It's the Season One finale! Khristen sits down with filmmaker, Melissa Lowery, to discuss her 2014 feature documentary, "Black Girl in Suburbia." It discusses just about everything we've talked about here in Season One - what a perfect ending! We dive into Melissa's filmmaking process from the intersectional lens of director, the inner child, and a mother of Black daughters. Listen until the end for a special treat!
To learn more of Melissa's work and/or to reach out to her for inquiries, visit her website www.blackgirlinsuburbia.com or email her at [email protected]. You can also check her out on Instagram @blackgirlinsuburbia, Twitter @BlkGrlNSuburbia, or her Facebook Page "Black Girl in Suburbia."
Featuring: Melissa Lowery
Content warning: mild language
Intro music: @ashatunesmash
Cover art/logo: @caithedeviant

This episode is all about microaggressions! Khristen invites one of her college roomies on the show to talk about her experiences in suburban Boston. This is the first time we see shared experiences across regions (midwest and New England/east coast), and the stories are endless! 

Featuring: Jhenna Louis, JD

Content warning: mild to foul language

Intro music: @ashatunesmash
Cover art/logo: @caithedeviant

Khristen and her hometown classmate catch up on their shared experiences of growing up in the suburbs. Crystal always used to ask "why?" as a kid, and this small but critical question allowed her to see systemic issues cloaked in upbeat songs and one of her teacher's attempts to get her class to see the gray areas in history. How have you raged against the machine?

Featuring:
Crystal Terrell

Content warning: mentions of sexual assault and mild to foul language

Intro music: @ashatunesmash
Cover art/logo: @caithedeviant

Belonging versus fitting in. Do you know the difference?

Khristen and a longtime family friend check in about belonging in a world that does not always see or accept us as who we are. While there's no subject matter expert in this episode, there's more than enough conversation to go around! We define belonging versus fitting in, thanks to Brene' Brown's definition, and discuss similar moments of friend group exclusion, romantic partner mismatches, and a universal misunderstanding that our parents' money was not our money. Basically, go find your tribe - they're out there waiting for you!

Featuring:
Ariel Seay-Howard, MA

Intro music: @ashatunesmash
Cover art/logo: @caithedeviant

Khristen takes us right into a conversation about Black hair. She talks with a historian about the constant work Black women have to do to debunk Eurocentric beauty standards. This episode's everyday guest shares her many hair horror stories as a child, and Khristen and Tiffany learn they have similar hair experiences as they entered into college. Let's just say relaxers and hair dye don't mix!

Featuring:
Siobhan Carter-David, PhD, @sdotcd (Instagram)
Tiffany Humes, OD

Black Business Shout Out: Made by Somi Hair and Skincare, @madebysomi; madebysomi.com
Intro music: @ashatunesmash
Cover art/logo: @caithedeviant

"School Daze" engages with a veteran educator sharing her story of teaching in a suburban school district, how she made sure to have Black women colleagues in her inner work circle, and her determination to mentor her Black students. We also hear from a Chicago native, who transferred into a predominantly white high school, talk her truth about navigating her new school, making friends, and, of course, dating.

Featuring:

Dawn Warren Hildreth

Arielle Bassett, @thearieiman

Advertisement: KreativeInc, LLC; @_kreativeinc; www.kreativemade.com

Intro music: @ashatunesmash

Cover art/logo: @caithedeviant

Episode 2 dives into a common practice among Black people: code switching. How Black people from the suburbs experience code switching, however, is a little non-traditional compared to Black people from mixed or all-Black neighborhoods. This topic was so good, there are two subject matter experts! Listen in to how Khristen and her guests discuss linguistics (high level definition: theory of language, dialects, and speech) and lived experiences of code switching in the burbs.

Featuring:
Nicole Holliday, PhD, www.nicoleholliday.com, @mixedlinguist
Tracey Weldon-Stewart, PhD, Middle-Class African American English, https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/middleclass-african-american-english/0C1ED3C71126B199313AF933CA8C2D13
Grant Flennoy, Jr.

Advertisement: Made by Somi Hair and Skincare; @madebysomi; madebysomi.com
Intro music: @ashatunesmash
Cover art/logo: @caithedeviant

The first episode of the series, Beginning of the Burbs, discusses the history of the suburb phenomenon in the United States from a sociological perspective. What was this new geographical location that differed from the big cities and the countryside? Listen in to learn about how the suburbs began from a sociologist, and the lived experience of a family who made that trek from the city to the burbs! 

Features the following guests: 
Janeria Easley, PhD
Pamela Bradford, DDS

Intro music: @ashatunesmash
Cover art/logo: @caithedeviant

Resources: 
http://www2.nber.org/mtopublic/ 
https://youtu.be/ETR9qrVS17g