Liberation, Softness, and A Good Ol’ Banjo with EbonyJanice

Hey, friends.

Welcome and welcome back to Nosy af where we have conversations about art, activism and social change.

I'm your host and friend, Stephanie Graham, and I so much admire today's guest on the show, Ebony Janese.

Ebony Janese is a superstar lady whose work blends activism, art, comedy, academia, and she does it with pure unapologetic brilliance.

Ebony Janiece has authored several books, but the one framing today's conversation is All Black Girls are activists.

A Fourth Wave womanist pursuit of dreams as radical resistance.

Ebony Janiece is smooth as F.

She is a womanist theologian, an educator, writer and performer whose work is all about liberation, wholeness, and finding softness in a world that wants you talking to you, hardened.

And to that I say, absolutely not.

Hardened me.

Hardened you?

Nah, that's not gonna fly.

So from developing fourth wave womanism to creating art that explores Black American women's journey toward healing and flight, Ebony Janese is here to drop wisdom, challenge norms, and most importantly, make us feel seen and heard.

And to that, I he double hockey sticks.

Yes.

Am I right?

I'm so happy.

Ebony Janiece is here today.

But first theme song.

Gotta get up, get up Tell the whole world you a winner Winner.

Vision of a car with a missing.

In the car what you doing?

How you doing?

What you doing and who you are?

Flex yourself and press yourself Check yourself, don't wreck yourself if you know me.

Then you know that I be knowing what's up.

Hey, Stephanie Graham is nosy as Ebony Janiece.

Thank you so much and welcome to Nosy af.

Thank you for having me.

Yes.

I'm so thrilled.

I was thinking that for my audience who are majority of, like, artists and culture makers, if we could just sort of go together to define the principles of fourth wave womanism.

Yes, yes, yes, yes.

So womanism is a socio, political, spiritual, religious tool.

That or the way that I've defined it, that is used for justice making, that is used for wholeness making.

And the term originally was coined by Alice Walker in her book In Search of Our Mother's Gardens.

And it's really, it's written in prose.

So it's this four part definition where she starts talking about how a womanist is, you know, loves the moon, loves softness, loves.

She doesn't say softness.

That's just me throwing that in there.

But loves the moon, loves roundness, loves dance, loves spirit.

There's another part of the definition where she says, a daughter says to her mother, mama, I'm going to Canada and I'm taking you.

And several Other slaves with me.

Another part of the definition she says womanist is like womanish, which is similar to being too grown, knowing too much.

And so she's really fleshing this out in this kind of poetic way.

But she gets to the last part of the definition and she says womanism is to feminism as purple is to lavender.

And so the way that I interpret that is that that is Alice Walker's way of saying that womanism is black women's feminist work, but it's a deeper shade of purple.

It's the deeper feminist work.

And because from what we know about her work and that she fleshed out both in the definition and onward is that Alice Walker is suggesting that black women's feminist work is not just what we knew at that time, you know, as feminist work.

Just, it's not just about gender equal equality.

It's really about wholeness.

You know, it's really about our roundness, it's really about our fullness as human beings.

And so when I came to womanism, I came actually through womanist theology because these black women theologians who are doing a lot of work, learning with Dr.

James cone, who is considered the father of black liberation theology.

And so what this, the whole entire idea was saying that this sacred text that we know of as the Bible can't be the whole story because blackness hasn't been fleshed out.

And what black liberation theologians were knowing is that God couldn't have forgotten us, right?

God couldn't have forgotten black people were Black women theologians were seeing themselves certainly in black liberation theology, but were offering at the same time there's something else missing, and it is our unique identity as black women who, who, you know, that there's something that needs to be spoken to for our black womanists and that the naming woman or womanist really spoke to that a little bit more.

The definition of womanism really spoke to that a little bit more.

And so they coined this term womanist theology.

And so that's how I came to womanism.

That's how I came to womanist theology from this theological perspective or from the spiritual religious perspective.

And so as I began to learn more about womanism and really find myself as, or already identifying as a woman, it's just without that naming, knowing that there was something very unique, both from my freedom making or my justice seeking self, and also from this spiritual religious being or this theologian, this person who is deeply invested in spirit and knowing more about God and understanding more about the divine and my relationship with the divine, that there has to be some Unique language or some unique conversation that is had for me, and that centers me.

And so that's where I came into womanism, but along the way of learning and being, you know, really identifying as a womanist and a womanist theologian, I realized that we were in another wave of womanism.

And this particular wave of womanism was thinking about spirit making, spiritual work, thinking about justice making, thinking about identity making from this full perspective and knowing that literally wellness couldn't be supplemental to the work, but that wellness, that our wholeness, that our, you know, our softness, our pursuing our whole selves, was literally the radical work.

The most radical work that we could ever do was to really return to ourselves.

And I identified it as another wave because I realized that there were a lot of other black women and femme folk who were doing similar work, who were not just saying, we're preaching from the pulpit or we're doing this activism work, and this is a supplemental tool that we're using, but that we're literally saying no.

Actually, the work that we're supposed to be doing is taking care of ourselves, is seeking ourselves, is pursuing ourselves.

And the reality is, historically, black women haven't had the privilege of centering ourselves in that way.

Black femme folk haven't had the privilege or the rights or.

And really, in a lot of ways, the audacity to say, I'm going to take care of me first, and then, you know, the rest and the end of that kind of intro, you know, defining that.

I really realized as a.

As a wave was that it wasn't just from this sociopolitical or from this academic perspective, or from this theological perspective, or even from this perspective of being in ministry.

What really affirmed it was that the art.

The art that we were making as black women and femme folk really even began to speak to that.

See also Solange seat at the table really is a full womanist reclamation where she says, I'm gonna go look for my body.

I'll be back real soon.

And so there's something in that that really was kind of like if there was a mantra or a song or.

Or a theme song for what a fourth wave of womanism is.

It really is black women saying, I'mma go look for my body.

I'mma go look for me, myself, my wholeness, and I'm a.

And I'm.

And then I'll be back to take care of everybody else, if that's what I got to come back to do, and.

Or that I'mma go look for my body, I'll be back like Real soon.

