that came
before me, right that I do feel there are times
that they compel me to write. And I do not
(07:29):
know how to really better explain that, but I do
I feel that feeling. It's interesting because this week my
husband and I went to Genomona's book tour event here
in Atlanta for her book The Memory Librarian, and it
was interesting. You're watching her in conversation with these two
(07:52):
amazing black folks E viewing, and I don't know the
name of the person that was facilitating, but it was glorious, glorious,
And one of the questions that the facilitator was asking
was wanting to know from Janelle and Eve, who collaborated
(08:15):
on one of the stories in The Memory Librarian, which
is a sci fi book. I believe it's a sci
fi book of different short stories, and Janelle is collaborating
with other writers and amazing creatives, right, And the facilitator
asked them, if you could, with the consent of this person,
(08:39):
if you could get someone else's memories and be able
to study them, study their life even more in depth,
who would you pick? And I was thinking about my
answer to that question, and the first thought that came
to my mind was I would want my great grandmother,
(09:00):
her mother and her mother right. Because there are times
that when I'm especially when i'm writing or when I'm
about to go on stage, that I sense the presence
of my great grandmother, but I sense that there are
other women with her, and that they know me but
(09:23):
I didn't get a chance to meet them, and that
somehow they're there strength, their wisdom. There curiosities about life
are also present to me. So I do feel that
they are a part of this creative catalyst that compels
(09:47):
me to write. I think sometimes it's nosiness that compels
me to write. I'm just curious about other people's business,
and so sometimes I can reimagine what their business might
be when I'm working on a poem or working on
(10:08):
a story or something like that. Um. I think music
is a big creative catalyst for me, and especially when
I'm getting a chance to hear music live. But I
would also say they are just certain albums, certain artists
that really getting me to thinking and brooding. Brooding is
(10:30):
a big part of creative catalysts that compel me to write.
Just really thinking about life, thinking about conversations, thinking about
our relationships to each other as humans. I'm a person
who who loves to brood. I like getting to have
those types of conversations with people where you're just talking
(10:51):
about life, talking about things you wonder about, things you
don't have an answer about, things that are a mystery
to you, things you're really trying to figure out, even
if you know in your whole life you can never
figure them out. I think all those things are the
catalysts that sort of lead me to the page. Sharifa
also asked, do folks still ask you and your husband
(11:14):
if you'd like separate checks at restaurants? Because they ask me?
And the answer is yes, Sharifa, they do. We do
still get that. And for those of you who may
be new to the podcast or new to me, I
am in an interracial relationship. My husband is white, and
Sharifa and I are also friends in real life, so
(11:35):
I know that her husband is white as well, and
she's a black woman like I'm a black woman. So
it is fascinating the amount of times that people go
through a lot of mental gymnastics they're doing to not
think that this is your spouse or your partner, because
you don't air quotes look alike, right, or don't look
(11:58):
to them like you should be together. This doesn't happen
as much anymore. Um, this example I'm about to give.
The restaurant thing totally happened still, But this example I'm
about to give doesn't happen as much anymore because I'm
just not performing in churches. Um, I haven't been for
a while even um prior to the pandemic, I was
(12:19):
just slowing up on that. And then the pandemic was
sort of a great way to be like, well, now
that's done. But when I used to perform poetry and
churches a lot, and most of my career I performed
in predominantly white churches and predominantly white Christian spaces, right,
And it was hilarious to me how many times my
(12:40):
husband and I would show up to these churches because
he traveled with me a lot, and they would assume
he was my manager. I've even had it happened at
a couple of white churches where the there was a
janitor there or there was some other black man there
(13:00):
in the room that they weren't may be familiar with.
