For Harriet | Celebrating the Fullness of Black Womanhood

Time 2020-09-16 23:06:00

Web Name: For Harriet | Celebrating the Fullness of Black Womanhood

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Infertility is an unspoken shame for many Black women. Thankfully, more and more of us are chipping away at that stigma. Just this week, both Michelle Obama and Gabrielle Union went public with details about their journeys to have babies.The former First Lady revealed that her teenage daughters, Malia and Sasha, were conceived via in-vitro fertilization.Actress Gabrielle Union has been open about her attempts to carry a baby in the past, and she and her husband, Dwyane Wade, announced the birth of their daughter via surrogate a few days ago.Visibility matters. So does access to good information and quality healthcare, things too many of us do not have. We talked to Dr. Lori Hollins, an infertility specialist, about things Black women who want to carry children need to know.If you'd like to listen to this conversation as a podcast, join our Patreon.Dr. Hollins, thank you so much for taking some time to talk to me. Before we really jump into this conversation, I'd love to know what you do. I'm an OB/GYN and I did a subspecialty training in what we call reproductive endocrinology and infertility. I trained as an OB/GYN. Four years of training after medical school and then I did an additional two years of fellowship training and what we call endocrinology or hormones related to female reproduction and infertility.Basically what I do on an everyday basis is what I call high tech fertility treatments. I see women who, for whatever reason, cannot get pregnant or have problems getting pregnant. The definition of infertility is one year of trying without using any type of birth control method or protection. I do things like we call in vitro fertilization where we basically give women fertility drugs and harvest their eggs. I do things like donor egg where women donate eggs to a woman because her egg reserve isn't very good. I do surgery for fibroids. I do the gamut of what we call reproductive medicine. But I did train as a general OB/GYN and actually did deliver babies for a fair amount of time before I actually did this fellowship training.My maternal grandma had nine children. My paternal grandma had eight children. It's like they could sneeze and get pregnant. It seems that today women are having more difficulty having children. What has changed?Well, I think the main thing that's changed is women are waiting longer to have children. My mother, her first pregnancy was age 18. Your grandmother probably had her first child at 16 or 17. Nowadays, people are waiting until they're in their mid-twenties, if not thirties, before they are attempting to conceive and it's because of going to school, lifestyle, finances, all those kinds of things.I call it lifestyle infertility in the sense that as women we are made to have children when we're younger. The prime childbearing ages are between 21 to, maybe, 35. Actually, fertility starts to decline at about age 28. The main reason I see couples having problems is that they wait and don't start to have a family, or don't even start thinking about having a family, until they're in their late twenties, early thirties. That is probably the main reason that we're seeing such a rapid increase in problems with fertility.Also, our society does not promote childbearing in the sense that we're trying to build our careers when we're in our twenties. I finished medical school at 26 and didn't finish residency until I was 30, so I didn't get married until I was 30 and didn't have my first child until I was 32. Thank God I didn't have a fertility problem, but I think that is the primary reason across all races and across all classes. People are waiting later to start a family. Your fertility starts to diminish at 28?Yeah. I'm not trying to scare anybody. It actually does start to decline slightly at about age 28. I give a talk to residents who are in training. Most people who are in training are in their late twenties/early thirties. And of course everybody's frightened, but there is a slight decline in your late twenties and then over the age of 35 there's a significant decline in fertility.For example, if you're under the age of 30, your chances of getting pregnant on any given month are about 20 percent. Human reproduction is very inefficient. At the end of the year, approximately 80 to 85 percent of people will be pregnant. And in another six months, maybe another five percent, which leaves about 10 percent of people who are infertile. If you're 40, your chances of getting pregnant on any given month are only about 10 percent.Which means that at the end of the year, only about 50 percent of people who are 40 and over are going to be pregnant. Also, as you get older, there's an increased risk of miscarriage because of genetic problems with the eggs. As eggs get older, there are more genetic errors. Anybody has about a 25 percent risk of having a miscarriage. When you're 40, the miscarriage rate is more like 40 percent. That's just normal. That is a normal process that happens throughout life. We know Black don't crack, but everyone's eggs get old. if you wait until you're 40 to really start thinking about having a family, you probably have about a 60 percent chance of not getting pregnant and not having a child.That is a huge thing that most people don't understand. They see Janet Jackson had a baby at 50, but we in the fertility world know that she probably had egg donation. Somebody probably donated an egg to her. People say, "Oh yeah, I have plenty of time. I can't wait till I'm 50, etc." Which is really not the case.I saw this thing about Gabrielle Union. I don't think she started fertility treatments until she was in her forties. It's unfortunate that she had all those miscarriages, but her chances of getting pregnant at 40 we're very much decreased even with the technology. Even though we have all this technology, we cannot change how old your eggs are. We can do fertility treatments. There's all kinds of information on this that people don't know.For example, if you go to the CDC website that talks about fertility programs all across the country and you look at the age, you will see that under 