You’ll no doubt have heard of and read Kuchenga Shenjé's debut novel, The Library Thief, which brings together her passions for history, mystery and rebels; and you’re likely to have felt the warmth and humour of her writing in publications like British Vogue and Stylist. In our conversation, we explore how she came to the transformative decision to pursue sobriety, her hodgepodge approach to her spirituality and spiritual practice, how the deferred dreams of her mother and grandmother have shaped how she enjoys her life and what she’s learned from the characters in her novel and daring women across history about what it means to live a life worth writing about.

You can find out more about Kuchenga here.

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I’ve been invigorated by Legacy Russell’s ongoing inquiries into how we come alive together. Whether she’s encouraging us to think expansively about the connection between marine life and Black agency under duress, or pointing us towards the liberatory possibilities at the intersection of our bodies, genders and technologies, her work is evidence of her desire and drive to live in a world in which Black folks thrive.

We explore how an investigation into visual culture helps us appreciate and reckon with the role Black people have played in shaping the modern world, our responsibility as global and digital citizens to harness the internet to collectively push forward what our shared future looks like, and what we learn from what it means to really live—or to not live—from the ancestors who refused to survive the Middle Passage. 

Legacy's first book, Glitch Feminism, explores how we find liberation in the glitch between body, gender and technology; her second book, Black Meme, shows us how images of Blackness have always been central to our understanding of the modern world. Both are available from Verso Books.

If you’d like to dive deeper into the cultural, literary and artistic references named throughout this conversation, please subscribe to Field Notes—a collection of the wonderlust that inspires and informs conversations on Busy Being Black.

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How do we engage with and sustain Black cultures, communities, histories and futures outside of the extractive infrastructures and institutions that thrive on Black death and disposability? Maleke Glee is a curator and scholar of cultural sustainability who offers go-go music as a wonderful working example: a genre and sonic landscape native to Washington DC, with an insular economy that supports self-taught and formerly incarcerated musicians.

Our conversation today also explores the spiritual work that undergirds Maleke’s ongoing research into and preservation of go-go music, how initiatives for Black inclusion within art world institutions often stifle ongoing efforts to sustain Black vernacular cultures, and how a closer relationship to ugliness helps us queer what it means to embody and pursue Black excellence.

If you’d like to dive deeper into the cultural, vernacular and academic references named throughout this conversation, please subscribe to Field Notes, a newsletter that collects the wonderlust that inspires and informs conversations on Busy Being Black.

Busy Being Black is proudly supported by myGwork – the largest global talent and networking platform for LGBTQ+ professionals. If you're not yet a member, now's the time to join.

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Angelina Namiba serves as a possibility model for effective and sustained engagement with those vulnerable to HIV. When she was diagnosed in the early 90s, she immediately set to work to understand why Black women were being left out of national efforts to combat the spread of the virus, and she participated in and assembled groups of women committed to raising the voices of women living with HIV globally.

She is a titan within England’s HIV advocacy movement and she has worked for almost 25 years to promote and advocate for the involvement of women living with HIV in forming and informing local and national HIV strategy and policy. Today, we explore the resilience required to sustain our advocacy when our lives are systemically undervalued and the ongoing need for cultural competency within the NHS, which despite being built on the backs of Black women, still leaves so many Black women to suffer in silence.

Angelina shares the mnemonic device she created to help women remember their rights when engaging with healthcare practitioners, and the role literature, storytelling and book clubs have played in bringing her and others like her together to effect systemic change. Angelina reminds that in the face of anti-Blackness, homophobia and misogynoir, it has always been us looking after us.

Recommended reading:

Our Stories Told by Us by Angelina Namiba

Queer Footprints by Dan Glass

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Dennis Carney is an elder whose respect among our community needs no justification nor explanation. Among much else, he led the now-closed Black Gay and Lesbian Centre in Brixton, and he has worked for 25 years as a therapeutic practitioner, supporting Black gay men to love themselves more deeply, hold their emotions more gently and show up in the world more fully.

We explore his involvement in the Stop Murder Music campaign, the internationalism of Brixton’s Black Gay and Lesbian Centre and the creation of “Let’s Wrap”, the UK’s first-ever discussion group for Black gay men, which was hosted at London Lighthouse, the leading hospice and charity for people living with HIV. We attend to the history of the long 1980’s, and Dennis shares his advice and insights on what we should pay closer attention to about that fraught, traumatic and generative period of our collective history.

Dennis shares how his disillusionment with the efficacy of protests and marches helped recalibrate his energy and efforts towards self-empowerment within our communities, and we broach the ever-important topic of intergenerational conversations, including what we learn from each other in our efforts to get free. Dennis reminds us that love for oneself and community, especially within a world so primed for lovelessness, has a singularly motivating power that supports us in being the change we hope to see in the world.