This happened probably more so at a conference right where
like they're not in the church space, but maybe they're
in a venue and there may be a black man
who's working at the venue. But I remember a very
specific time that it was a black man who was
working as a janitor. And my husband and I walk
in about to do sound check, and they look at
(13:24):
both of us standing next to each other and they
point to the random black man who's just doing his job,
and They'll say, oh, we just saw your husband. And
I'll be like, oh, I I don't know him. I
don't know him, like I think he lives in the
city here where y'all live, and I travel here with
(13:44):
my husband. So yes, that's always um an interesting moment. Sharifa,
you are You're not alone in that. Sharifa also asked
how often do you trim your ends? And she said,
I'm so bad at this. Okay, So I need to
confess right here that this is a how I approached
(14:07):
my hair care is a thing that I feel I
was taught implicitly by my mother. So I grew up
in the house for most of my time growing up
it was um for a while, just my mom and I,
and then it was my mom, my sister and I,
and then right as I was about to leave high school,
my grandmother moved in with us. So I've had just
a mostly like phem woman experience growing up. Most of
(14:33):
my influential figures were women, and not just women but
black women. Right. So my mom's rules about hair, what
I learned from her implicitly is my mom was basically like,
if your hair needs to be like shampoo, conditioned, style,
my mom was like, I can do that, but if
your hair needs cutting, if it needs color, if it
(14:56):
needs chemicals, we don't do that at home. I can
count on one hand and possibly one or two fingers
the amount of time I gave my sister a perm
at home. My mom was big on, there are professionals
who do this, and we're gonna let them do this
so that your hair doesn't fall out so we don't
do anything wrong to it. And I really adopted that
(15:18):
practice for the most part, So I still before I
went natural, when I was wearing my hair relaxed, I
was really good at like, I can shampoo, I can condition,
I could style my hair. I could curl it, I
could blow dry, and I could do all those things
at home, but if it came to cutting, I was
going to a professional because I don't trust myself. Even
(15:38):
when the pandemic started. My current hairstylist, whose styles only
natural hair, my current hair stylist, I asked her to
do like a consultation with me since we were locked
down and I could not get to her for her
to actually style my hair. And it was a wonderful consultation.
She talked me through, like, you know, what I should
(16:00):
be doing in addition to my basic kind of shampoo,
deep condition, leaving condition, or whatever my routine was. I
told her what I'd been doing. There's a few things
I've been doing that she told me not to do anymore.
And then she told me, like, you need to have
some times that you do some deep conditioning. You need
to have some times that you do some protein treatments
on your hair. Like she walked me through all these things,
(16:22):
many things that she would do when I would see her,
but things that would help my hair to like remain
healthy until I could see her. And then right at
the end of the consultation, she was like, oh, you
should go and order some shears and you can just
dust your ends until I see you. And I knew
as soon as she said it that I was not
gonna do it. I just don't have whatever that sort
(16:44):
of visual visual gene is, like, I just I don't
have that. I don't have that. I can't draw, I
can't paint. I'm not good at interior design. I am
not great at fashion. I don't have visual giftings in
any way. So I do not trust myself to trim
(17:04):
my own end. So I don't do that. But I
go see my hair stylist about every eight to ten weeks,
and I let her trim it. I'm going to tell you,
and for anyone listening that is black and has natural hair,
and even for some of you that may not be black,
but you may have like really really tight, curly hair,
(17:28):
it's really hard when it's time to get a trimp.
But I can say from my experience as a black
woman with natural hair, it is really hard when it's
time to trim, because every time your hair grows, it
feels so like hard wand you know, you feel like
you have worked so hard to get that you know,
half inch or that inch of growth that you have
(17:50):
and you don't want to be told by a professional
that what you are thinking is your hair growing. Now
they have to cut that half inch off of there
because it's time for to trim your ends. So among
my black woman community, I do have many friends who
are natural that avoid trims for that reason. They only
get their hair trimmed like twice a year because they
(18:11):
really don't want to deal with losing the length of
their hair that they love. But I have gone through
some changes with my hair. I entered being natural with
getting my hair colored. My initial hair stylist that was
with me when I did the big chop, and you know,
she's the one who cut off the last little bits
(18:33):
of my relaxed hair on the ends. She um dyed
my hair that first time. So for most of my
time being natural, I've always been in and out of
hair color, and sometimes my hair was healthier doing that
than other times. Right, So now I'm really about doing
everything I can to keep my hair healthy, and I
have a hair stylist that's very focused on that, so
(18:54):
it's a little more. I think it's easier for me
to go in and know that every eight ten weeks
I'm gonna get it trimmed. Then actually, I would have
to say doing that more often is helping my hair grow.