30 people have about a 50 to 60 percent chance of getting pregnant if they have to use technology. But if they're over the age of 40, their chances of getting pregnant are less than 10 percent. Over the age of 42, they don't even keep statistics because the chance of getting pregnant is less than five percent. That is a huge thing that has been misrepresented in the media. I'm not trying to scare people. People do get pregnant. I'm not saying they don't, but if you have to use technology to get pregnant over the age of 40, the chances dramatically decrease, especially if you want to use your own eggs.You're absolutely right. That's so much of the messaging we get around these innovations with fertility treatments. I just imagined that that means we have a longer window. You're saying the window has not expanded.Well, we have a longer window if you're willing to use someone else's eggs.The American Society of Reproductive Medicine does say that we can help people get pregnant up to the age of 55 in this country. But with a younger woman's eggs. A younger woman under the age of 35 will donate her eggs to the woman. Your uterus works. A 70-year-old woman's uterus can work, but the egg quality and the egg number dramatically decreases.There is a decrease in male fertility as well. Not as dramatically, but there is a slightly increased risk of birth defects if the man is older as well.Age is huge, and one of the things that really bothers me that I see with African American women is they do not get referred to me when I can really make a change and I can really help. I'm seeing African American women at much later ages, and I think it's just because you're not getting the information.Even some of the general OB/GYNs are not referring people because they even don't really think about this as much. Then I see them. I get so angry sometimes because I'm seeing you at 42. African American women tend to have fibroids, which can make it somewhat difficult to carry a pregnancy. So I'm seeing you at 42. If you're over 35, we want to see you after six months of trying.Then you come to me at 42, and I'm telling you you need to do egg donation and your head is spinning, It's really frustrating, and I really wanted to get the word out there that if having your own genetic child is extremely important to you, then that needs to be high on your priority list. Maybe even before your career. Do you understand what I'm saying?Yep.Let's talk about egg freezing. We can freeze your eggs when you're younger, but, generally, the oldest we recommend freezing eggs is age 37. We don't recommend doing it before age 30.Although our Reproductive Medicine Society doesn't, necessarily, recommend doing that for social reasons. Usually, we recommend doing that because someone maybe has cancer or some other thing like that, but more and more people are doing it for social reasons because they want to have that insurance policy.I think our society needs to change in the sense that we need to make it possible for women to pursue a career and have children.Let's say, hypothetically, that I'm a 31-year-old woman. I don't have a partner. I want to be married before I have children, and I know that I definitely want to have children. Should I look into freezing my eggs?I would say give it a couple of years. I would say by 33 if you don't have a partner that's an option. The other thing is you can do donor sperm. I have a lot of single women and same-sex couples who decide to do donor sperm. The only thing about that, once again, is as you get older, even with donor sperm, your chances decrease.I would say if you're not in a relationship, or it's not on the foreseeable horizon, I would say definitely consider freezing around age 33/34. And that's what the literature suggests as well because at least that gives you a chance. Whereas let's say you say you don't meet the person until you're 40. 40-year-old eggs don't work as well.I would say definitely consider it if that genetic link is extremely important to you. If I freeze my eggs now, I don't need to be worried that in 10 years there's going to be problems with implantation or with the quality of eggs. They're frozen and it doesn't change.It doesn't change. Things can stay frozen indefinitely. That's how good the science is for that. Although, the chances of getting pregnant with a frozen egg are a little bit less than it was then with a fresh egg the egg quality does not change. If you decide not to use them until you're 40, the quality is going to be from when you froze them at 32.You do have to do what we call in-vitro in the sense that you just can't put sperm around those eggs. You'd actually have to inject sperm into those eggs because the freezing process does change how the egg interacts with the sperm. They can stay frozen indefinitely, which is the beauty of it.Wow. That's, that's a bright spot. But of course, I'm sure that a huge impediment to getting your eggs frozen is the cost. How expensive is this?We're talking about around $10,000 to $15,000.Oh my gosh.It's not cheap by any stretch of the imagination. Then there's an annual fee to keep the eggs frozen, which actually really isn't that much. It's about $250 to $300.Some of the costs are the fertility medicines that are used to stimulate the ovaries. The other costs are the laboratory stuff, the high tech stuff that we have to do in the lab to freeze the eggs. Also, the procedures that we use to get the eggs, so it's certainly not cheap. For a lot of women, that's a huge barrier. I'm not going to say it's not because it definitely is.For the most part, if you're doing it for "social indications," it's out of pocket. I have heard people say that some of their employers may help pay for women getting their eggs frozen. But, generally, it's a drop in the bucket.But once again, a part of it has to do with how we view society and is that a good thing to promote people to delay childbearing versus change some of our policies?In some states, for example, in Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, and, I think, Illinois, I a lot of fertility treatments are covered by insurance. But, generally, not egg freezing.There is an organization called Fertility for Colored Girls. It's out of Illinois. That does provide grants for fertility. You have to apply