And that being back, you know, is when I get back, hopefully y'all be good.

Or when I get back, you know, there will be a lifting or there will be a stretching or there will be an enlarging that will happen just as a result of me going to get me and coming back.

This makes sense.

One thing, I was thinking of listening to your book.

I was like, wow, Ebony.

Janiece knows a lot of people.

I feel like I need to even get your book just so I can reference all the names.

I was like, maybe this would be my art project, like making little zines of all these folks.

But yeah.

Cause I'm like, wow.

But then it made me think your background, like, oh, yeah, she did study theology.

I feel like you're writing or at least like you're reading.

It's you narrating the book.

You speak so easy like a friend.

And so it just.

You forget that you have this background.

You just seem like you're a friend.

That's just like talking as if you're just talking as if we're, like, out working.

I think of like in Forrest Gump, Bubba Gump, how he's just saying, like, there's this kind of shrimp and that kind of shrimp.

And you're like, and this Alice Walker and then this theologian.

And then this theologian.

I'm like, wow.

I think another thing that's important in that, too, though, Stephanie, is that what also, I think you could recognize about, you know, some of the people that I name dropped that really are the homies or that really are people that I have been learning with or learning in community with, is that that's your circle, too, you know, and for whoever the listener is, that's your circle, too, that you are either surrounded by and.

Or should be surrounding yourself by people who are adding to the canon, who are thinking through the thought.

And so it seems.

It seems really like, oh, my gosh, how does she know all these people?

But, you know, either next year or 10 years from now or 15 years from now, we literally will be the same saying the same thing about, you know, whoever.

The community of folk that you're in relationship with.

Because none of those.

None of us are on an island by ourselves learning these things, right?

I'm learning in community with some brilliant people who, 15, 20 years ago, when we first started really digging into these conversations, we was just, you know, nobody knew who.

You know, Nobody knew who 15, 20 years ago.

I won't say nobody knew who Sonya Renee Taylor was, because she was doing.

She was well known in another arena.

But then as her work began to shift and she's in relationship with all these other people, you know, or we're in relationship.

Right.

As her work began to shift, of course it impacts the things that I'm thinking about.

So my friend who is not known on an international stage, I'm not known on an international stage, but we're growing and evolving and community together.

So we arrive at this place at the same time and it looks like, wait, how do they all know each other?

Meanwhile, we.

Nobody knew us 27 minutes ago.

And, and I'm done with this sermon too.

But the, the other example that I give of that is there's this famous picture, or I call it famous because I love it so much.

But it's like Toni Morrison, Pearl Cledge, Alice Walker, Jean June Jordan, all the everybody that you can think that.

It just feels like a flex for them all to be in the same picture at the same time.

Yeah.

At the time of the photo, whoever was taking the photo or whoever was walking by at the time of the photo just thought, oh, it's a whole bunch of black girls standing on stairs.

Nobody really, at the time that the photo was taken could have looked into the future and been like, oh, the mothers of our wisdom are currently all in this one place taking a picture.

They were just students, they were just, you know, scholars, they were just teachers.

And other than the homies, nobody knew them.

And then now we can't even talk without, you know, thinking about, you know, at the very least, one of them, or hopefully we not out here running off at the mouth and not thinking about, you know, Maya and Tony and Alice and you know, and, and, and it seems like it would seem like a flex to, to mention them at, you know, at that time now, but at the time, you know, it was just like, oh, that's my girlfriend Alice.

Yeah, I feel like I just knew.

Whoever Oprah had on the show when my mom was getting me dressed for school is who I would know.

So it would just be like Maya Angelou and maybe Toni Morrison.

Uh huh.

And like, that would be it.

I went to school, it was in like a predominantly white neighborhood.

And then I went to film school.

So it really wasn't until I started like pursuing my own art practice, running across like other black artists that I would know some of these other names.

Otherwise I had no idea who they were.

That's in that too, though, in my opinion.

That's in that.

I'm gonna go look for my body.

I'll be Back, like, real soon.

It's really, like, no one.

Cause I'm from Sandusky, Ohio.

This predominantly white space, the curriculum was not thinking about any of the people that I just listed.

Maybe the blackest.

And not that this isn't black, but the blackest portions of the curriculum was, like, maybe a Richard Wright book, Black Boy, as far as black women are concerned.

Phyllis Wheatley, you know.

Okay.

Yeah.

So it wasn't.

I didn't grow up with a curriculum just steeped in, you know, black girl wisdom either.

But when you go.

When you be in the pursuit, which is the journey that.

Right.

Like, obviously, you're on right now.

You're in the pursuit of yourself.

You go on to look for your body.

A part of the way that you find your body and put your members and put your pieces back together is you're like, oh, who is everybody talking about?

Audre Lorde.

I need to find out something about Audre Lorde.

You know, everybody's talking about June Jordan.

Let me read something.

You know, Let me find out.

And then you discover that work, and you're like, oh, this is.

I didn't know I was missing my eyes.

I didn't know I was missing my fingers.

I didn't know my hands weren't completely, you know, doing what hands are capable of doing.

And so, yeah, I think that that's a part of that.

Like, what we do when we go look for our body is we go and grab that material or we go and grab the homies, or we go and, you know, community, you know, with our sisters and our.

And our besties, and we figure out, you know, how to stretch and enlarge ourselves in that way.

Yeah.

So in.

So your art practice, is it something else outside of writing?

Because in your book, you mentioned.

You talk about how you didn't know that Patrisse Cullors was an artist.

I didn't either until you said that.

Yeah.

And then you had.

And I might have, like, missed it because, again, I was, like, listening.

But your friends.

You were at some event, and your friends were like, we didn't even know that you were an artist.

And I was wondering if you could talk about what that event was and how that came about.

Yeah, I did this.

Now, this actually is a little bit of a flex.

For the record, I did this.

I love a flex.

Yeah.

Just slight.

You know, I did this program several years ago, the Public Theater in New York City, and it was.

It's called Bars, and it was run by Daveed Diggs, Tony and Grammy Award Winning Dovey Diggs, who is, of course, Dovey Dix, is in Hamilton, the original cast of Hamilton.