Like I'm I'm probably have the longest hair that I've
ever had, I ventured to say in my entire life
(19:15):
right now because I am trimming more often. And if
you have access to a professional, especially a professional that
specializes in natural hair on black women, like, I think
that is a good thing when you have access to that,
when you can treat yourself to that, I think you should.
(19:36):
But some of you listening that are black women with
natural hair or black folks with natural hair, like some
of you listening are really good at like dusting your
own ends and trimming your own ends. And if that's you,
if that's you, then yes, I think you should probably
try to trim your hands every two to three months.
(19:58):
Try that, you know, that really helps your hair to grow.
And I do think even if you're very good at
caring for your hair, maybe if you're great at doing
your color and your cut and everything yourself, I think
it's good if you can to have sometimes that you
go into a professional, let them sort of assess how
your hair is doing. They can even while they're you know,
(20:20):
doing your hair appointment. They can give you some consultation
on you know, what you can do for your hair
to make your hair healthier even in the process. So
shout out to that Sharifa. I apparently had a lot
to say about trimming ins, didn't I. Okay. Sharifa also asked,
what is the one car you cannot do without? Mm hmm.
(20:43):
That's a love one girl. I'm like one car, And
I'm gonna tell you what I'm what I mean when
I say carb. This is not a scientific definition because
I know that technically, like fruit, there are some fruits
that are also carbohydrates, right there are some vegetables are
also carbs. I really technically mean flower based carbs. I'm
(21:06):
not even thinking about rice when I say this. I
mean flower based carbohydrates. That really, for me falls in
the pasta cobbler, you know, k brownies. I mean a
lot of it's sweet stuff. But it could be a
shepherd's pie, it could be a pot pie, you know,
(21:26):
it could be all the different various pasta dishes that
we love. Okay, So just so y'all know what I
mean when I say a car. I guess the one
carb I could not do without? I feel like it
would probably have to be just in general desserts. I
think because I was trying to think to myself, is
it dessert or pasta? And I feel like if something
(21:50):
happened and my doctor was like, you are allergic to pasta,
you can still eat dessert, but you're allergic to pasta.
Or if my doctor said you're allergic to dessert, but
you can still eat pasta, I feel like I would
be most disappointed about the desserts. So overall, it's the
dessert for me. It's the dessert for me, Like that's
(22:12):
that's the carb that I need. I think I could
have zucchini noodles and just be like, yo, that's gonna
be my pasta. But that ain't gonna replace a good
crime brewlet. It's gonna be hard to you know, like
you can't be like here with this banana, I will
make a crime brulet, like that's just not that's not
(22:35):
gonna do here with this, you know, carab bean. I
will make a chocolate cake, like you won't do that,
Like the chocolate cake is delicious, like flower is delicious,
and I'm not gonna stop eating it. So that's my decision.
But yes, the one carb category for me would be dessert.
(22:56):
Natalie asked, how do you rehearse for your poetry and
do you get nervous um. I feel like there's two
different categories of how I would rehearse, and I think
the one category is how I would rehearse poems that
I know already, and how I would I would rehearse
when I'm working on a new poem. When I'm rehearsing
(23:20):
poems I know already, A part of it is sort
of this. I'm not in any way saying that performing
poetry is athletics, but I think because I participated as
an athlete when I was in high school, I think
some of the routine of what you are doing to
sort of tune your body back into your sport. I
(23:45):
think I kept some of that type of routine as
it relates to my poems. So some of it for
me is about warming up my voice and getting my
voice opened up ready to project. A lot out of
that is about hydration. I can't practice my poems or
practice performing them if my throat is dry, if my
(24:09):
body overall is really dehydrated. So typically when I would
be rehearsing some poems, I knew, I would start out
just kind of opening up my voice. I would start
out maybe performing a poem or two that I knew
really well and getting in the rhythm of them, saying
(24:31):
them loudly so that I can also get myself back
used to projecting. But I think that also plays a
role in sort of opening me up to sort of
getting relaxed into what it's going to feel like to
be on stage. I think that another part of that,
(25:03):
especially when I'm not at home, like if I have
a gig and I flew out of town to go
to the gig, and I'm in the hotel or I'm
in the green room, like I'm within an hour or
two hours from a performance, I do sing to warm
up my voice, to ground myself. UM. A lot of
times I'll sing him, and I typically sing hymns that
(25:26):
I learned from my great grandmother, Like UM, I'll sing
leaning on the Everlasting Arms that to Him that my
great grandmother taught me when I was a little girl.