for it. I think they provide up to $10,000, but those kinds of things are few and far between.The other thing I would say though is if we see people earlier in their fertility course, sometimes they don't need to do high tech fertility treatment. Sometimes all they need is medication or maybe they need inseminations which are much, much, much, much cheaper option. Generally, when we get to the high tech stuff, people have tried everything else and they're older and that's what we have to do.Let's talk about Black women and fertility. From everything I've read, Black women have higher rates of infertility than women of other races. Is that true?Yeah, that is true. I think it's about one and a half times greater [than white women]. And there are many factors. You might've heard of a condition called polycystic ovarian syndrome. Black women have that just as much as any other ethnic group. We tend to have problems with our uterus more. We have fibroids. That is not necessarily a problem that affects fertility, but it can be a reason for miscarriage. We tend to have more obesity.One of the major things I'm seeing nowadays with people not being able to get pregnant is what I call obesity-related infertility. Having extra weight on your body may cause you not to ovulate and also is associated with miscarriage as well as birth defects.As you know, there's a huge obesity epidemic among Black women. I'm tending to see a lot more of what I call ovulatory dysfunction related to obesity as well. Obesity causes complications with pregnancy, too. I'm seeing a lot of that in some places.I've seen people say that a part of the reason why we're experiencing such high rates of infertility is because of our diet. Is diet of a factor in infertility?We tend to have more obesity, which is related to our diet, and when you're obese, you have what we call insulin resistance, which can interfere with you ovulating properly. So yes, I think diet is a factor because what we eat contributes to obesity.I'd say about 60 to 70 percent of my patients are obese. I talk until I'm blue in my face about losing weight because we do know that fertility treatments don't work as well if you are overweight or obese. So if you're doing high tech fertility treatment, we're giving you injections with a tiny needle underneath the skin. If you've got a huge layer of fat, you're not going to absorb your medications properly.So it's not the hormones or anything. It's not the chemicals in processed food? It's the actual weight on your body.I think it's a combination of all of those things. You can't really tease it all out.I think it is processed food. I think it is the chemicals. We do know that what we call endocrine disruptors that interfere with your normal hormonal milieu in your body. So I think is a combination of all of that.Absolutely. That makes perfect sense. Another genre of comments that we get a lot when we post stories about women battling infertility is people blaming it on birth control or IUDs. They're saying that disrupts your body's natural processes.I'm saying no. Certainly being on a birth control pill is going to change your hormones while you're on it, but once you stop it, you should be able to get pregnant. I was on birth control for most of my life until I decided I wanted to have children, so that's, generally, not the case. With the IUD, as soon as you take this out, you can get pregnant.I'd say 90 to 95 percent of people who stopped their birth control method are able to get pregnant once they stop it, so I don't agree with that. I know there are all kinds of conspiracy theories."We're trying to control Black woman's reproduction, whatever, whatever." But in general, most people are able to get pregnant after they stopped those birth control methods relatively quickly. And once again, I've done general OB/GYN and you know, there is a subset of people who have a fertility issue that is not related to being on a birth control method. So I don't ascribe to those kinds of conspiracy theories that it is going to destroy Black women's ability to conceive because that really hasn't been borne out because most people are not infertile.We're talking about 10 to 15 percent of women have a fertility problem. With Black women, it's probably more about 15 percent but 85 percent don't. I don't think you can say that a birth control method is the cause of this increase in infertility. You mentioned that people have to be referred to you as a specialist. If I have questions, and I'm just going to go see my regular OB/GYN for a pap smear, I need to say to them, "I want to have a baby or I'm concerned." And then they have to then say, "Okay, well you need to see so and so."Not necessarily. A lot of my patients are actually self-referral. I have a lot of patients that just do their own research, go on the website, look up infertility specialists and self-refer, so you don't have to be referred through an OB/GYN. A lot of patients are, but you don't have to.In my particular practice, because women want to go to women, I have a lot of patients that have just done their research on the web and have found me that way. You can go directly to an infertility specialist especially if you think that you might have a problem. The problem is that people don't know that they can do that.Are you accepting new patients?Yes, I am. I'm in Jacksonville, Florida and I work for. I'm a practice called Brown Fertility.by Kimberly Foster//After 2016, I thought I was done with politics. But in these two years, we ve seen so much policy that harms marginalized people being pushed and passed across the country, that I realized sitting out of this system is not an option. The people who hold the most power are only going to make things worse.And once I got educated on the work that Republicans have been doing to keep voters of color, young people and poor people from the polls, I got even more fired up. Now, I m all in. I think November 6 is going to be a good day for Democrats across the country, and I will be heartbroken if my favorites lose.Stacey Abrams is one of the people I m really pulling for. Though I have to admit that I wasn t immediately on the Abrams train because I didn t think she had a chance. I was wrong. And as I ve learned more about her, the work she s done to expand the