And so had this program where he had, for a few years invited actors and poets and writers and performers into this kind of community theater, ish experience, and spent the summer together really writing and, you know, building up to this end project.

And the end project was a lot of individual performances and then a lot of group performances.

And so.

And so I call it a Slight flex because I happened to apply to it.

It was.

Somebody sent me the application, and the day that it was due, I was like, oh, let me turn this little application in.

I didn't really know details and specifics what it was about to be submitted.

My little video did my little whatever, whatever, and got in.

Then once I got in, I found out details and specifics.

And I still.

I hadn't necessarily been a theater kid, so I didn't know how big of a deal, how important the public Theater was.

Viola Davis, Julia Roberts, Meryl Streep, like some of the majors, you know, had performed in this particular theater or through this theater.

And so I.

So I spent the summer working on this project.

And the performance that I did, the solo performance that I did was solo, but it ended up kind of in group choreography.

But the solo performance that I did was this piece that I wrote called the People Could Fly, which was about the actual historical story, the rebellion at Igbo Landing, where a group of enslaved Africans overthrew their captor off the coast of St.

Simon's island in Georgia.

And then the legend is that they got over into the water, grabbed hands, and then flew back to Africa.

And so I wrote this piece.

Some of the homies came to see me perform.

And when they showed up, they were just like, wait a minute.

I know you as an educator.

I know you as an activist.

I know you, you know, as somebody who'd be running off at the mouth.

I did not know that you were a writer and a performer in this way.

And that is a part of my upbringing certainly is that I used to write poetry.

I used to perform in when I was younger in community theater and things like that.

But it had really gotten away from me for so many years because I really got kind of accidentally caught up in the.

The social justice industrial complex is what I call it, you know, where all.

All black people, especially black women and femmes, end up accidentally being in charge of equity and inclusion for everything.

And we have to teach all the things and educate on all the things.

And I accidentally ended up in that.

So some of these people that were having this kind of like, shocked response came to know me because of that work.

And even though we had known each other for years, I hadn't necessarily been posting poetry or posting any my creative writing online.

What I was doing online was anti racism education.

Yeah.

And so.

Yeah, so that was the surprise.

But so that's the addition of my artist work is that I am a poet and a playwright and a country music writer.

I just sing the country songs to myself, though, really.

Country music literally just.

It is the Ebony Janiece show.

But I love country music so much.

So shout out to Cowboy Carter for.

To a lot of people how much.

How like storied country music is, which I think is part of the reason why I love it so much.

Yeah, I mean, I think obviously country music has been around forever, but hearing it, like, bumping down the block is like.

Because of Cowboy Carter, I think is amazing.

It's an era.

Get my sew in the Cowboy Carter.

I just love.

Do you still.

Are you.

So you.

Are you, like, working on anything right now that you're excited about it?

Like a play.

A play or anything?

Yeah, I actually.

I have three things that I'm working on right now.

I have been working on a short film.

It's called Meet me in Harlem.

It's in.

It's basically a choose your own adventure love story, if you will.

And it's.

It's about lifetime's worth of love for these two people.

Fall in love with each other in Harlem, and then through their love, discover that they have multiple timelines and lifetimes.

And so it's kind of choose your own adventure because it's not a.

So there's like, at some point, like, you know, choose your own adventure.

For those who might not know, because I'd be forgetting sometimes that I'm of a certain age.

Choose your own adventure is where you.

When we were younger, we used to get these books where you could get to, like page 12.

And it would be like, if you want Jane to go down the hill to get the ball, turn to page 37 to finish a story.

If you want Jane to just sit on the hill and cry, turn to the next page and see.

And so there's different ways that the story ends.

And so that's kind of how this short film that I've been working on for a few years is that it's like there are moments where you're like, oh, they gonna make it.

And there are moments where it's like, oh, they don't make it for a couple more lifetimes.

And so, yeah, so I've been working on that, and I'm actually performing for the first time ever, a comedy storytelling event.

Oh, cool.

Yeah, I wrote this comedy script a couple years ago, or I started working on a couple years ago, so I'll finally be performing it in October of this year in Brooklyn.

But I wrote this script, this.

This piece because I realized that black girls gotta be so serious.

And I present very serious because of the work that I was doing publicly.

Meanwhile, I don't know many people funnier than me.

So given the chance of, you know, to, like, actually choose the way that I show up, I probably would choose the clownery and the foolery and the cutting up.

But I.

I didn't feel like there was a space for that, and I wanted to figure out a way to introduce that.

And also, I'm deep socialized in a Southern black Christian experience, so some of the things that I want to talk about felt very inappropriate.

So I just kind of started working on this storytelling experience where I'm really telling a lot of true stories, embellished by comedy, of course, but telling a lot of these stories that I.

I didn't know how I would tell it.

And so the.

The name of the.

The special is called who Gonna Tell My Family this?

Because it's kind of like a.

Like, y'all didn't want to know this about me, but here we are.

Oh, my gosh.

And then the other piece, which is kind of an ongoing project, I had this group of.

This kind of.

What you're talking about.

Does Ebony, Janiece, know everybody?

I got together a group of the homies at the beginning of 2021, and for the next two and so years, I basically paid them every month to show up and talk to me about this idea of the people could fly.

Because I was so inspired by the piece that I ended up writing for bars at the Public Theater a few years ago.

And I wanted to talk about it.

I wanted to.

I wanted to talk about it more specifically with black American women, because I feel like that's my tribe and we know something about flight that.

Or.

Or we.

Or we may know something about flight, but we just don't talk about our wings.

We just don't talk about, you know, our ability to fly.

We don't talk about lost technology as, you know, descendants of Africa, as African people, but as descendants of enslaved people who were socialized out of flight.

And so myself, Sonya, Renee, Taylor, Khadija and Zakiyah Abdul Mateen, Nikki Black, Thea Monier, Roya Marsh and Lord, don't let me be forgetting anybody.

Mahogany L.

Brown.

How could I be forgetting?

We spent probably about two and a half years which culminated this January.

