Busy Being Black with Joshua Rivers

This week, my conversation is with Black, fat, queer and trans theorist and abolitionist Da’Shaun Harrison. Their new book, Belly of the Beast: The Politics of Anti-fatness as Anti-Blackness is an important addition in the fields of fat and Black studies, which offers us all necessary knowledge and insights to help improve how we relate to one another and ourselves. In this bonus episode, Da’Shaun...

In the face of the ongoing and various violences experienced by Black women in the UK and across the world, Zinzi Minott wonders why more people don’t ask, “What do Black women’s bodies need?” It’s a question I’ve been sitting with since we recorded our conversation, which includes us exploring what our duty of care is to each other. Zinzi is a dancer, artist and filmmaker and she’s interested in...

For many of us who’ve grown up in the so-called West, our understanding of what belly dancing is has been shaped by colonialism’s legacy. What we’ve learned about or encountered as belly-dancing is actually a white-washed mishmash of several cultures, designed to play into the West’s fascination with and manufactured fear of those designated Muslim. My guest today, Shrouk El-Attar, is an LGBTQ rig...

The late Ursula K. Le Guin wrote, “Our roots are in the dark; the earth is our country. Why did we look up for blessing – instead of around, and down? What hope we have lies there.” And it is down there, among roots and earth, that Black trans gaming designer, archivist and artist Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley is looking for our Black trans ancestors—those whose lives and stories have been lost to h...

I met Raven Gill in March 2020 at the Equality and Justice Alliance convening in Saint Lucia, just before our countries went into their respective lockdowns. We became fast friends. She is an outspoken and forthright activist, who does essential and life-sustaining work with trans and non binary Bajans through the civil society organisation she founded, Butterfly Barbados. In our conversation, we...

“Tiny resistances were a kind of healing in a weeping place” is just one of the many powerful and lyric aphorisms that ennoble The Prophets, the New York Times best-selling debut novel from Robert Jones, Jr. – a story about the forbidden union between two enslaved young men on a Deep South plantation, the refuge they find in each other and a betrayal that threatens their existence. Robert Jones, J...

This week, I’m in conversation with Robert Jones, Jr., author of The Prophets – his New York Times best-selling debut novel about the forbidden union between two enslaved young men. In this bonus episode, Robert reads an excerpt The Prophets, entitled “New Covenant”. Robert Jones, Jr. is a writer and thinker, and the creator and curator of the social-justice social media community Son of Baldwin....

Edafe Okporo is an author and activist, who successfully sought asylum in the United States after years of violent persecution in Nigeria because of his sexuality. Since then, he’s made it his mission to not only speak out against the ongoing violence faced by LGBTQ people in Nigeria, but to help those displaced by violence build new lives as close to the American Dream as possible. We explore his...

Phyll Opoku-Gyimah and Frank Mugisha are two powerhouse LGBTQ human rights activists. Phyll, who has been a guest on the show before, is the co-founder and executive director of UK Black Pride, Europe’s largest pride celebration for LGBTQ people of colour, and the executive director of Kaleidoscope Trust, the UK-based charity working to uphold the human rights of LGBTQ people across the Commonweal...

Tobi Ajala is the founder of TechTee, a complete lifecycle digital agency that specialises in software development and design within fashion and luxury industries. And Yasmina Kone is Senior Partnerships Manager at Beam – the world’s first crowdfunding platform for homeless people. We came together at Black Tech Fest 2021 to explore navigating and excelling within industries that can be inhospitab...

“A part of each of us, our essence, is timeless, has never been harmed, and carries a dream it is waiting for us to bring into the world.” These are words from my guest today, Langston Kahn, whose new book, Deep Liberation, brings together the shamanic wisdom of ancient spirituality with the needs and demands of modern-day life— he wants to help us transform the emotional patterns that hold us bac...

Koritha Mitchell is a firebrand and one of my favourite people to follow on Twitter. She’s Professor of English at Ohio State University and the author of two books: Living with Lynching: African American Lynching Plays, Performance, and Citizenship; and From Slave Cabins to the White House: Homemade Citizenship in African American Culture. Among much else in our far reaching conversation, we disc...