electorate in Georgia, and her political skills, I've gotten more invested.At this point, her race is a statistical tie. She will win if she can overcome Brian Kemp s attempts to steal votes. But there s no guarantee she ll be able to do that. Systemic voter disenfranchisement is out of her hands, and that s what s most frightening.I ll shed a tear if the outcome isn t the one I d prefer on Tuesday.Abrams victory in the primary could not happen if she weren t an exceptionally talented woman. Her being tied with a Republican in what used to be the heart of the Confederacy is the product of Herculean effort. I am as amazed by her abilities as I am disgusted by the attempts to minimize her. I know it doesn t make sense to keep riled up by Trump s bigotry, but I can't help it.This week he said to the press, "I like Oprah, but the woman that she's supporting is not qualified to be the governor of Georgia by any stretch of the imagination."Unbelievable is the only word that comes to mind. I believe in the importance of credentials and experience. I thought other people did too, but that man is in the White House. Those of us who believe in competent people running government have been consistently horrified by the people Donald Trump surrounds himself with. If you re going to come into the highest office in the land knowing absolutely nothing, at least build a team of smart, knowledgeable people. Trump hasn't done that. This is the least educatedcabinet in 26 years. For the past two years, we ve been inundated with stories about the disturbingly high levels of incompetence in every department.Was Ben Carson qualified to run HUD? Was Rex Tillerson qualified to be Secretary of State? Was Rick Perry qualified to lead the Department of Energy? What are Jared Kushner s credentials to be making Middle East policy? There's a report out saying Trump offered the job of UN Ambassador to a woman whose previous occupation was Fox News host. I could go on.Why is it that the only time he's talking about credentials and qualifications is when he's talking about people of color? Curio couldn t be a competent judge because he s Mexican, and Trump has a history of calling Black people stupid. It never sticks, but it s downright laughable when aimed at the woman poised to claim the governorship in a state once thought to be solidly red.Doesn t Donald Trump love Ivy League schools? After all, he did send this tweet to discredit Andrew Gillum, another Black person on the verge of a historic win.In Florida there is a choice between a Harvard/Yale educated man named @RonDeSantisFL who has been a great Congressman and will be a great Governor - and a Dem who is a thief and who is Mayor of poorly run Tallahassee, said to be one of the most corrupt cities in the Country! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 29, 2018A Yale education is a boon for DeSantis, the man racists think is racist. But you know who else went to Yale? Stacey Abrams. She graduated from the same law school as Brett Kavanaugh. Her opponent has no terminal degree.And Abrams does have experience navigating Georgia politics. She was minority leader of the Georgia state legislature from 2011 to 2017. While there, she stopped the largest tax increase in Georgia state history by discovering a math error. I thought Republicans hated taxes?Stacey Abrams is a politician so skilled Oprah fly into Georgia to stump for her. The Queen of media knocked on suburban Atlanta doors and shared the stage for public events.Mike Pence, obviously threatened by the flood of attention that comes with an endorsement from one of the most famous women in the world responded at a Kemp rally. I heard Oprah was in town today. And I heard Will Ferrell was going door-to-door the other day. Well I d like to remind Stacey and Oprah and Will Ferrell I'm kind of a big deal, too. And I ve got a message for all of Stacey Abrams s liberal Hollywood friends: This ain t Hollywood. This is Georgia. The Republican Party forfeited it s right to claim they re above entertainment when they elected a reality tv star who stays on the road to meet his fans. But we only need to go back a couple weeks ago to see the glaring hypocrisy.Donald Trump could not have been happier to praise a MAGA-hatted Kanye West and welcome him into the White House. The Trump who spent 30 years getting as close to famous people we like as possible wishes he was one of them. Celebrity is frivolous to these people now because celebrities can t stand them.I know why her resume doesn t matter. Black people in the United States have long known that there is no credential that will sway a racist committed to believing you inferior. But I think I point out the lies racists tell about merit because they use them to gaslight the rest of us. When we see the goalposts moving, they call us the paranoid race-baiters. Abram is a brilliant woman and sterling candidate, and no one can take that from her.Kimberly Foster is the founder and editor-in-chief of For Harriet.Erica Ahmed s journey into entrepreneurship began more than a decade ago with the birth of a new baby. Her daughter had sensitive skin that nothing could fix. There was a paucity of resources available, and what was there just didn t work, she said.Ms. Ahmed, who works in public health, set out to make something that would cure her daughter s skin issues completely.Like countless Black woman before her, she began in her kitchen. I started researching and experimenting until I came up with the right combination of natural, non-toxic ingredients, Ahmed told For Harriet.The process wasn t easy. The budding businesswoman wasn t a trained chemist, so testing and trials took time. But once she succeeded, the first products, that would later become her natural cleaning brand The Green Laundress were born.Ms. Ahmed s ingenuity came right on time. The marketplace is now ripe for natural cleaning brands. We re witnessing a societal shift toward personal wellness and environmental protection that makes the benefits of a greener lifestyle clear.Most consumers have no idea how many toxins we encounter every day or how much harm they do to our bodies. Exposure to unsafe chemicals carries great risk to women and children, in particular. In 2015, the International Federation of Gynecology and Obstetrics stated that