I took them to Senegal, to the door, no return, and to really contemplate on a deeper level what it meant for us to fly, you know, back to our homes.

But the purpose of that work was because once that group culminated after those two and so years I have been working on this play now, which is a.

It's a full blown production, really.

These characters kind of fleshed out by this group of women over the last few years.

Thinking about what happened on that ship, what happened to Don on that ship, you know, on the way to, you know, St.

Simon's island, before you overthrow your captors, how do you.

How do you remember that you can fly?

How do you remember, you know, what do you understand about God?

What do you know, what happened to sisterhood?

What happened to, you know, what happened to God on that ship?

So it's an Afro futuristic womanist retelling of what happened because the cast is solely women and girls.

And so I've been working on those three thinking, imagining and dreaming about how I will bring them into the world for a few years now.

And what a privilege and an honor to be able to be like, I'm not going to put this out tomorrow.

Cause guess what, it's not ready.

But you know, come to the time where now it feels time, like, I can do the comedy script and, you know, hopefully we'll see what happens with the other two projects in the future.

Yeah, that's really exciting.

Especially as you were saying in your book where you're like, okay, I need to get out of this space.

Like out of teaching.

I mean, we're just talking about this on your Instagram.

You're like, you guys need this workshop, but I'm not gonna do it again.

I could relate to that, you know, Like, I've had friends that have started to become producers because they're like, oh, nobody's hiring us to produce, so clearly I have to become the producer.

You know, and like, that's not something they want to do, you know, but.

Right, right.

It's like, you do it because nobody else is gonna do it.

Like, if we need more department heads in film of color, then they become a department head of color, you know, where you're just like, I really just wanna be a worker and just do my job and go home.

But.

But you're not Allowed that opportunity.

There's a difference between the things that we do because we sick and tired of being sick and tired.

You know, we're definitely.

And the things that we would really do if we could really dream, you know, if we could really be like, oh, in my highest imagination, this is what I would be doing.

And the gag is we're so deeply socialized into certain behaviors and, you know, and.

And being the mule of the world and taking care of everything and everybody else, we're so socialized into those ideas that even when you first start asking people, you know, what would you do in your wildest imagination and your wildest dreams?

There's such a disconnect.

It still ends up being labor.

Right?

We're in this capitalist society.

There's still some labor to it.

And so you don't.

It takes a couple tries to get to.

Like, actually, even if there were no limits or boundaries, I wouldn't be doing that.

This is what I actually would be doing.

And so I say, you know, a privilege.

But it doesn't.

I really have been troubling the language of privilege, particularly as a.

As an artist, as a writer, as a creative that's been able to kind of ease into certain things and not have to be, like, mass producing stuff so that I can pay my bills.

But the reality is, it's not a privilege.

It is our divine right.

It is actually your.

You were born, you know, divinely equipped and with the right to do the things that the.

What Dr.

Katie Geneva Cannon calls the work your soul must have.

But.

But we don't.

We haven't historically been able to even access that enough to the point that when we see people access it, we're like, oh, that's privilege.

It is.

Got it.

In the context of what we're experiencing.

But really, it's not privilege.

It's your right.

Like, that's how it's supposed to be.

And, you know, I think that it.

It takes a lot of that.

That is some of what fourth feminism wants to support us through is that we don't have to feel guilty about or, you know, give all these disclaimers before we say, oh, what I was doing today was napping.

What I was doing today was creating something.

What I was doing today was, you know, hanging out with the friends.

What I was doing today was experiencing pleasure.

Like, we.

But for.

Especially for black women, we always feel like we gotta give all these disclaimers about what we were doing today.

What I was doing today was reading romance novels.

Right?

No, that must be Nice.

Actually, it is.

And I hope that, you know, I want that for you, too.

And it is your divine right.

So what is the work that we can do together to figure out how to get, you know, get all of us to that place, you know, where, where we can.

Where we can be in our must be nice era.

Yes, must be nice era.

Because I think about in church when, you know, the pastor would say, you know, when we get to heaven, God, we want God to be like, good job.

You know, you don't want him to be like, listen, you were doing all this ripping and running, and I wanted you to be a country western singer, right?

Very right.

Goofing off, running a workshop.

Factually, factually, factually, factually.

Hey, it's Stephanie.

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You know, if this also makes me think, when you hear, you know, some of the women you mentioned, I'm still, like, learning more, but I think, like, in that space of, like, pardon my, like, Valley Girl about it, but like, black, black girl, intellectual womanist world, if they speak, like, spirit, God.

And because, like, if I go to church on Sunday, that's not mentioned, you think like, well, what they're speaking, that's not of God.

And so that's actually, I should not actually follow what they're saying because it's not in the word, but actually it's making me think, like, you just need further learning, right?

Like, like, it's like even how you were saying like this, like, God doesn't necessarily, like in the Bible, it's not necessarily mentioned, like, what black people were doing so good to.

It's not like, against God to read these works, I guess, is what I'm getting at.

I talk about this a little bit in the book, in the chapter In Pursuit of My Ancestors because I'm acknowledging that, but, you know, growing.

I have been preaching from the pulpit since I was 8 years old, teaching Sunday school since I was 6.

I grew up, like I said, deeply socialized into Southern black Christianity, which is the Christianity that most of us are socialized into.

Even if you didn't grow up in the south, the great migration, you know, took those southern black Christian ethics across the land.

So there definitely is, you know, that is a part of who I am and who I and who I have always been.

And to be honest, who I will always be, you know, no matter what my actual identification is or as far as, like, my theology.

Right, because my theology has drastically shifted.

But no matter what, I'm still Southern black Christian girl at the core.

And so I have to process how.

And I say socialized into that, because socialization is that you hear something and or you see something, and something is repeated to you over and over again as the standard or as the ethic or as these are morals.

And so you didn't necessarily get to contribute to the rules or the morals that you, you know, were going to abide in.

There was a hierarchy that already exists.

You were born into it, and you leaned into it, and you live into it.

And so some of what we consider demonic or antichrist or not of God or, you know, against Christianity or against our principles, the reality is we really just haven't fleshed out our faith for ourselves.

And that's just a fact.