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We are living through a particularly tense geopolitical moment and I have found myself in a near-constant state of anger over the past couple of weeks. I have had to work very hard to ensure the language and energy I put out into the world is not only angry, but productive. To help me – and us – show up with compassion and clarity in this moment, I’m resurfacing my 2019 conversation with communications provocateur Jean Lloyd.

Jean has spent her life deeply committed to the emancipation of the human spirit and she invites us to focus on and remember that language is a tool used to create, not destroy. We explore the difference between talking and communication; forgiveness and making peace with unanswered questions and missing apologies; the urgent, important and life-long work of being ourselves; and communication as the essential tool for love and our liberation.

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I’m thrilled to share this conversation with British Nigerian writer and curator Irenosen Okojie, which was recorded at the Garden Cinema in London after a private viewing of Blitz Bazawule’s new musical adaption of The Color Purple. Our conversation was one of many events that took place as part of Irenosen’s Black to the Future festival, an afrofuturist celebration of outstanding Black artists and a growing space for visionary imaginings to thrive.

We explore why The Color Purple aligns with Irenosen’s notions of afrofuturism; the lessons we can learn from characters within the novel and the musical about Black hope, family and love; and the ways Black queer people across space and time continue to live, by example, the futures we deserve to inhabit together.

Thank you to our friends at Warner Bros, The Royal Society of Literature and The Garden Cinema for making this conversation with Irenosen possible.

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The urgent problems of our time require collective engagement with the generative offerings of our imaginations. Whether our work calls us to challenge the extractive practices ruining our planet, educate a new generation of thinkers and creators, or to put out into the burning world poetry that awakens and enlivens, each of us carries – and feels the weight of – a responsibility to help fashion a better future.

My guests today offer us ways to tackle the demands of liberation through active engagement with the Black radical imagination and tradition. I’m in conversation with Melz Owusu, Marai Larasi and Yomi Sode. Melz is the Founder of the Free Black University and a PhD researcher at the University of Cambridge. Marai is a feminist advocate, community organiser and consultant who has worked in social justice for over twenty-seven years. And Yomi is an award-winning writer and the recipient of the 2019 Jerwood Compton Poetry Fellowship.

This conversation was recorded at Rehearsing Freedoms, a festival of community health, healing, movement building, arts and culture created and curated by Healing Justice London. And together we explore how the Black radical imagination helps shift us out of oppressive landscapes and times, and towards just and dignifying worlds that affirm Black aliveness.

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Julian Joseph is acclaimed as one of the finest jazz musicians to emerge this side of the Atlantic and his career has been characterised by many ground-breaking advances: he was the first Black British jazz musician to host a series of concerts at London’s Wigmore Hall and the first to headline a late-night televised performance at the BBC Proms.

We explore how jazz and life are both animated by the art of improvisation, the methodology that undergirds the educative offering of the Julian Joseph Jazz Academy, the instruments and symphonies that enchant him, the artists and composers he recommends to inspire us to adventure, and his message to those who feel like they have music within them, but aren’t quite sure how to get it out.

Julian plays Gershwin with London Philharmonic Orchestra on 22 November – and subscribers to Field Notes have an exclusive discount on tickets.

About Busy Being Black

Busy Being Black with Josh Rivers is the award-winning podcast that centres and celebrates queer Black liveliness. Help these enlivening conversations reach more people, by leaving a rating and review.

Thank you to our funding partner, myGwork – the business community for LGBT+ professionals, students, inclusive employers and anyone who believes in workplace equality.

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Questioning and then breaching our limits is a salient and consequential concern — and a quest Elijah McKinnon undertakes as founder and executive diva of Open Television (OTV), a platform and media incubator for intersectional storytelling. Elijah’s insights into how their imagination is supported and encouraged by their pragmatism made me think and reflect on how I engage with my own; and we wax lyrical on a shared desire to become undone. We explore the difference between surrender and intentional release, the differing demands of and confusion between transparency and vulnerability, and refusing to be bound by other people’s ideas and labels. Elijah reflects on their stewardship of OTV, the care required to sustain artistic vitality, and how an entitlement to softness has transformed their sense of duty to themselves and the communities they love.

About Elijah McKinnon

Elijah McKinnon (they/them) is an award-winning entrepreneur, strategist and visionary from the future currently residing on planet earth. They are the founder of Chicago-based consultancy and creative studio People Who Care, which specialises in campaign development and management, brand strategy and identity and cultural productions exclusively for non-profits and grassroots initiatives. Elijah is the Co-founder and Executive Director of Open Television, an Emmy-nominated non-profit and web TV platform for intersectional artistry.

About Busy Being Black

Busy Being Black with Josh Rivers is the award-winning podcast that centres and celebrates queer Black liveliness. Help these enlivening conversations reach more people, by leaving a rating and review.

Sign up for Field Notes – Busy Being Black's newsletter offering to encourage your wonderlust.

Thank you to our funding partner, myGwork – the business community for LGBT+ professionals, students, inclusive employers and anyone who believes in workplace equality.

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