widespread exposure to toxic environmental chemicals threatens healthy human reproduction. The American Lung Association warns that a host of products; including aerosol sprays, ammonia, bleach, detergent, as well as kitchen and bathroom cleaners, can cause an array of respiratory illnesses and even cancer.And according to the Environmental Working Group, a non-profit organization focused on raising awareness on environmental and public health, many of the most harmful products rarely list all their ingredients on their labels, thus denying consumers of the ability to make an informed purchasing decision. They tested cleaning products and found that 53% contained products that harm your lungs.Green Laundress products aim to be safe and effective. They contain pure essential oils to scent scrubs and sprays instead of fragrances that are often the culprit of respiratory issues. Gone are the days of having to air out a freshly cleaned room because of overpowering fumes. You can actually inhale deeply without choking or fainting, Ms. Ahmed said.Switching your cleaning products is an essential part of living a healthy life, according to her. I think it s important for people to understand the importance of comprehensive wellness. You want to eat well. You want to clean greener. Exercise. Take care of yourself. It all goes together. But even when we know better, the transition to using new products can be difficult, and not just because of how well the harsher ingredients work. Ms. Ahmed knows how effective their branding is I remember what my parents cleaned with when I was a child and how those messages and (commercial) jingles are forever entrenched in my mind. Ultimately, it all comes down to if Green Laundress products get the job done. If you re used to harsh cleaning agents like Comet and Pinesol, you re probably skeptical of the effectiveness of natural products. Ahmed insists that hers is a better way. We have been conditioned to believe that the only way to clean is with harsh chemicals. Surely, our ancestors didn t use what many of us use now, yet their homes and clothing were immaculate. Nor did they eat what we eat Again, comprehensive health It all goes together. Growing a company is almost always an uphill climb, but she s dedicated to making sure our communities can live and breathe well. Cleaning greener isn t super sexy or exciting, yet it is so critical to our health and overall quality of life. Back in 2009, Chris Rock attempted to shed light on the practices used to acquire human hair extensions in his documentary "Good Hair." Rock's exploration of an integral part of many Black women's experiences was less than stellar, but it opened up a conversation about the women whose hair we wear. Rock depicted Asian women shaving their hair temples to offer ass a sacrifice. ThatWhile debates about the aesthetics and costs of hair extensions are common, we're less inclined to think deeply about where the hair come from, and, more importantly, if the hair donor is abused or exploited in the process of collecting bundles.Valerie Ogoke started Ayune Hair, an ethically sourced human hair extensions company, so women can enjoy the versatility of wearing weaves without participating in exploitative practices.THIS CONVERSATION IS AVAILABLE AS A PODCAST EXCLUSIVELY TO SUBSCRIBERS OF OUR PATREON. I have read up about your company, and I am obsessed. I, literally, want to know everything.Well, thank you for agreeing to chat with me. I actually was really excited when you shared that post about where you showed a video of a woman getting her hair cut for hair extensions, and the question was like, "Do we really know where our hair extensions come from?" Well, for me, that question flickered in my mind about two years ago. I'm originally from California, but I've been living in Australia for, I would say, about five years, and around March of 2016, I decided to move to Bali, Indonesia, with my partner. During that time, I was rocking my natural hair, and I wanted to change up my look, as we all do and try out extensions, but in searching for hair extension, I didn't feel like any of the companies resonated with my journey, and I decided to take a back seat, move to Bali, and just focus on my spiritual journey. In that spiritual journey, I really started to question, "Okay, I really don't actually know where these hair extensions come from and how are they sourced. How are the women being treated?" That was the beginning of my journey of creating the brand Ayune Hair. In creating that, the focus was making sure that it was ethically sourced, making sure that women are actually being paid for their hair extensions, and that no one was being mistreated or deceived during this process.I also wanted to get into a more sustainable frame of thought, making sure that this was something that had longevity and it wasn't that there would be a point where hair would be mixed with synthetic hair, which happens actually more often than we think it does. I think if you just think about, in general, the way we as humans consume quite a bit, and something there's not quite enough to go around, and so what a lot of companies do is they find ways to mix things and make sure that it lasts a little bit longer in order to increase their profit. But, for me, I wanted to make sure this was fair for everyone and that no one was being deceived in the process.This is amazing. I am an almost 30-year-old black woman. I have been around a lot of weave. It really never occurred to me until fairly recently that I should be morally concerned about where hair extensions come from, and so I'm just wondering, before you made that trek to Bali and decided to pursue that spiritual journey, did you have any emotional tug or moral tug about where this hair comes from?Yeah. Well, I left America in 2012 because I realized that I wanted to find my happiness and what that looked like, and it's interesting when you leave your comfort zone, all of these new experiences come in, and in one of those experiences was the fact that I realized that we were all interconnected, that what I did just naturally impacts other people around me. So that was always flickering into my mind, and then, in terms of the hair extensions, it didn't really cross my mind because I wasn't necessarily