And I'm gonna tell you that as someone, again, who had been preaching and teaching from the pulpit since I was 8, that.

That I was in my late 20s before I realized that I had never fully fleshed out my faith for myself.

I knew what I believed, but I never interrogated why I believed those things.

And the why I believe those things is equally as important as what I believe.

So what happens is, you hear somebody say, you know, talk about ancestral veneration and your automatic, you know, response to it, particularly from this Christian perspective or the southern black Christian, Christian experience, is, that's demonic.

Don't be fooling with no ancestors.

You know, let the ancestors.

We talking about God, we talking about Jesus, we talking about the Holy Ghost, and that's it.

It.

Meanwhile, the Bible sat there for more than one book, more than one chapter, and says, such and such begat such and such, begat such and such, begat such and such for a mother effing reason.

Because lineage matters.

Ancestry matters.

It matters both from a political and a spiritual perspective.

Why does the lineage of Jesus Christ matter?

Why is such and such begat such and such begat such and such begat Jesus matter?

Because from a legal Perspective, we need to prove that Jesus is from a certain line so that we know that the Messiah has arrived.

That's number one.

That's why we're going through all of this.

Such and such begat such and such because we need to prove that Jesus is the Messiah.

Number two, from a spiritual perspective, then it's also for a very similar reason, right?

This legal perspective is also part of the ways that Jewish people are acknowledging or claiming their.

Their inheritance because of this fleshed out, such and such begat such and such, right?

And so this, from this spiritual perspective, again, we get to the Messiah has arrived because we know that according to the text, the Messiah is going to come through this bloodline for African and descended people, right?

There is no, particularly in the US or those who have been taken from the continent of Africa and are descendants of those that were taken from this continent.

There is really no way to do that, right?

So legally, you cannot even claim your actual legal inheritance to a certain extent, because there's no way to do it.

Your history has been erased.

There's no way for most of us, we can't go past Madea.

We can't go past Grandma or great grandmother, maybe Great great grandmother, depending on how old you are, right?

And so let's acknowledge that there's something intentional and insidious and systematic about black people who, who happen to be largely Christian on this continent, who also are the direct descendants of enslaved Africans who absolutely deserve the inheritance of wherever it is that they're from and the inheritance of this land.

So legally, if you believe that it is demonic to acknowledge your ancestors in an intentional way, if reparations ever became a thing, you couldn't get them.

Because talking about anybody past the people, a lot has been demonized so deeply that you wouldn't even be able to say, no, I can prove this.

So that's from a legal perspective, but from a spiritual perspective, how audacious is it to say, particularly African people, who are those of us that are the descendants of enslaved Africans.

How amazing is it that we have been so socialized into believing that it is demonic to seek to reverence, to acknowledge, to honor, to think with, you know, in high esteem about our ancestors when the words coming out of your mouth are not even brilliant without your ancestors?

A large majority of the things that I say are not brilliant because Ebony Janese is brilliant.

I've cited at least 10 black women in the past 20 minutes, right?

So citation then, right.

Becomes a part of my spiritual and intellectual lineage.

And of the 10 black women that I've cited, I've cited like seven non alive, you know, seven that are not alive.

Those if I considered them my ancestors, and I certainly do.

Those, if I consider them my ancestors.

My ancestors.

I'm brilliant because my ancestors were brilliant.

So the idea that I could show up and even talk about something with wisdom, with credibility, with authority, without reverencing or acknowledging the elders and the ancestors is laughable.

Right?

So I put those two things together.

To talk about the legal and the spiritual reasons and implications of thinking about something other than specifically what came directly from Genesis, Exodus and Leviticus is to suggest that there is a, an inheritance and a legal right that we have to that will not come through that text.

Because that text was not thinking about African people.

That text was.

And the text was thinking about African people.

But the way that we've been socialized into learning about it was not thinking about African people.

Right?

The way that we've been socialized into learning this text.

And again, this is from a trained theologian.

I went to seminary and I've studied from, you know, multi faith perspective.

I understand the text as something more than just the text.

Right.

The Bible is still a sacred text that I am in intimate relationship with.

And as a theologian, I have the ability to read this text and trouble it and say, oh, Zan west, queer theologian Zan west says when we, when we read sacred text, in particular, we have to ask ourselves the question, who does it benefit for me to believe it this way as a black feminine?

Who does it benefit for me to believe that it is okay for Tamar's rape to be taken over by her father's grief that he, that his son was killed?

Who does it benefit for me to believe that the most important part of that story is not the fact that Tamar was raped.

The most important part of that story is the fact that a brother had to kill another brother.

And now the dad is grieved about that.

Who does it benefit?

Right.

So I understand then I don't throw away the story that happened there.

I understand that somebody made some choices when they wrote this story.

Somebody made some choices when they preached this text or not, right?

Somebody made some choices.

And those choices, it does not benefit me in this body, in this lived experience to believe that God cared more about one of those experiences than this other experience.

And if you, if you are socialized into believing your theological truth system in one way, say, who is erased more often?

Women.

Surely God is always mad at the women folk, always judging, always punishing, always you Know, condemning.

Right.

Women, queer people.

Right.

Certainly God.

God hates them.

Although the text, the, the.

The text would not actually suggest that.

Right.

And so there's.

So you look at the least of these and you see the least of these are not represented in this text.

Text.

That doesn't mean we throw the text away.

That means that we have the divine right to say we get to ask some questions about who's left out here.

And because this is the end of that sermon, because we don't have the historical records to say such and such begat such and such begat such and such begat such and such, we can look at this text and see that who begat who begat who begat who is important.

Therefore, we shouldn't be excluding that from our reality at the same time.

Hmm.

Yeah, that's good.

It's like doing more research.

And also put some respect on my great grandma's name.

Period.

Period.

Because there's a question in that.

Do you ever think about potential children that will come beyond you whether you have children out of your body or not?

Do you think about your nieces and your nephews?

Do you think about the future for them?

If you, if you, in all your infinite wisdom are thinking about the future, you think your grandmother wasn't thinking about you?

You.

You think your great grandmother wasn't thinking about you?

You think, you think nobody in the past, even, even those that were enslaved, right.