And UM, I learned the him Greatest Lie Faithfulness when
I was when I was a kid, But I learned
it in church, like singing in the choir. So sometimes
(25:46):
I'll take like a to me, what is in part
it is? It isn't part of spiritual practice, I think,
because whether I am performing poems that are explicitly about
God or not, there's something very spiritual to me about
performing poetry. And now in the way my career is,
I'm very rarely performing poems in any sort of a
(26:08):
Christian or faith based type of setting. Um, I'm getting
to do a performance and do pieces about my life,
about my husband, about my hair, and whatever else, you know.
So sometimes I might still sing, or sometimes I might
sing an India Are song, But I think the singing
is about this opening up of the voice, opening up
(26:30):
of my soul. It's about grounding me. And I like
to sing what I would call like a memory song,
like a song that I have really wonderful memories about,
and something about singing that like it does the physical
work I think of helping me rehearse, but it also
is doing some soul work for me too. And then
a lot of times I will rehearse the poems, say
(26:52):
them out loud, I paste a lot. And then now
the way my poetry sets are. When I first started
in my rear, I was performing my poems one at
a time. Well, now I'm doing sets of poetry. Could
be thirty minutes, could be an hour long. Right, So
I'm practicing the poems, but I also have to think
about what is the set of poetry I want to do, So,
(27:13):
say in an hour, i want to do six poems,
and then I'm going to tell stories in between the
six poems. Then a lot of times when I'm rehearsing,
I'm thinking through, like what's the usual story I tell
to get between these two poems? Do I have a
new angle I want to take on that I want
to try, And then I kind of gott to fumble
through that and talk through that a little bit um
out loud to myself, and then kind of once I
(27:36):
talk it together, I can kind of get it together
enough to try it out on stage. So I would
say that's one way. And if it's a new poem
that I'm memorizing and rehearsing, I typically do that. In
these twenty minute rotations, I start out by handwriting the
piece three times and then I will take So when
(27:57):
I say twenty minute rotations, I mean like twenty minutes
on and twenty minutes off, right, once I've handwritten it
then when I come back to my twenty minutes on,
I'll start kind of reciting the poem from the page
and just keep going at it line by line, stands,
up by stands, until I think I've got most of
it pre pandemic. You know, when all the open mics
were around, I would take that poem out to an
(28:19):
open mic too, try to take it out a few
times before I bring it to like the stage where
I got booked to perform this thing. But sometimes I
didn't get to do that. So I also just reserve
the right as a poet to say to the audience, Hey,
I've got this new piece. Is it okay if I
try it out in front of y'all. You know, all
the performances don't have to be they don't have to
(28:42):
feel so like super produced. I think the most important
part for my performances is that they feel conversational. I
say to you all, as listeners of this podcast, that
I always want the podcast to feel like a living room,
like our her living room. But I think a living
room is in my mind all the time when I'm performing.
I almost want the audience to have like relaxed enough
(29:02):
that no matter where we are they sort of felt
that they leaned back into a couch a little bit.
And I think there is a certain way I like
to bring myself to the stage to make people feel
that sense of warmth, feel that sense of belonging. I
think that's a big part of it for me. And
Natalie asked, do you get nervous? Natalie, I get nervous
every time, no matter what the size of the crowd is,
(29:24):
no matter who is in the audience or not. If
I had to perform that poem in front of two
people or two thousand people, I would still be nervous.
But the interesting thing about it is I'll feel nervous
like an hour before and right up until I stand
there and start talking. And then once I've started talking,
I don't feel nervous anymore. But I feel nervous leading
(29:46):
up to it every single time. And I think that's
a good thing. I think it's good to feel nervous.
I know every artist doesn't, so it's not a bad
thing if there are performers who just don't feel nervous.