wearing hair extensions. I was wearing braids when I first moved over, and then when I decided to buy hair extensions that is when the concern popped in my mind. I'm like, "I don't even know where this hair comes from."I know a lot of us do look at AliXpress, and I saw them using pictures from other brands, so I just really didn't know who to trust. That was one part. And then I was just concerned that, "Am I supporting something that is disempowering another woman?"Absolutely. So where did your research begin?Literally, online, like all of us. What do we first do when we have a question? We start Googling it, right? And we're like, "Okay, how does the process work," because I've been natural for 10 years, so my journey was just rocking my natural hair in braids. I just started Googling and trying to figure out what's the step-by-step process, and I realized the most common thing, I think we all know, is that it's sourced from Indian temples, right? I think that's what we initially think, because women usually in poorer areas in India go to temples to sacrifice. It's a spiritual sacrifice to gods.That was all I knew.The other part is that usually men travel trough really rural areas around Southeast Asia or even in China, and they just cut hair, but what I didn't realize is that no one was really getting paid for any of this. So that was a huge concern. I'm like, "Who's making the money?" Because there's a 300% profit that these people are getting, because they're not necessarily paying these women anything.Wait, so they're not getting paid any money?Very, very little, and when I really started to reach out to vendors, I don't ever tell people my intentions because I want them to be very honest with me, so I just asked them, "So, what is your relationship with the women that you're sourcing hair from?" And they don't know what my intentions are, so they always tell me the truth, because I don't think they know the vision that I have of making sure that the women are treated fairly. A lot of times, they would tell me that they would just give them food and water, or they would give them very little, so it was concerning that other people were making a lot of money, but the women who were providing the hair extensions weren't really getting anything out of it. That was the first thing.The other thing is how sustainable is it for a woman to cut their hair. We start at 14 inches, right? But a lot of us go to 18, 20, 22, sometimes 24 inches. That's a lot of hair off of one head. How sustainable is that? So my other question is, "Are we really wearing real human hair extensions?"In my peak weave days when I was really priding myself on buying the most expensive Malaysian, I feel like I've maybe paid like $200 a bundle, maybe even more. I feel like it's a lot of money, and especially if you're buying two or three ... that's hundred of dollars, That's crazy to me.Yeah. It's really concerning. I was actually really excited when, I believe, Refinery29 just recently shared a short docuseries where I think they were in Vietnam, and it was the same discussion, "Are these women being paid?" The answer was, "No, they're not really getting that much out of it." I do think, and we're not really pointing fingers here, because the whole point of this is to practice mindfulness, like it's impossible for us to be perfect. We can't save the world, but we can try to be more mindful about the things that we do throughout our lives, so if we're in a financial space where we can afford to support something that is more uplifting for the conscious customer, then let's do that, but if we can't, don't beat yourself up for that. It's really just we're not playing a blame game. We're just trying to be more mindful.Absolutely. You mentioned something I'm so curious about, the sustainability part. I never thought about this before, but there is no way that all this weave is human hair. I never considered it, but can you talk a little bit more about the mixing of human hair with synthetic hair and how we might be getting duped and buying the super, super expensive weave that's not even real.Yeah. I should start with saying that this is not everyone. I'm sure there are a lot of businesses that are selling real, human hair extensions, so we're not painting everyone as the same kind of deceptive business owner. I think one of the telltale signs is if you're buying three bundles for $150-$200, it's likely that it's mixed with synthetic hair. That's one. In my research in trying to find hair extensions, Malaysian hair extensions are not really a thing. There are Cambodian hair extensions, there are Indonesian, there are Vietnamese; but in searching Malaysia, there wasn't any ... and the same for Brazilian. One thing is that, for sustainable hair extensions; for me, it's all about how the natural process of how our hair strands fall. Every day we have 50 to 100 hair strands that fall out of our scalp, so these women, in particular from my business, they collect their hair strands, which is really meticulous and time consuming but it ensures that they never feel pressured to cut their hair. Because what we're trying to bring back is choice, rather than pressure.We all have close connections with our natural hair and sometimes, we wanna shave it and that's fine. But sometimes we wanna just rock our natural hair and so, we have to be mindful that other women feel the same way. Especially indigenous people. And so what our women do is, they collect their hair strands and then they sell it. And so, this is a sustainable process because naturally, you have so much hair that falls out of your hair a day and sometimes you can have about 150 hair strands. What they do is, they just collect it all and then they sell it to our vendors. So then, we never collect any hair that's actually cut from a woman's head. And so they never, ever feel like they have to do that because of their financial circumstances. Malaysian hair is not a real thing? When I lived in Indonesia for a year, I often went to Malaysia and Singapore and different places; and in searching for actual Malaysian hair, I did not find that. And in doing research and watching other documentaries, they didn't find it either. Just from my research, I did not find any. And also, if people know about Malaysia and the