Hoodoo Plant Mamas

In this episode we're joined by the lovely Sirene Wata. We discuss African water spirits and deities, water as a tool of enslavement and liberation, and the many ways water has showed up in our lives, writing and work.

CONTENT WARNING: Mention of Suicidal Ideation 19:25-21:22

Sirene Martin is a multimedia artist hailing from south central Kentucky. She holds a Bachelors of Arts in Pan-African Studies from the University of Louisville with an emphasis in Gender and Sexuality studies. In her art, Sirene seeks to be in conversation with the ancestral spirits that hold her. These conversations act as a portal as she travels into the creative space to conjure worlds and realities that are often refused to her in the material world as a Black Transgender Woman. As a Hoodoosaint, she is a historian and archivist. Recording and caring for the stories of her ancestors, her art elevates the rich Root culture and religions of the Black folks that made Kentucky their home.

RESOURCES

• American Horror Stories Installment 2, Episode 5
• "Ep. 52 Black is King!" A Little Juju Podcast
• Bite Size Halloween
• Perfect Black by Crystal Wilkinson
• "Ep 16: We Perfect Black with Crystal Wilkinson" Hoodoo Plant Mamas
• "Water" by Joy Postell

BE A PATRON! Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/hoodooplantmamas

SOCIAL MEDIA Twitter: @hoodooplants Instagram: @hoodooplantmamas

DONATE Paypal: paypal.me/hoodooplantmamas Cashapp: cash.me/$hoodooplantmamas

This podcast was created, hosted, and produced by Dani & Leah. Our music was created by Tasha, and our artwork was designed by Bianca.

It's the end of the world...as we know it. We talk with Cherise Morris about her work, our anxieties and frustrations around the end of the world, and the hope we need to build a better future.

Cherise Morris is an award-winning writer, interdisciplinary performance artist, ritualist, spirit worker and healer born and raised in rural Virginia and living in Detroit, MI.

RESOURCES

• "MEMO: It's Almost the End of the World" Substack. Cherise Morris.
• Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler
• "The End of the World" Substack. Leah Nicole Whitcomb
• "MEMO: We are Living" Substack. Cherise Morris.
• Cherise Morris Patreon

BE A PATRON!

Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/hoodooplantmamas

SOCIAL MEDIA

Twitter: @hoodooplants

Instagram: @hoodooplantmamas

DONATE

Paypal: paypal.me/hoodooplantmamas

Cashapp: cash.me/$hoodooplantmamas

This podcast was created, hosted, and produced by Dani & Leah.

Our music was created by Tasha, and our artwork was designed by Bianca.

Let's talk about plants, baby! We discuss our houseplant journey, the lessons we've learned from taking care of houseplants, and the mental health benefits of green spaces.

BE A PATRON! Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/hoodooplantmamas

SOCIAL MEDIA Twitter: @hoodooplants Instagram: @hoodooplantmamas

EMAIL & SPONSOR INQUIRIES [email protected]

DONATE Paypal: paypal.me/hoodooplantmamas Cashapp: cash.me/$hoodooplantmamas

This podcast was created, hosted, and produced by Dani & Leah.

Our music was created by Tasha, and our artwork was designed by Bianca.

Crystal Wilkinson, Kentucky’s Poet Laureate, is the award-winning author of Perfect Black, The Birds of Opulence , Water Street and Blackberries, Blackberries. She is the recipient of a 2021 O. Henry Prize, a 2020 USA Artists Fellowship, and a 2016 Ernest J. Gaines Prize for Literary Excellence. Nominated for the John Dos Passos Award, the Orange Prize and the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, she has received recognition from the Yaddo Foundation, Hedgebrook, The Vermont Studio Center for the Arts, Hedgebrook, and others. Her short stories, poems and essays have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies including most recently in The Kenyon Review, STORY, Agni Literary Journal, Emergence, Oxford American and Southern Cultures. Her fourth book Perfect Black was released from University Press of Kentucky in August 2021. She currently teaches at the University of Kentucky where she is Associate Professor of English in the MFA in Creative Writing Program.

This episode is sponsored by Moyo Mysteries. Moyo Mysteries offers spiritual consultations, pelvic steam plans, and full-spectrum birthwork services, from fertility and birth & labor to loss & bereavement and abortion work. Moyo Mysteries also offers a variety of educational projects and upcoming trainings. To learn more, you can visit www.moyomysteries.org.

Also, follow on Facebook and Instagram under the name, Moyo Mysteries

BE A PATRON! Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/hoodooplantmamas

SOCIAL MEDIA Twitter: @hoodooplants Instagram: @hoodooplantmamas

EMAIL & SPONSOR INQUIRIES [email protected]

DONATE Paypal: paypal.me/hoodooplantmamas Cashapp: cash.me/$hoodooplantmamas

This podcast was created, hosted, and produced by Dani & Leah.

Our music was created by Tasha, and our artwork was designed by Bianca.

//SPOILERS FOR LONG DIVISION//

Mississippi author Kiese Laymon joins us for our season finale. We discuss the revised version of his novel Long Division, explore themes of freedom, language, and timelessness, and talk about creating art separate from the white imagination.

Kiese Laymon is a Black southern writer from Jackson, Mississippi. Laymon is the Libby Shearn Moody Professor of English and Creative Writing at Rice University. Laymon is the author of Long Division, which won the 2022 NAACP Image Award for fiction, and the essay collection, How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America, named a notable book of 2021 by the New York Times critics. Laymon’s bestselling memoir, Heavy: An American Memoir , won the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction, the Christopher Isherwood Prize for Autobiographical Prose, the Barnes and Noble Discovery Award, the Austen Riggs Erikson Prize for Excellence in Mental Health Media, and was named one of the 50 Best Memoirs of the Past 50 Years by The New York Times. The audiobook, read by the author, was named the Audible 2018 Audiobook of the Year. Laymon is the recipient of 2020-2021 Radcliffe Fellowship at Harvard. Laymon is at work on the books, Good God, and City Summer, Country Summer, and a number of other film and television projects. He is the founder of “The Catherine Coleman Literary Arts and Justice Initiative,” a program based out of the Margaret Walker Center at Jackson State University, aimed at aiding young people in Jackson get more comfortable reading, writing, revising and sharing on their on their own terms, in their own communities. Kiese Laymon was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship in 2022.

RESOURCES

• Long Division by Kiese Laymon
• "We Need to Reckon with the Rot at the Core of Publishing" by Elaine Castillo. LitHub.

BOOKSHOP

https://bookshop.org/shop/hoodooplantmamas

BE A PATRON!

https://www.patreon.com/hoodooplantmamas

SOCIAL MEDIA

Twitter: @hoodooplants

Instagram: @hoodooplantmamas

DONATE

Paypal: paypal.me/hoodooplantmamas

Cashapp: cash.me/$hoodooplantmamas

This podcast was created, hosted, and produced by Dani & Leah.

Our music was created by Ghrey, and our artwork was designed by Bianca.