But for me, that's a good thing. That's that's that's
a good sign to me that I'm still like in
my I'm in my humanity, you know, I'm in the
part of me that is still that kid that never
(30:09):
knew anybody was gonna pay any money to see me
do anything, you know, And so I get nervous, But
the nervousness totally fades away once I say whatever that
first word is on stage. Then after that, I just
feel like I'm I guess I would say I feel
like I'm at home, but I feel like I'm making
myself at home and somebody else's home. Typically, right, if I'm,
(30:32):
you know, performing someplace that I was asked to come there,
I'm like, it's not technically my home, but they were like, here's,
you know, a big old living room. Make yourself at home.
That's what I feel like I'm doing. Great questions Natalie
Christina asked what is your advice for an aspiring youth
writer for figuring out a path after high school? Wow, Christina,
(30:53):
this is a really great question because you'll you'll have
to share with me and any of you saying that
are in high school or our high school age or
college age, You'll have to share with me your thoughts
about what you think a writer is at this stage
of your life. When I was in high school. I
(31:13):
thought a writer was in their forties, and I thought
that I needed to find something to do from seventeen
until I turned forty. I just needed to find something
to do to bide my time. And for some reason,
all this good writer early stuff was going to come
to me in my forties. But I mean, in certain
ways that's kind of been true, but in other ways not,
(31:36):
because that meant in my mind, I thought there was
no use for a young writer. I thought there was
no use for my thoughts at seventeen or nineteen or
or twenty two. I thought that my thoughts weren't going
to feel important to anyone until I was grown, grown.
And I don't believe that's true, and it proved to
(31:57):
not be true in my career because I started in
my career professionally at twenty two years old, when I
didn't expect that that was going to happen. So what
my advice would be for an aspiring young writer, especially
figuring out what they want to do after high school?
I think there are many options for you after high school. Um,
(32:20):
I came from a family where it wasn't really an
option about college. It wasn't like, you know, you could
do this, you could do this, you could do this,
or you could go to college. It was like, once
I was a little kid, everyone just referred to that
as when you know, when you get to college, you'll
see this. When you get to college, you'll experience that,
you know. So I really just didn't have any other
(32:42):
thoughts other than attending college. I don't believe necessarily the
college is the path for everyone. I think it can
be a good path if that turns out to be
right for you. And I'll tell you what the pluses
of that can be. As a writer, college can be
a fantastic training ground. You're going to get exposed to
so many other writers, so many other authors that you
(33:03):
didn't know about. You know, I graduated from Spellman College.
I'm actually celebrating my twenty year college reunion this year.
Who can believe it? Who can believe it? And when
I think about that, I think about, especially having gone
to a historically black and historically woman all women um college.
(33:25):
I think about all the writers that I either was
exposed to or took a much deeper dive into them.
I mean I got to read Sorrah, Neil Hurston, and
Langston Hughes, one of my professors. Shout out to Dr
Harper was and is a Lankston Hughes scholar. I got
to read France, fain No and Chinua Chebe, I got
(33:47):
to read Beverly got Chef Tall and Audrey Lord. You know,
I mean I was. I was reading so many amazing
UM writers, you know. So, I think one of the
pluses to college is that it kind of forces you
into this spot that you are typically doing more reading
than you might have done by yourself because you sort
(34:09):
of have the structure of classes and different things, essays
to write and all that. So I think college can
be a wonderful experience for a writer. I think also
a writer has to live. A writer has to live
and experience life and think about the stories and their
own family, think about the story that they've experienced, you know.
(34:31):
So I would say, if college is something that's possible
for you, I would encourage that anything that you have
that can bring you more learning, whether that's college, whether
that's UM certifications, whether that's trade school, anything like that
will do nothing but enhance your writing. And I think
(34:52):
the plus now for the generation of folks who are
graduating high school is that you have access to so
many ways to do the work of your writing. When
I was coming out of high school, it was sort
of like if you were a writer, people were just like, okay,
so you're going to put out a book. You know,
there weren't really blogs that existed that much at that
(35:15):
time in the late nineties. There definitely wasn't social media
as we know it today. So I would also say
to a young writer, think about think about the ways
that you can air quotes publish your writing that may
not even be traditional publishing. I think there are some
places where the playing field has been leveled where you
(35:39):
don't have to wait for some institution or some publishing
entity to come and say you you are worth publishing.
