Tangible Voices

The Preface and Editor's Note to I Dream a World. 

The reading this week is perfectly imperfect. It's been a week, ya'll. I'm owning it... for now. #perfectionist #type4 #infp (lol)

Favorite quotes: 

"My greatest lesson was that this is my history, this is American history. "

"... when the flowing box in our living room disrupted all that I'd been taught, I was shocked. Black people were being attacked by dogs, clubs, and fire hoses. I was bewildered. My mother had instilled in us the belief that everyone was equal in the eyes of God. Didn't God tell everyone?"

"This celebration of sisters is not an attempt to elevate or lower any segment of society, it is merely an opportunity to savor the triumphs of the human spirit..."

"My job-- the privilege and pain of it-- was to capture a life on a page of words."

"Looking at these women, love is not hard to find." 

This is Tangible Voices, a space where true voices from the past and present can be uncovered, shift our perspective, and resonate with our lives today. I’m Carey, an educator, performer, and artist. I hope to put many different voices over the loudspeaker, so to speak, through this podcast.

To kick off my series, over the next few episodes, I will be reading accounts from African-American women who changed history-- and in their own words. The book I’ll be reading from is called I Dream A World: Portraits of Black Women Who Changed America. The book contains photographs and interviews by Brian Lanker. Edited by Barbara Summers,  foreword by Maya Angelou. This book was originally published in 1989.

Today, I will be reading “They Came to Stay”, Maya Angelou’s foreword to I Dream A World. This is a captivating, heart-wrenching, brutally honest reminder of the weight African-turned-American women have carried for the USA. 

In this year, 2020, the Amplify Melanated Voices movement has taken off. I am an African-American myself, a descendant of West Africans, and the more I learn about my people, the more I desire to share our history. Though I had conceived this very episode last year, I’m beginning to come to the understanding that everything happens for a reason; and this is an important time to begin releasing stories to the world.