Dr Francesca Sobande is an author and academic whose book, The Digital Lives of Black Women in Britain, explores the myriad ways Black women in Britain thrive, influence and are erased as they navigate social media platforms. We discuss disentangling a distinct digital experience for Black women in Britain, her ongoing interest in borders, citizenship and diaspora, and whether expressions of Black...

Tristan Fynn-Aiduenu wants us to unleash our imaginations. A playwright, actor and director of Ghanaian heritage and raised in South London, he’s committed to telling stories that are wild, seasoned and passionate. He’s the director of a new play, For Black Boys Who Have Considered Suicide When the Hue Gets Too Heavy, in which six young Black men meet for group therapy, and let their hearts – and...

Lazarus Lynch is the multi-hyphenate artist behind Busy Being Black’s theme music. He’s a dear friend and someone I share a spiritual connection with, and I admire so much his ability to harness his creativity to create spaces, moments and music in the world that nourish, heal, provoke and soothe. Our conversation is a meditative exploration of our shared histories in the Black Church, the pursuit...

Content warning: This episode explores imprisonment, police brutality, homicide, sexual violence and mental illness. Please listen with care.  I believe in the abolition of prisons, and while I’m still learning about imagining and building societies that prioritise care, restorative justice, and people over profit-making, I know that we should not be locking people up in cages.  Michael Tenneson,...

Ted Brown is one of our most important and formidable elders. He's an activist and change maker, who’s been fighting for the rights of black and LGBTQ people for over 50 years. An original member of the Gay Liberation Front, Ted was instrumental in organising the UK’s first pride March through London. He’s been at the forefront of campaigns to demand better treatment of LGBTQ people in the media a...

I’m in conversation today with Shiloh Coke, a composer, musician, actor and writer who stars in a new audio play called recognition. In it, she voices Song, a Black woman composer who stumbles upon the work of Afro-English composer and conductor Samuel Coleridge-Taylor. The play, and their conversation across space and time, asks important questions like: How do we honour the forgotten whose work...

How do we honour the forgotten, whose work was once celebrated, and who gets to decide which work stands the test of time? These are questions we’re asked to consider in a new audio play called recognition, which explores the story and legacy of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor – an Afro-English composer and conductor born in London in 1875. The play brings Coleridge-Taylor to life in conversation with Son...

One of my favourite quotes is from Civil Rights icon Bayard Rustin, who said the proof that one truly believes is in action — and there are few who embody Bayard’s words as wholly and unapologetically as Abdul-Aliy Muhammad (they/them).  An organiser and activist born and raised in West Philadelphia, Abdul-Aliy has grown into a firebrand. Whether standing up for queer Black and brown communities i...

Content warning: Today’s conversation includes references to sexual violence. Please listen with care.  I caught up with Taitu Heron in December 2020, as a way of bringing to a close a difficult year with one of my favourite people. Taitu is a development specialist, human rights advocate, scholar and performance poet and we first met in St Lucia in February 2020, on the eve of the onset of the gl...

“Let yourself unlearn everything you thought you knew about yourself” is one of the many important life lessons George M. Johnson shares with young readers in their new book, All Boys Aren’t Blue. George calls the book a memoir-manifesto and in it, they grapple with sexuality, gender identity, assault, consent and Black joy – and I found it to be an utterly invigorating read.  We discuss the lesso...

My conversation this week is with queer Black poet and storyteller Jubi Arriola-Headley. Among his altogether brilliant debut collection of poetry is the tremendous "Every God Is a Slowly Dying Sun" — a heartbreaking reflection on Jubi’s relationship with the late poet Craig G Harris.  original kink is available now from Sibling Rivalry Press. About Busy Being Black Busy Being Black is the podcast...

I have fallen in love with the poetry of Jubi Arriola-Headley. Exploring themes of manhood, vulnerability, rage, tenderness and joy, his work speaks such truth to those of us reckoning with who we’ve been and who we want to be. Jubi is a queer Black poet and storyteller and his debut collection is called original kink. Our conversation explores his relationship with his late father and his intimat...

Today I’m in conversation with one of our elders, Jeffrey Pickering. Born and raised in Barbados, he moved to the UK at 16 to pursue further education. He went on to become a nurse and cardiac physiologist and shared his life with his partner Michael for 36 years, until Michael’s passing in 2011. Jeffrey spoke to me about his reverence for his mother, his first love, his career, his assiduous purs...