You actually get to decide that your words are worth sharing.
And there are a lot of platforms that you know
you can do that. And if you are a writer
that is interested in perform it's writing like spoken word,
(36:02):
like playwriting, and and the type of things that are
going to lead you to stage or to television or
to film, I think it's really important to try to
find that sort of communal space where you can share
your work, whether that's an open mic that could be
a virtual type space where you can share your work
with other writers. I think, even if you're not a
(36:24):
performance based writer, having community with other writers in general,
and in particular having community with other young writers. You know,
how can you gather together with some other young writers?
You know, maybe y'all can start a little writing workshop.
You can share work with each other and help each
other to become better. Maybe you have a book club,
or you'll read different books to help you become better writers.
(36:46):
You know. Any of those things I would say are
great places to start with figuring out what your path
will be after high school and just accept there may
not be this established path for you. You may feel
like you're taking some of it up. You may feel
like you're trying a bunch of things and just seeing
what comes out, and that's okay. So many people that
(37:07):
you look up to, their journey to where you are
looking up to them was very rough and tumble. They
did not know, they did not have it all figured out,
And it's okay if you don't know. It's okay if
you don't have it figured out. But it can be
fun and interesting and curious just to see where life
takes you, to try out some things to try some
(37:29):
different jobs and get some different relationships and connections to
folks whose work you love and admire, and let all
those places be places that you can learn. So I
hope that helped Christina, and we look forward to being
able to read more of your work really soon. Lizzie asked,
what piece did you recently do that gave you an
(37:50):
overwhelming amount of joy? Um. The first piece that comes
to my mind to answer this question, Lizzie is my
poem never Tell a Black Girl How to Black Girl.
I love that poem so much. I actually kind of
finished that poem during the pandemic. I had started it
and it was kind of refining it, but it never
really I never really got the chance to pre pandemic,
(38:13):
like do what I would have done with it, take
it out to the open mics and do all that.
And I got a chance to do that poem on
a television show called Social Society, so big shout out
to Social Society on All Black Network. You can see
the clip of that on my Instagram if you haven't
checked it out already. But I love that poem. I
(38:35):
love that poem because I love the reaction I see
in black women when they hear it. Sometimes it makes
them cry, sometimes it makes them laugh. Sometimes I can
look in their eyes and see that I made a
reference that they're like, Oh, that's me, that's my black
girls stuff, you know. And I love the idea of
black girls and black women continuing to be released from
(38:59):
what people expect us to be, that we get to
be just who we are. And there is no singular
way or monolithic way to be a black girl. They're
all sorts of ways, and I love that for us.
So yeah, that poem gives me a lot of joy
every time I perform it. Jay asked, what advice do
you have for someone who is scared but interested in
(39:21):
spoken word? Actually get this question a lot, And I
can understand the being scared because spoken word has this
additional element for those of you listening that maybe poets,
but you're not necessarily interested in performing those poems. Right.
There's a there's a nervousness itself and writing. But because
(39:42):
spoken word is being written to be done in front
of a crowd, that sort of becomes a barrier for
some folks that they're just like, I don't know, I
I kind of want to do that, but I'm really
really scared, and so I just want to say, first
of all, the being scared is totally understandable. I mean,
the thought of taking something you've written that's likely very
personal and taking it to this room full of strangers
(40:03):
and just reading it out loud, that that is really
scary and kind of goes back to the earlier question
than Natalie asked about getting nervous. I think most poets
that you love at one time were that scared poet,
or have had times where they were scared. So I
would say, if you're interested in spoken word, but you
feel afraid, I think one of the beautiful things about
(40:25):
spoken word, at least in my experience, spoken word is
built in community, and I feel it's best built in community.
