This week, Amanda sits down with SheConfidential Founder Charlene Ketchum to discuss their journeys forming Black women’s community and learning to care for their minds, bodies, and spirits. Follow SheConfidential on Instagram @She.confidential. Learn more about how to join Charlene’s SheConfidential community at SheConfidential.mn.co.

Amanda has a conversation about the legacy of the HIV/AIDS epidemic with Dr. April and Michael Petillo, both of whom were heavily involved in activism and education around the epidemic during the 80s and 90s.

If you are a queer elder who would like to share your story, email us at [email protected].

Subscribe to us on Patreon! We offer monthly bonus content like audio essays, monthly book club meetings, and group coaching.

You can also follow us on Instagram and TikTok at defineandempower.co.

Thank you to Mia Miranda for editing the audio for this episode.

List of books mentioned during the interview:

Gifts of the Body by Rebecca Brown

Written on the Body by Jeanette Winterson

Fear of a Queer Planet by Michael Warner

The Well of Loneliness by Radclyffe Hall

Body Alchemy by Lauren Cameron

Stone Butch Blues by Leslie Feinberg

This episode is the first in a series of conversations that I've been recording with queer elders. In my research as a doctoral student, I work to reconstruct Black feminist landscapes between the 1970s and the 1990s. These interviews build upon my research by allowing actual queer people to narrate the story of queer life during the latter half of the twentieth century.

This week, I had a conversation with two of my dear friends, Shepherd Tsosie and Libby Coyner. Libby Coyner (she/they/theme) is a queer, disabled, cancer-surviving Leo/Leo/Libra who works as an archivist in a mid-sized private university in North Carolina. She lives with her spouse Shepherd Tsosie with many cats and books, and they talk a lot about ethics of story-keeping and how we remember together. Shepherd Tsosie (Soh-see) is a fourth-gendered Diné (Di-neh) person from Arizona, they are an unaffiliated researcher and writer and they live with their wife and cats in North Carolina. Both of them have been so integral in helping me form my identity as a queer person of color, and I’m grateful we had the chance to chat. In this episode, we cover a variety of topics, including the Navajo gender system, what it means to be a queer elder, the late-90s queer punk scene, and the story of how they met and fell in love.

If you are a queer elder who would like to share your story, email us at [email protected].

You can also follow us on Instagram and TikTok at defineandempower.co.

Thank you to Mia Miranda for editing the audio for this episode.

If you would like me or one of our other facilitators to give a lecture or lead a workshop at your school or workplace, you can either DM us on our social media platforms or email us at [email protected].

Resources mentioned during the interview:

Making Gay History podcast by Eric Marcus

People in Search of Safe and Accessible Restrooms by Simone Chess, Alison Kafer, Jessi Quizar, and Mattie Udora Richardson

REFUGE Restrooms

Queering the Map

The Lesbian South: Southern Feminists, the Women in Print Movement, and the Queer Literary Canon by Jaime Harker

Subscribe to our newsletter here: https://defineandempower.com/newsletter

This week, Amanda had the chance to sit down with two of her undergraduate mentees, Allayne Thomas and Katherine Gan. In their conversation, they talk about the controversy around Simone Biles refusing to compete in some Olympic gymnastics events, their research projects, and the possibility of solidarity and mutual understanding between Black and Asian women.

Allayne is a recent graduate from Duke University where she studied International Comparative Studies, Korean, and Human rights. She is a gifted poet and avid reader. She currently works as a paralegal and is interested in attending law school. She enjoys binging Netflix, talking with friends, and obsessing over crumble cookies in her free time.

Katherine Gan is a senior at Duke University, majoring in Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist Studies. Her current project uses Asian/American women's poetry to excavate the afterlives of empire. She loves to read, be outside, and go biking.

If you have a topic you’d like us to cover or a question you’d like us to answer, you can DM us on social media, leave us a comment, or email us at [email protected].

You can follow us on Instagram and TikTok at @defineandempower.co.

Thank you to Mia Miranda for editing the audio for this episode.

Books Katherine mentioned:

Ghost Of by Diana Nguyen

A Cruelty Special to Our Species by Emily Jungmin Yoon

If They Come For Us by Fatimah Asghar

Poets Allayne mentioned:

Pavana Reddy

Nayyirah Waheed

Yrsa Daley-Ward

Warsan Shire

This week, Amanda had a conversation with Dr. Lindsey Smith. Lindsey is a professor of political science at Green River College. She writes and teaches classes on the ways race, gender, and intimacy are informed by history and the law. Together, Amanda and Lindsey have a conversation about the realities of pregnancy and motherhood and the struggles women face when seeking treatment for postpartum depression.

Link to postpartum depression article: https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2021/07/13/1011757615/women-say-california-insurer-makes-it-too-hard-to-get-drug-for-postpartum-depres

Follow us on Instagram and TikTok at http://defineandempower.co.

If you have a question you’d like us to answer on air, DM us on social media, email us at [email protected] or leave us a voice message at 971-338-9426

Thank you to Mia Miranda for editing the audio for this episode.

This week, we hosted a roundtable discussion on sexual violence with a group of women of color undergraduates, PhD students, activists, and writers. Thank you to Laura Jaramillo, Tammie Zhao, Katherine Gan, and Mia Miranda for participating in this dialogue.

In our conversation, we explain what sexual violence is, answer questions from listeners, and discuss our own experiences of breaking from toxic cycles of abuse. You’ll also hear our instructor Mia Miranda read from her auto fictional short story on sexual violence, titled “Slaughterhouse.”

Follow define&empower on Instagram and TikTok at @defineandempower.co.

If you have a question you’d like us to answer on air, DM us on social media, email us at [email protected] or leave us a voice message at 971-338-9426.

Thank you to Mia Miranda for editing the audio for this episode.

This week, define&empower’s founder Amanda Bennett had the chance to have a conversation with Tammie Zhao. Tammie is the founder of the liberationist community Just Gilded Cages. An artist and civic entrepreneur, Tammie holds space for humanity to connect and collaborate on building a world we all want to thrive in. In our conversation, we answered a listener question about how to protect Black girls from being hypersexualized while also instilling in them a sense of freedom through the practice of a loving community.

If you have a question you’d like us to answer on air, email us at [email protected] or leave us a voice message at 971-338-9426. Thank you to Mia Miranda for editing the audio for this episode.

Social media:

Tammie’s Instagram: @ZammieTao

Just Gilded Cages Instagram: @Justgildedcages

define&empower’s Instagram and TikTok: @defineandempower.co

Mentions:

Hood Feminism by Mikki Kendall

Sula by Toni Morrison

Pleasure Activism by adrienne maree brown

Thanks for tuning into define&empower’s podcast, Black Feminist Hotline. define&empower is a Black feminist education and consulting collective that places the varied perspectives of Black women at the center of all of our work. This podcast extends the work we do at define&empower by giving you, our listener, access to authentic, creative, and honest conversations between Black women and other women of color.

This week, I had the chance to have a conversation with Temi Lasade-Anderson. She’s a masters student in the UK. She’s a critical internet scholar who focuses on race, tech, and digital culture. I hope you enjoy our conversation about a wide range of topics including grief, mental health, relationships, and our visions of a Black feminist future. Follow Temi on Instagram at @temisresearch. Follow Amanda on Instagram at @theamandashow12 or on Twitter at @theamandashow16.

Follow d&e on Instagram and TikTok at @defineandempower.co. Or you can check out our website, defineandempower.com. Many thanks to Mia Miranda for editing the audio for this episode.