In the Telling

Odile Tevie’s love of people and their stories and connections inspire a curiosity that moves her to explore beyond the surface and cross boundaries. Born in Accra, Tevie refuses to be boxed in by anyone and embraces all the things that make and have shaped her. And for her, the voyage of discovery is a never-ending one. Tevie is the current director and co-founder of Nubuke Foundation, a visual a...

Ajamu is a fine art photographic artist, scholar, archive curator and radical sex activist with a 25+ year track record of exhibiting in museums, galleries and alternative spaces worldwide. He is the co-founder of the award winning rukus! Federation, the rukus! Black LGBTQ Archive, and is a leading specialist on Black queer history, heritage and cultural memory in the UK. His philosophical-politic...

Dr. Edwina Ashie-Nikoi is an archivist, historian and curator of the African/Diaspora experience. Her probing of culture and history began early, constantly asking (pestering!) her bemused parents and older kinfolk about their family and Ga ethnic histories. Having connected with various strands of blackness while growing up in Dubai, studying in the US and researching in the Caribbean and UK, she...

In this episode, Dr. Maboula Soumahoro talks about her Côte d'Ivoire heritage and the complexities of being born in France. Dr. Soumahoro is an associate professor in the English department of the University of Tours, France, where she also received her PhD. A specialist in the field of Africana Studies (Atlantic), Dr. Soumahoro has conducted research and taught in several universities and prisons...

Flip Couto is the Executive director of " Aliança Pró Saúde da População Negra" (Alliance for the Health of the Black Population), founder of Collective AMEM (group of black queer artists), dancer at Sansa-croma company and member of House of Zion. He is an HIV+ brazilian dancer, performer, cultural mischief maker and curator who interrogates, redefines and creates a diverse range of spaces and ac...

In this episode, librarian and genealogist Phillip Bond talks about the maternal and paternal matriarchs of his family, Venus Bond and Ella Dockery,  the impossible odds they had against them and the incredible legacy they left behind. Phillip Bond has been working in public libraries for 15 years. Beginning his career as a public librarian for the Brooklyn Public Library, he uses the diverse...

Where are you from? Where are your families from? Dr. Stanton Biddle began his family research in response to these questions from classmates while in grade school in rural western New York State, which was largely white. His initial questions: when did his African American ancestors come to New York; where did they come from and why did they come? These questions gave way to other questions. Fort...

Eric Darnell Pritchard is an award-winning writer, cultural critic, and an Associate Professor of English at the University at Buffalo. He is also faculty at the Bread Loaf School of English at Middlebury College. Eric is the author of Fashioning Lives: Black Queers and the Politics of Literacy and editor of “Sartorial Politics, Intersectionality, and Queer Worldmaking,” a special issue of QED: A...

If we are fortunate, we have our biological families and our chosen families. Our history as African Americans is a complicated, often painful one. As descendants of enslaved people, we lived with the omnipresent possibility of separation through the sale of our fathers, mothers, sisters and brothers. After coming out to their family, many lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people also suffere...

Building a healthy life can be difficult. Doing it while engaging dysfunctional family members can be insufferable. Carla Whyte, an educator from Brooklyn, NY, knows this struggle intimately. As the only person in her immediate family to participate extensively in therapy, Carla considers what it means to strive to be well in a toxic family environment. The Brooklynite has been teaching for about...

Join us this episode as we speak with Katherine “Kat” Cheairs, a filmmaker, educator, curator, activist and community artist. Kat’s areas of interest and research include: HIV & AIDS; visual culture; media arts therapy; community arts; and, critical race theory in art education. Ms. Cheairs is a co-curator of Metanoia: Transformation Through AIDS Archives and Activism , an archival exhibition...

Alexis De Veaux was born and raised in Harlem. She is the product of two merging streams of black history in New York City--immigrants from the Caribbean on her mother’s side and migrants from North Carolina on her father’s side who settled in Harlem in the early decades of the Twentieth Century. The second of eight children, that history was embedded in her mother’s view of life: as she would say...

This weeks episode features Alexis Pauline Gumbs, a community-cherished writer, a queer Black feminist scholar and an aspirational cousin to you and everyone you know. Alexis is the author of  Spill: Scenes of Black Feminist Fugitivity  (Duke Press, 2016),  M Archive: After the End of the World  (Duke Press 2018) and  Dub: Finding Ceremony  (Duke Press, 2020).  S...

In this episode of In the Telling , Christopher Stahling talks about his two seminal figures in his life, his grandmothers Ethel and Thelma. Both women lived together in Harlem and deeply impacted Christopher as a youngster, though differently.  Join us for enjoyable and thoughtful stories about these two special women--and learn about Chris, too! Christopher Stahling is a life coach, mixed media...

In our second episode, Miranda Mims, co-founder of the Nomadic Archivist Project (NAP), an initiative devoted to developing relationships and beginning conversations around preserving legacy, memory, connection, and trust in the African diaspora, spoke about searching for her great-grandfather. Miranda has been actively researching her family history for the last 15 years, from reconstructing the...

Hey NAP family! Glad you are here to join us on our very first episode of In the Telling! Our first episode features NAP's co-founder Steven G. Fullwood - writer, archivist, and amateur photographer and filmmaker. His published works include Black Gay Genius  (2014), and Carry the Word: A Bibliography of Black LGBTQ Books (2007). Fullwood is the former associate curator of the Manus...