different cultures; there are the Malays, which look more Indonesian and then you have a lot of south Indians.So potentially, if someone is sourcing hair from Malaysia, it's probably just Indian hair. But, yeah. I would be very cautious.I think people should probably be more mindful of what are the chances that this is Brazilian hair?What are the chances that women are actually cutting their hair in Brazil? When I was in Los Angeles, I spoke to a Brazilian who used to sell hair extensions and he said that there were no Brazilian hair. He didn't get them from Brazil.Wow. Okay, so let's talk about your company [Ayune Hair]. After doing this initial research, when did you decide that you wanted to start a hair extensions company?Initially, the beginning of my move to Indonesia was a spiritual journey in understanding my connection to everything around me. And then, I had kinda epiphany that I could align my desire to share my passion for kindness and compassion with beauty, so I began researching. And what I decided to do was eventually travel to the villages.I was venturing to the unknown, but what I realized was that really made it an authentic journey for me because I was there with the vendors, I was there meeting with women, I was there interacting with the people in the different villages. I remember just talking with my translator and he was saying people were shocked because they hadn't really seen such a young, black woman walking around and engaging. They didn't understand that. I thought it was so vital that I was present in every, single part of the journey to creating Ayune hair ... to show that I really do care that these women are treated fairly.You mentioned something I think is really interesting. In this space there are relatively few black women, despite the fact that we are such huge consumers of hair extensions. I feel like I can only name a couple ... maybe, three or four ... black women-owned hair extension companies.Yeah. I'm originally from Los Angeles, California. I remember visiting home and driving around and just seeing that every beauty supply was ... I don't know if I actually saw a beauty supply that was owned by a Black woman because it was predominately Koreans, and not to say anything bad about them owning it, but it was a bit disheartening that ... as you said, the consumers are Black women. We have a huge buying power and yet, the owners, or the people who are making a profit, are not Black ... the majority of them.So I wanted to encourage us to take that power back. We know this better than anyone else because we are the consumers, so shouldn't we be selling to ourselves? That was actually quite interesting, but I feel excited because there's a lot of opportunity for us to become thriving business owners and to share our passions with our fellow sisters.When I've spoken to black women who are opening beauty supply stores, they've talked to me about some of the obstacles of breaking into that industry. And I've been so fascinated by how closed the beauty supply industry is. You mentioned Korean people dominate the industry and, of course, they have their networks. And this is not to say anything bad about Korean entrepreneurs, that's not the point. The point is some of those closed networks are very difficult to penetrate. Have you found that to be true? I found that, initially, some vendors weren't taking me seriously and they were all men. That was another thing. And so, I think they were a little bit taken aback because they're used to working, probably, with men and then, probably with non ... anything but a black woman.I really didn't let that faze me. It's one of those things where if one door closes, another one opens. It was just about continuing to push forward and I really believed that if I continued being authentic and transparent in following my truth, the right people would align with me. That was what, kind of, kept me going.Let's talk about your sourcing. You don't have to disclose any trade secrets, but I am interested in knowing as much as you'd like to share about how you get the hair that you sell.Right. I think I mentioned before, I spent a lot of time in the villages, and I intentionally took two years, well, now it's two years and four months, to create this business because I really wanted to make sure that I was involved in the process and I was hands-on, and I understood exactly how it was being worked.And so, I was physically there, present in the factories, in the villages.In terms of trade secrets, it's just being present and also creating a really, positive relationship with people. With the vendors, I wanted to share my passion with them ... my compassion ... I wanted to show them that I cared about them as much as I cared about this business. We often would have dinner. I would ask them about their kids. I wanted to make this, kind of, a family thing, like as a tribe. And make sure that they knew that I cared about them as much as I cared about the women, as much as I care about black women. I just wanted to share that compassion with everyone. I don't know if that's really a trade secret, but that was basically the focal point of the entire process of creating this brand.Again, we even went really deep into the villages and met other vendors and sat with them and the factory workers. One thing I was really excited about is that factory workers actually are treated fairly, in the sense that they have their lunch breaks, they're not overworked, they looked really happy. I went to several spaces and they didn't look unsettled or disgruntled. So I was really excited about that. Even in buying the hair extensions, because now I'm back in Australia, I pay more because the factory workers are getting raises, you know? And I appreciated them. I'm happy that they're actually being paid adequately as well as the women that are selling their hair to the vendors. So, how do you find the women?Actually, the process that I'm supporting has been going on for quite some time, but not that many people support it. So in Indonesia, particularly, which is the starting point or the birth child of Ayune Hair, it's been happening for at least 30 years. It's not really something that's brand new, but it's just something that's kind of been under the rug and not brought to people's