And brutal in this brutal condition, that they didn't look into the future and think, ooh, Ebony, Janiece.

I want her to be.

Well, I want her to be able to sit down somewhere.

I don't want her to be talking about the same things that I'm over here talking about and struggling through.

Yeah.

And so it's something very audacious about thinking that you can exclude your ancestors or that it's demonic.

There's something insidious about that idea.

But that is.

It's demonic for you to be thinking about them.

Meanwhile, you ain't even wise without them.

Right.

It's almost sort of offensive.

Like, don't be calling my Grandma A devil.

1,000 trillion percent offensive.

Yes.

Yes.

My goodness, that's really helpful and thank you.

Yeah.

Cause, and, you know, especially, like, when you go through, like, I wanna.

This is really helping me to, like, see, like, oh, yeah, read more, study more, be in more conversation.

Because the girls I kick it with, we not talking about this.

Wait till I get to dinner tonight.

Wait till I get to dinner tonight.

What is we talking about?

You know, something else I want to ask you, as you write about, like, ease and play and softness, what does that look like in Practical?

So you wake up in the morning, your alarm goes off, and then what do we do?

Number one, I don't wake up with an alarm.

Let's start there.

And I just want to say that I have lived my life to get to the point where I don't have to wake up with an alarm.

Because the way that my brain.

I'll talk about softness in a second, and so I'll talk about a regulating nervous system, but the way that my brain functions is that if I'm startled out of my sleep, it's not gonna be a great day.

And I don't think that that is.

That's just the Ebony, Janiece Show.

I think that we just get used to it.

Get used to waking up like this.

And then, you know what happens in the day as a result of this?

And this isn't.

This actually isn't new for me.

When I was a little girl, I've been putting.

I've been putting a lot of pieces together for myself about, like, girl, how did you get this way?

But when I was a little girl, when I was a teenager, my dad used to come wake me up because that was my preference.

Because when my mom woke me up, my mom would just yell up the stairs, abby, wake up.

Like, yeah.

But my dad.

Which is so funny because my dad can be so hard sometimes.

My dad never shouted, woke me up ever.

Never, ever.

My dad would come upstairs and, like, kind of, like, shake my shoulder a little bit and wake me up.

And if I gotta be awakened by anybody but God, wake me up like that.

Let me ease into the wake up.

Do not jumpstart my day.

And so then, you know, of course, I have had, you know, a few jobs in my early 20s before I really dove into entrepreneurship in the way that I exist in it now.

But a few jobs in my early 20s where I did have to wake up really early with an alarm, and.

And just the sound of it, I had to wake up with an alarm.

It's just traumatizing.

Like, it's like, yeah, I woke up alarmed.

And so.

So I think that that's important to think about, you know, how we wake up.

I don't wanna say that I had a full intellectual thought process about it, but even then, my desire was, I don't wanna live a life where I gotta wake up like this.

This.

You know, I.

I recognize how this makes my body feel, and it doesn't feel Good.

And, you know, and I could.

And you notice the difference because on the days where you don't have to set an alarm, it's a completely different kind of morning, you know, and so that became a dream for me, which, which seems like a, like a silly thing to say, but it's a really real thing that, you know, in my, in my highest imagination for myself, I live my life in such a way that I wake up and then I ease into my day because I don't want to wake up with an alarm or alarmed.

And so I begun to create a life where that was possible for me.

Now, for the record, I wake up really early anyway, so there's that.

But I wake up because I woke up, not because somebody punched me in the head and said get up, you know, and, and so that's kind of where some of that messaging comes from and some of that language of ease is really like, oh, if I could ease into my day, what other ways do I get to practice?

Ease in other spaces?

It's not just, I don't wanna wake up really harsh with an alarm.

I also don't wanna start my day with, you know, terrible text message news or terrible email news.

Right.

And so you just start to look throughout the rest of your day and see where are the places where the most high stress or where you' in your body or the least in your body and.

Or where you're feeling the most anxiety or where you have a knot in your stomach or where you're feeling overwhelmed.

And if you could kind of look at those parts of your day and figure out what is the strategy that I could implement for myself, for my life, that I could avoid this high kind of kick to my gut, kick to my nervous system.

And, and again, there's a way in which we could talk about privilege when it comes to that, but I want to really, at the very least offer that it actually is your divine right to be in a regulating nervous system, that it does not have to be normal, that your body should constantly be in a state of alarm and unrest.

And so looking at those places in your life where it's like, okay, instead of checking my email or my text messages as soon as I wake up and there's, and there's not, there's not privilege in that, that's just kind of wisdom.

Go to the bathroom and brush your teeth first.

At first, right?

Yeah.

Go get some water, go take a shower, be with yourself before you do those things.

To, to think of that as like, oh, that's a Privilege.

I have to, I have to jump out the bed and check my emails, check my phone.

Who, what kind of salary are you making that as soon as you wake up, you gotta go check your email now?

Quit that job.

Yeah, yeah, right.

So thinking of it that way, instead of, instead of leaning into like, oh, people who don't have to check their text messages or their emails as soon as they wake up have the privilege of doing that and, and start to think about it from this perspective of like, who, who really is a.

I say this and I'm done with the sermon.

I'm a Baptist preacher by heart, so I always.

I love, I love how you conclude everything as sermons.

My mom used to say to me, because I sleep with, with the do not disturb on.

And my mom used to be like, what if there emergency, Call the police, please, please, if an emergency is happening for you, dial, call the rescue squad.

You know, there, there has to be.

Especially before we lived in the same place and we've only lived in the same place in my adult life for the past few years.

So the years before now, where she would be like, what if, what if there's an emergency nobody can get you call the daughter that's around the corner.

Corner, yeah.

Don't call me in Harlem and you're in North Carolina.

Doesn't make sense.

You know, like there has to be.

You have.

I am, I don't.

I cannot be at the top of the list of the people that you call in the event of an emergency because I'mma be sleep now.

Of course, even with do not disturb, there's ways to get through this.

Of course.

Yeah.

There is a real emergency.

I might hear the phone vibration.

Yeah.

You know, but otherwise, you know, so this idea, like again, it's more of our socialization.

We really have been, you know, trained, you know, for lack of better words, socialized into this idea that we always have to be accessible.

And that, and that goes back to Solange saying, I'm gonna go look for my body and going to look for my body.

A part of getting my body back is getting my nights back, getting my sleep back, getting my morning back, getting my lunchtime back.

My lunchtime.

You know, if I have to go to a place to work my lunchtime.

The company that you work for has a legal obligation to provide you with a break.

Take the actual break.

It is not a privilege to take the break.

It is your legal right to have the break.

Right.

And so thinking of those things really helped me to begin to really construct and co create what ease will look like for me.

And then once you can really start to lean into the ease, then you can really start to think more deeply about, okay, I'm.

I've eased into my day, what will bring me pleasure.

And.

And that isn't not a privileged thing either.

I'm.

I'm not a coffee drinker.

I'm not a coffee snob like some people.

I do drink coffee, but I'm not, not a coffee snob like some people.

So I get the, like, $4 instant coffee.

And I.

If I put any money into my coffee routine, it is my creamer.

I'll buy a really good, you know, oat creamer.

Come on, now.

So I make my little, little coffee in the morning.

That's my little morning routine.

And this is before I let y'all stress me out.

Like, yeah, let me.

Let me wake up, go brush my teeth, go do the thing, go, da, da, da, da, da.

Go downstairs, do my little coffee routine.

And I.

And more than it is the coffee, it's really the ritual of it I really enjoy.

Like, now I'm waiting.

I'm now waiting for the kettle to, you know, start whistling.

And while I'm doing that, I go read my little, you know, ancestor said book, my little, you know, daily word, whatever, whatever.

And so that brings me pleasure.

And so I can think more about, you know, I've gotten to the ease.

I'm thinking now more about pleasure, how to fill those places that used to be more high stress.

I could fill those now with, like, this is what I actually want to be doing in this moment, or what I actually want to be experiencing in this moment.

And softness is like this whole other conversation, I think, even though it's inside of that too, right?

If I'm talking about a regulating nervous system when I talk about softness, particularly in the book, you know.

But as I, you know, kind of start to introduce the language of softness several years ago in this way, I've never been talking about softness as luxury or as, like, an aesthetic ever.

Never, ever.

I've always been talking about softness as I am seated in my body.

And, you know, the difference between your seat and when you are, are up in right, like.

And a lot of us live, like, right here at the, like, clenched fist and the tightened chest and, you know, belly.

And I discovered a softer version of myself, of fully, like, just sit back.

If you're, you know, listening to this, just sit back in your seat, fully relax your shoulders, release, you know, the breath that might be sitting in your chest, chest, release you know, fill into the breath in your belly and feel what it feels like to be fully seated, relaxed into your seat.

Now imagine that you could live your life from that seat or that you could pursue that seat in every single situation.

That is what I've always been talking about when I talk about softness, when I talk about pursuing softness, pursuing this easeful.

Even in the example that I give is Toni Morrison.

That doesn't mean that we cannot have hard conversations because we've seen too many Toni Morrison interviews where she talking about hard stuff fully seated, meaning you saying something she told a woman.

In fact, in this particular interview, you can't even imagine how incredibly racist what you just said to me is.

Yes, I remember.

That person said that to a white woman woman, fully seated in herself.

Which is part of the reason why I call it the seat of Toni fully seated in herself, saying hard things, fully seated.

What is her.

What does your body feel like at the end of a week, at the end of a month, at the end of a year?

If you have practiced, even.

Even if you just practicing it, even if you haven't mastered it?

And I don't think any of us will because we live in a society where there's people are being genocided as we speak.

So of course your body, you know, is responding to the things going on around you, right?

But if you just began to practice it and you just sat in your seat one out of the five times you had to turn up today, and you practice that until that turns into two times, until that turns into four times, get to the end of the year and go back to the doctor and ask the doctor to reevaluate your blood pressure.

Reevaluate, right.

So I'm suggesting that it isn't just.

Just this spiritual woo woo idea of the seat of yourself or fully seated in yourself.

I'm suggesting that there is something that happens to your whole spirit, soul and body when you can sit down in yourself on a daily basis.

And there's something healing, something regenerative, something that is revelatory in the seat that you can't.

That we haven't been able to get because we've been sitting up here ready to go.

Yeah, okay, I got my fist up.

We ready to go.

Right?

You know what?

This is sort of terrible, but it sort of reminds me of this like seated, walking, seated, being soft is like gangsters.

Like I was watching this movie with Pablo Escobar.

He's a terrible person, but he just moved through just like, what did they say?

Okay, I'm gonna go deal with them.

And he just walks.

And he seems like very calm now.

Clearly we don't know his blood pressure or what, like internally he was going through.

But the way, at least in the movies, how he moved through was just so at peace, you know, like description.

I think that's a brilliant connection because when you think about who you could be as a leader or as an entrepreneur or as a creator, if you could sit down and.

And because being in your seat means that you're less reactionary and you're more like, here's the chaotic thing that's happening.

You in your seat and you're like, hmm, this is what's next.

This, this makes me think about Frank Lucas.

We could say Frank Lucas for a black woman.

Yes.

Yeah.

I mean, also, maybe not the best person.

Yeah, yeah.

Ethically, but yeah.

Right.

My aunt Phyllis used to be a high ranking official.

She worked for National Guard Equal Opportunities Bureau.

And I saw, I went to, I was, I remember this like it was yesterday.

I was like 23 years old.

I went to D.C.

with her for this convention.

And we're in the hotel and she's on the phone with a lot of like five star generals, like high, high, high ranking.

She the only woman, the only black woman on this.

Only woman, period.

But the, you know, particularly that she's a black woman on this call with all these generals, like high ranking military officials, and they're asking questions, she's answering these questions and somebody asked this question and she responds to them and she says, I know he's high ranking because she says his title when she, you know, lieutenant, lieutenant, colonel, something, something, whatever, whatever.

She says, his title, some big title.

And he asked her the question and says, let me think about that.

