This episode contains spoilers.

On today’s RESET episode we are recapping the FX eight episode series on Octavia E. Butler’s celebrated novel Kindred. The visionary time-travel classic whose Black female hero is pulled through time to face the horrors of American slavery and explores the impacts of racism, sexism, and white supremacy then and now.

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his episode contains spoilers.

On today’s RESET episode we are recapping Netflix limited series: From Scratch starring Zoe Saldaña and Eugenio Mastrandrea. This romantic drama is based on Tembi Locke’s bestselling memoir with the same name.

From Scratch is a cross-cultural love story that follows Amahle ‘Amy’ Wheeler (played by Zoe Saldaña) an American student studying abroad in Italy, as she meets and falls in love with Lino, a Sicilian chef. Their whirlwind romance faces many unforeseen challenges, including their very different cultural backgrounds; true to real life, it is also infused with lightheartedness and moments of humor that exist alongside the more serious ones. But when Lino is faced with unimaginable health challenges and the couple’s future is threatened, the two families come together to create an extended family unlike any they could have imagined, proving that love crosses all borders.

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On today’s episode we are continuing our journey with the works of Alice Walker, and discussing Book 2 of 3: in the The Color Purple Collection, The Temple of My Familiar.

Celie and Shug from The Color Purple subtly shadow the lives of dozens of characters in The Temple of My Familiar, all of whom are dealing with the legacy of the African experience in America in some way. From recent African immigrants to a woman who grew up in South America's mixed-race rainforest communities, to Celie's own granddaughter living in modern-day San Francisco, all must come to terms with their ancestors' brutal stories in order to come to terms with their own troubled lives.

Walker weaves a new mythology from old fables and history as she follows these remarkable characters, a profoundly spiritual explanation for centuries of shared African-American experience.

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On today's episode, we’re continuing our conversation on Black Women, Black Love: America's War on African American Marriage. Dr. Dianne Stewart, professor of religion and African American studies at Emory University, argues that Black women are single by circumstance and points to intentional efforts by the U.S. government to prevent Black marriages from occurring.

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On today's episode, we discuss Black Women, Black Love: America's War on African American Marriage by Dianne Stewart

This episode contains spoilers.

Summary

In this analysis of social history, examine the complex lineage of America's oppression of Black companionship.

According to the 2010 US census, more than 70 percent of Black women in America are unmarried. Black Women, Black Love reveals how four centuries of laws, policies, and customs have created that crisis.

Dianne Stewart begins in the colonial era, when slave owners denied Blacks the right to marry, divided families, and, in many cases, raped enslaved women and girls. Later, during Reconstruction and the ensuing decades, violence split up couples again as millions embarked on the Great Migration north, where the welfare system mandated that women remain single in order to receive government support. And no institution has forbidden Black love as effectively as the prison-industrial complex, which removes Black men en masse from the pool of marriageable partners.

Prodigiously researched and deeply felt, Black Women, Black Love reveals how white supremacy has systematically broken the heart of Black America, and it proposes strategies for dismantling the structural forces that have plagued Black love and marriage for centuries.

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On today’s RESET we are discussing the first episode of the Netflix limited series: From Scratch starring Zoe Saldaña and Eugenio Mastrandrea. This romantic drama is based on Tembi Locke's bestselling memoir with the same name.

Stay connected with us!

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Contact: [email protected]

On today's episode, we discuss the importance of rest by delving into Tricia Hersey's Rest Is Resistance: A Manifesto.

******This episode contents spoilers. *******

Summary

In Rest Is Resistance, Tricia Hersey, aka the Nap Bishop, casts an illuminating light on our troubled relationship with rest and how to imagine and dream our way to a future where rest is exalted. Our worth does not reside in how much we produce, especially not for a system that exploits and dehumanizes us. Rest, in its simplest form, becomes an act of resistance and a reclaiming of power because it asserts our most basic humanity. We are enough. The systems cannot have us.

Rest Is Resistance is rooted in spiritual energy and centered in Black liberation, womanism, somatics, and Afrofuturism. With captivating storytelling and practical advice, all delivered in Hersey’s lyrical voice and informed by her deep experience in theology, activism, and performance art, Rest Is Resistance is a call to action, a battle cry, a field guide, and a manifesto for all of us who are sleep-deprived, searching for justice, and longing to be liberated from the oppressive grip of Grind Culture.

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On today’s episode we discuss, The Color Purple: The Story of an American Masterpiece by Salamishah Tillet

******This episode contains spoilers. *****

Summary

Alice Walker made history in 1982 when she became the first Black woman to win the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award, both for The Color Purple. Published in the Reagan Era amid a severe backlash to civil rights, the jazz-age novel tells the story of an African American woman haunted by domestic and sexual violence. Prominent academic and activist Salamishah Tillet combines cultural criticism, history, and memoir to explore Walker’s epistolary novel, showing how it has influenced and been informed by the zeitgeist of the time. The Color Purple received both praise and criticism upon publication, and the conversation it sparked around race and gender still continues today. It has been adapted for an Oscar-nominated film and a hit Broadway musical.

Through interviews with Walker, Oprah Winfrey, Quincy Jones, and others, as well as archival research, Tillet studies Walker’s life and the origins of her subjects, including violence, sexuality, gender, and politics. Reading The Color Purple at age 15 was a groundbreaking experience for Tillet. It continues to resonate with her - as a sexual-violence survivor, as a teacher of the novel, and as an accomplished academic. Provocative and personal, In Search of the Color Purple is a bold work from an important public intellectual.

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On today’s episode we are bringing back a segment we called “Girl Talk '' and now calling it ‘Reset’. Our focus in these segments is to prioritizing our mental and emotional health by checking in with each other and discussing life and everything in between.

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On today’s episode, we are discussing multifaceted writer, media personality, and cultural commentator, Sesali Bowen’s memoir/manifesto, “Bad Fat Black Girl: Notes from a Trap Feminist”. Bowen was Senior Entertainment Editor at NYLON magazine and one of the architects of Refinery29’s Unbothered. She is the creator, producer, and co-host of Purse First, the podcast about the female and queer rap. And some of her works has appeared in Cosmopolitan, New York Times, and other outlets.

Publisher's Summary

Bowen rose to the top of hip-hop journalism thanks to her passion for trap music, where she profiled musicians like Megan Thee Stallion, Lizzo, and Janelle Monae who changed the game. Bowen observed a lot of beauty, intricacy, and all-around badassery, but she discovered that mainstream feminism did not reflect any of that complexity.

As a result, she coined the term ‘Trap Feminism’, a modern paradigm that questions how feminism interacts with contemporary hip-hop. For the contemporary world, Bad Fat Black Girl presents a fresh, inclusive feminism. Bowen examines misogyny, fatphobia, and capitalism in the context of race and hip-hop, weaving together her life experiences and cultural critique.

Listen to listen to Ebony Musings now in Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts.