Reflections from the WRBG Festival

Glory Edim, host of the upcoming Well-Read Black Girl podcast, looks back on the 5th Annual Well-Read Black Girl Festival. The festival, held in October 2021, featured speakers like Gabrielle Union, Ashley C. Ford, Arlan Hamilton, Michelle Obama, and many more, highlighting stories of Black girlhood, sisterhood, freedom and perseverance. Listen here for Glory's reflections on this year's gathering, and stay tuned for the Well-Read Black Girl podcast – launching February 2022!

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:16):
Pushkin. Hi, it's me Glory Adam, and I'm back with
some extra special goodness from our recent Well Read Black
Girl Festival. Last month was wild. I released a book,

(00:40):
moved across the country, and became a podcaster. But the
highlight of the month was our five year anniversary with
thousands of people gathered from all over the world. This
year's festival was our biggest yet with so many the
amazing talks and panels that reminded us how we can
shape the world through reading. Y'all came through and showed

(01:04):
out and showed up for our community of authors, thinkers,
and activists as we sat in conversation with women like
Gabrielle Union. I firmly believe that that balance is an
arm of the patriarchy meant to keep women off balance
and feeling like a perpetual failure at all times. If
you have a full life, you're not going to be

(01:25):
able to be superwoman at work and at home. That's
just it's just it's that's not on the table. And
Heather McGee, Black women have the highest educational attainment of
any group, of the highest labor force participation of any women.
Right we are doing it all in playing by the rules.
But we are today still haying interest on racist decisions

(01:46):
that were made long before we were born, and even
Michelle Obama are forever first Lady. A few years ago,
when I began the process of writing my memoir, I
didn't know what the final product would look like. I
just knew I wanted to tell a full story of
all my life, all the messy parts in everything. But
now that Becoming has been out for almost three years,

(02:08):
I realized again and again that it's so much more
than just a manuscript. In the last five years, I've
continued to cultivate a community of thoughtful, passionate readers, and
I'm so thankful that you all have inspired such wonderful dialogue.
This year, we have this incredible panel Becoming an Abolitionist.

(02:28):
Here's a bit from panelists Dereka Parnell. There's more than
one hundred years of literature on abolition or reduces the
police or in closing prisons. So I encourage people to read,
to be in conversation with other people about the campaigns
that can reduce power from the prison industrial complex and
invest power in people, and to fireside chat with writer

(02:52):
Ashley c Ford when it comes to writing about memory.
I think a lot of people think I can't write
about this if I don't remember exactly what was said
or exactly what happened. But you remember a lot of
the feelings and emotions that you experienced in certain moments
as a child, so you can write the whole in
your memory into the piece. You can say. You can

(03:15):
literally write down I don't remember this, I don't remember this,
but what I do remember is feeling like this, I
mean so powerful. And we heard from writers like Eddie
s Claude Junior and Fara Jasmine Griffin on how they
honed their craft when I started grappling with my own wound,

(03:38):
my own sense of being a fragile little boy who
still has daddy issues, where I began to insert my
own personal journey into the thinking that the questions took
on a different kind of gravitas, that I was able
to take risks as a writer on the page and
to press up against what I was feeling about the

(04:02):
moment and trying to approximate that on the page. I
think all writers should be aware that they are building slowly.
They aren't writing into the void, They're writing into the future.
They're writing into people who are already trying to imagine
it differently. I think we see ourselves as girls for

(04:22):
the first time, fully dimensional in the work of black
women writers. It's the first time we see each other ourselves.
We started these gatherings as a place for us to
see ourselves in these spaces, and our new podcasts will
be doing the same, connecting us further with intimate conversations

(04:45):
and exploring how we can all see ourselves as well read.
We had so much fun with y'all and fully planned
to keep the party going. There's plenty more to come
on my new podcasts, so stay tuned to the feed.
I'll be dropping a sneak peak of my show on
January eighteenth, and dropping the first episode on February First,
tell your friends to tell their friends so we can

(05:08):
all be friends. Well read black Girl coming soon from
Puschikin Industries