Spoken word is not something that is best done when
you are just isolated away from other poets and away
from that sense of community, and I think that's a
part of how we help each other. You know, you're
(40:46):
going to have moments where the poet next to you
is like scared out of their boots, you know, but
you're there just to egg them on, to heckle them
in a positive way. My sister and I when we
used to go to open mics to other we would
say we were positive hecklers. You know, when someone we
loved get up there to perform, we would yell wonderful
(41:07):
things at them before they started their piece, just to
let them know, like, there's a love out here in
the room. So any way that you can get involved
in the community of other poets, that will help you
to start feeling less and less scared, because then it
may not feel like a room of strangers. It may
feel like a room of some people that you might
actually know, I might actually know you, and you won't
(41:30):
feel so alone because at any open mic situation, whether
it's in person or virtual, there's always somebody there that
it's their first time, and we can all remember our
first time, and we want to give that person all
this love, you know, and so you get to give
that love and you also get to receive that love.
So that would be my advice to start there. And
(41:51):
maybe if you live in a place where maybe there
aren't open mics, you know, see if there are virtual
spaces like that or kind of like I was talking
about with Christina, think about are there other writers that
you know? You can also build your own community if
you don't have access to one, so J you're gonna
feel afraid, but it doesn't mean you should not try
(42:14):
doing your spoken words. So I'm hoping that some folks
get to hear those pieces really soon. TM asked. Do
you sit down to write and a poem comes out
to you and then you write, okay. I have a
smaller number of experiences where I sat down and the
whole poem just came to me. Typically, the poems come
(42:37):
to me in layers. I get maybe a couple of lines,
and then I wait several months, and then I get
a few more lines, and then a few weeks go by,
and then a few more lines, and then I'll have
a conversation with someone and the rest of the poem
will come. Most of my poems are written in some
iteration like that. Every now and then I've had a
(42:59):
poem that I just It's very rare that I have
a poem and I have an idea and I sit
down to write it and then it just comes to me.
It's typically more like all of my poems sort of
start as either one liner kind of things, or I
do have sort of a concept or an idea, and
then I kind of have to come back to that
(43:20):
concept later, and then months later or weeks later, the
poem will just show up. So that that's the interesting
thing about poetry. Of all the genres of writing that
I've done, I've written as a journalist, I've written as
a nonfiction author. You know, um, I've written essays and
(43:41):
poems are different in how they come about. They will
not be controlled. You will not go to a poem
and say today I will write five undred words. You
sort of have to go to the poem and see
which poems want to be written. So that's part of
why I say that for me, writing poetry is a
very spiritual act because it does feel very connected to
(44:04):
this mystery, you know, of what some of my friends
would call the divine, what some of us would call God,
or just some force that's unexplainable, and how creativity happened,
you know. And I really do believe in that because
I I sit down to write and I don't always
know what in the world is going to come out.
And sometimes I sit down to write and nothing comes out,
(44:24):
and those are very frustrating days. But that doesn't mean
just because nothing came out that I shouldn't keep going
back to the work and just go back and try.
Sometimes I will have had a poem idea. This has
happened to me several times that I've had a poem
that I had an idea for, like years ago, and
I could just never figure out exactly how to get
it written, And all those years later, the poem will
(44:48):
show up. I'll be about to go to sleep and
I'll get all these lines and I'll be like, well,
that's interesting, you know, and just try to keep track
of it. So yeah, I very rarely sit down and
a poem just comes out. It sort of comes to
me like in fragments, until I start to see like
the picture of the poem becoming whole, and then I'll
start refining from there, if that makes sense. Okay, this
(45:12):
is our last question for this episode. TM asked, this
is a very important question. How do you use the
bathroom while wearing a jump suit? In the podcast, you
asked this question, but you didn't answer it. Tim. I
want to thank you for bringing this up right now
because this this is a part of what kept me
from wearing jump suits for so long, because I would
(45:32):
look at other women wearing them and I would be like, man,
that looks so good on her, Like, I love how
that looks on her. Yes, you know. Then I would