And I'm in my early 20s and at the time I still believed that the way to prove that you were a good, you know, best for this job or, you know, that you were smart, is that you, you're witty, you have the answer.

But to see this black woman in action say, let me think about that.

Change the trajectory of my life.

Because here's the thing that, that talks me.

She did not get a whooping with a belt.

She didn't get fired, she didn't get in trouble.

There's something in fact that I think they respected even more about her as a result of her saying, I'm not about to sit here and lie to you off the top of my head.

I don't know.

Let me think about that.

There's something so profound in so the Example that you gave about Pablo Escobar with Frank Lucas is like, you know, just chilling.

What multitudes of, you know, issues do you get to solve in your mind when you're fully seated versus trying to come up with the first possible answer?

And how do we then apply that to all these other areas of our life where it's like, if I could sit down for a minute, I could figure this thing out.

So let's take that, sit down for a minute and apply it to our actual life.

If I could stay sitting down.

Down.

Game changer.

Overall, whole spirit, soul, and body gets a.

Gets to have a different experience in this world.

If I could just stay seated.

That's.

That's really good.

And I even remember.

I remember when I was, you know, learning, like, photography, and people would ask me, oh, can you do photography for me?

After I get all the information about, like, the who, what, where?

I'm like, okay, this sounds great.

I will call you back.

You know, like, so that way you can, like, really think about, like, a price, you know, just, like, take your time instead of being like, it's 600.

Oh.

And then, like, you think back, like, why'd I say that?

Like, it's really 800.

900.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So I really.

Yeah, I really appreciate that.

That's.

That's really good.

Yeah.

Thank you so much.

Like this little quick round house questions.

Okay.

So did you have an imaginary friend growing up?

Oh, yes.

I had an imaginary friend.

My imaginary friend had an imaginary friend, and I had imaginary.

I still remember their names.

Theresa, Vanessa.

My imaginary pet name was Dog.

My imaginary cat's name was Cat.

My imaginary bird's name was Birdie, and my imaginary giraffe's name was Giraffe.

Not very creative, but very creative at the same time.

I love that you have a favorite holiday food.

The first thing that just came to my mind is dressing.

Okay.

And then do you have a favorite Christmas carol?

I don't.

Well, maybe I do.

What is that?

Yes.

Hark all the bells.

Call the bells.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

There's something about that song.

It's just like, merry, merry, merry, merry Christmas.

Yes, that's a good one.

I've been, like, watching.

I love, like, Hallmark films, and then this is a controversial one, but do you have your own Netflix account or do you use someone else's?

I don't watch anything at all whatsoever, period.

Really?

Wow.

Oh, my God.

I cannot wait to see your films.

Yeah, I don't watch anything.

It's been a couple years since I really been like watching anything.

I'm romance novel girl and the storyline is so much Y.

That didn't capture my attention as much anymore.

And then as a hip hop womanist.

Can you freestyle?

Got bars?

I do.

I will not.

Okay, and then have you ever won a contest?

I can't think.

I'm sure I have.

But the first thing that I thought with that question is I was the first person to get out in sixth grade for the spelling bee, so.

So I was put out for the Word magazine.

I'm very embarrassed about that.

But that's the first thing that came to my mind.

Ugh.

Don't be embarrassed.

She wouldn't just, you know, enjoyed your was just was seated.

Do you have a favorite Disney character?

I don't think that I do.

Of course.

Princess Tiana comes to my mind.

Yes.

Mama Odie of course comes to my mind because I'm a little bit of Mama Odie sometimes, so.

So I'll go with Teyana and Mama Odie.

And the last thing, do you have any hot takes through your womanist lens of the housewives?

Like Atlanta Housewives?

Everybody needs anything about them.

Yeah, all of them need to read.

All the black girls are activists.

Yes.

Well, number one, I do wanna affirm that there's a chapter called In Pursuit of Loudness.

So I don't wanna judge the way that they show up because I think that there's something very valid about it.

And also I think In Pursuit of Soft would be very helpful for them.

Not from an aesthetic perspective, but from a.

Like, they be.

They never sitting down, they always be climbing out they seat.

So.

Man, that's real.

You're right.

That's so true.

Who would you be?

Who would you be if you did not respond on TV out of your seat every single episode?

Who would you be?

And what's possible?

There.

There's a young lady, her Instagram handle is QueensofProductions.

She applied for your archivist position.

Okay.

She's a producer.

Like a film producer.

And one, I think that'd be cool just for your films.

But then two, I almost wanna ask her if we can do like a.

It'd be like a fun, like six week Ayanla dream with me workshop with just Kenya Moore.

With Portia Williams.

I don't know.

Just cooling those clips and thinking about what would you say?

Oh, yeah, people.

Instead of.

Instead of what Ayanla would say.

Cause Ayanla might cuss them out.

Honestly.

Yeah, yeah.

You know, what would I say to Kenya in this situation?

What would I say to Portia in this sit.

Well, what I say to Nini in this situation, like, I think that could be really, really dope.

Yeah, I think.

I think that I was saying that Ayanla, because you had, like.

It's like a way to work with you.

Like, you know, depending on your vibe.

Like, you would meet them in your home.

So that's where I got, like, the one on one thing.

But I don't know, just the thought.

I was just wondering as I was reading, like, because I love the housewives.

Please say this to me in an email soon, because I want to think, okay, yes, that might look like.

I think I would.

I would just love it.

And I think just, like, where, you know, you come from, like, I'm coming from housewives and, like, drug dealers as my references.

Yeah, I know.

It's like, it takes all kinds, right?

Like, but yeah, I just would be.

I feel like I would also learn a lot from that.

So, yeah, I'll send you an email about it and, like, ask.

Please, please, please do.

I want to think about it.

This has been another episode of Nosy af.

I'm your host, Stephanie Gr.

What did you think about today's conversation?

I would love to hear your thoughts.

Head over to the Nosy AF website for all the show notes related to this episode.

You can also find me on Instagram at Stephanie Graham, what would you know?

Or online@missgraham.com where you can sign up for my newsletter where I share exclusive updates about my studio practice, as well as this podcast.

Until next time, y'all stay curious and take.

Take care.

Bye.