be like, how does she go to the bathroom? And
I'm gonna say something and it's gonna be a little
easter egg for those of you that are fans, so
I'm gonna get you, sucker. But I really was like,
how do you go to the bathroom when all this stuff? Want? Anyways,
(45:52):
this is the deal with jump suits and going to
the bathroom that I have learned. The best jump suit
to make it easier to go to the bathroom is
for me, a jumpsuit that doesn't have a zipper, or
if it has a zipper, it has to be easy
to get in and out of it. But I really
(46:12):
recommend jumpsuits that don't have zippers when possible, because they
are the easiest to go to the bathroom. Now, it
might feel a little weird for you if you know,
you're pulling your jumpsuit down, and you know, for those
of us with breasts, it's like you're pulling your jumpsuit
down and you're like, am I naked? Am I naked
(46:34):
in the bathroom? And then sometimes I have some jumpsuits
that are bag ear, so it becomes an interesting sort
of strange bathroom yoga post that I'm doing to like
try to do the squat that one does when you're
in a public restroom, but I'm trying to hold my
knees in a certain way to keep my jump suit
from falling down to the ground. So your best case
(46:58):
scenario when going to the bathroom wearing a jumpsuit is
that you're wearing a jumpsuit that doesn't have a zipper,
so you can really just pull down the straps, or
if it's strapless, that you can pull down whatever the
tube top of it is, but that it's snug enough
in the middle in the waist that it still stays
up on you while you like do whatever arrangements you're
(47:20):
doing when you go to the bathroom, and then that
when it's time to put it back on, it's easy.
Where it's a problem when you're trying to go to
the bathroom wearing a jumpsuit is when the jumpsuit has
a back zipper and it's one of those zippers that
either it would be better if you had a second
person to zip you up, or that you have to
get in some sort of strange ego pigeon pose in
(47:41):
order to get that zipper up by yourself. I have
some jumpsuits like that. I don't wear them as much anymore,
but when I was traveling a lot and doing a
lot of events, it would literally be that I would
have to time how I drink water so that I
could not have to go to the bathroom that often,
(48:03):
because I wasn't sure how long it was gonna take
me to get out of the jumpsuit to go to
the bathroom and then to get back in it. Now,
sometimes you could just receive the kindness of a stranger
in the bathroom if you if you feel up to
this and just have to walk out and be like,
get somebody help. But I don't like to be in
that situation. So I feel like, if you're gonna do
(48:25):
a jumpsuit, jumpsuits can be so wonderful on so many
different body types. I feel like everybody type can find
a jumpsuit that works for your body. You know, I
really do feel that way. But I feel like, if
you in a place where you can try on this jumpsuit,
you should try on what it feels like getting out
of it and getting into it, and if it's complicated
if the zipper is sticking. If you can get the
(48:47):
zipper up so far by yourself, but then you gotta
bend your head down and try to fold up your
arms and do all this strange stuff like really try
to find some jumpsuits that look good on you and
that makes you feel feel good when you wear them,
but also that you can get in and out of easily,
because let me tell you, it's nothing like the panic
of having a bladder that is super full and knowing
(49:10):
that you've got a little bit of a journey ahead
of you trying to get out of your clothes. No
one wants it. No one wants it, Okay. So that's
my jumpsuit advice. That is how I use the bathroom
while wearing a jumpsuit. Thank you Tim for bringing that
back up, because I didn't want to leave y'all out there.
I don't want to leave those questions unresolved. I want
to thank you all for your wonderful questions. I hope
(49:31):
to do one of these again soon in the next
couple of months. So I hope you all have a
great rest of your week, and this week I want
you to try to do something that I'm trying to
give as a gift to myself. Give yourself the gift
of a slow morning this week, if you can get it.
Give yourself the gift of a morning where maybe you
(49:51):
don't have to schedule that meeting right first thing. Maybe
you give yourself that little bit of time. Maybe it's
a Saturday, maybe it's a Sunday, Maybe it's a day
off from work that you have. Maybe you only get
one of these days a year based on what your
schedule is. But give yourself the gift of a morning
that you don't have to meet anyone's expectations but your own.
(50:12):
And that's what I wish for all of you. Thanks
so much, see you all next week. Heart with Amina
Brown is produced by Matt Gowen for slob Fit Productions
(50:33):
as a part of the Seneca Women Podcast Network and
partnership with my Heart Radio. Thanks for listening, and don't
forget to subscribe, rate, and review the podcast.
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