attention. The Indonesian women they've always been collecting their hair strands and selling them. But they've usually worked with very few people and they're usually men, so I wanted to bring a different perspective to the hair extension industry and show that these sustainable hair extensions are amazing, you know?The same ones [hair extensions] that I had tested two years, I still have to this day. There's longevity in it. It's a great product. In terms of finding the women, they've already been around way before I even came into the picture, so it was just really about bringing it to the forefront.So no one is shaving their hair? They're collecting the hair that naturally falls out of their head?Yes. We are not saying that there's something wrong with someone shaving their hair. That is fine, but again, it's all about providing choice because not everyone wants to shave their hair. It's a little bit sad when a woman feels like there's no other choice but to shave off their hair or cut their hair. I mean, if they're in a financial situation where they have no food and that's their last hope, imagine how that feels. I always say, "Put yourself in that woman's shoes. How would you feel if you felt disempowered or that this was your only option?" That would feel horrible. You wouldn't want that to happen to you. I definitely wouldn't want it to happen to me. I think if I was ever pressured into anything, I would feel horrendous. I would be really unhappy for a very long time. So I'm just trying to change that so that these women actually do have a choice. It seems like this process would take a long time to amass a single bundle of hair. How do you collect enough hair to sell?Well, that's the thing. They're collecting at least 100 hair strands a day. The thing is that we're talking about longevity rather than a fast turnover. In collecting the hair strands, it's almost like slow fashion. It takes a little bit of a longer time but you know that it's done in the correct way. You know when it's being disempowered in the process. So yeah, you're not going to get like 24 inch hair extensions. I stop at 22 because there's not as many women with that long enough hair to support extremely long hair extensions. And we just work on a small supply because we believe in this process. So yeah, it does take a little bit longer and there's not this huge abundance of it, but it's always going to be done the correct way. And how much are the women being paid?Right. So it depends. We try to be a little bit discrete about that. It's all based on the weight. So, again, when women are collecting 100 hair strands a day, they usually sell it every two weeks and so it's more of an ongoing source of an income. It's not really a get rich thing. It's just providing an alternative source of income that's consistent. It's not like a one off where they get $100 and then that's it for two to three years, because you know it takes quite a long time to grow that length back to cut again. So it's more of providing a continuous flow of income for them.Let's get to the pricing of your product, Ayune Hair. If I want to buy 18 inches of hair, two bundles of 18 inch hair, how much would I pay?That's a good question. The pricing works in a particular way because it's all about thinking about all the different stake holders that are involved before it even gets to the buyer. We have our various vendors, and there's different levels of vendors, so we deal with the vendors in the villages and then we deal with our higher level vendors who have a larger factory that can clean the product again so the hair is cleaned several times.It's extremely time consuming because we're literally going through every single hair strand in choosing which ones are acceptable to sell and which ones aren't. Because you know, again, in this process the cuticles are not always perfectly aligned. So we're always looking for the best hair strands. So it's quite time consuming so it becomes a bit more of an expensive process. But in terms of price, I don't have the prices directly in front of me, but the Australian prices range between, I believe, like $130 to $200. It's a little bit cheaper if you're in the US. It aligns perfectly with most well-known hair extension companies. There's no get rich scheme here. It's just providing an alternative for conscious women in particular, Black women all around the world, to be able to purchase something that aligns more with their morals. Or if they're very concerned about where their hair extensions come from, then they can support something that makes them really feel comfortable and they don't have to worry. And then they can celebrate the different layers of their beauty through their hair extensions and maybe they decide to take the hair extensions off and rock their natural hair, and then they put the hair extensions on later.It's just about supporting a lot of women who are becoming more aware around the world and providing something that aligns with them.So you do ship to the United States?Yes, we ship to the United States. We ship to the UK. We ship to Europe. Of course I have to ship to the United States because I am American, even though we're Australia-based, because, I couldn't forget about my fellow American sisters. Awesome. Have you gotten any investment for this business or are you completely boot strapping it?Well, I am so grateful that I have an absolutely amazing Nigerian mother in the US right now that really believes in my mission, so she really assisted in the investment towards creating this. I didn't really share my story in terms of moving back to Australia. Our home is really Indonesia, so I feel most alive when I'm there. But unfortunately, due to some health issues, we had to come back and all of our initial investment money was put into hospital costs, so my amazing mother stepped in and helped to make sure that this brand came out. That's it for now, but we are looking for other investors who are interested in supporting conscious consumers.When you say "our" you have a partner? Yes, my partner is Austrailian. He was also on the same spiritual journey as me. He really believes in celebrating kindness. He also believes in the fact that we are all interconnected, so we built this business together.It's a beautiful time to be Black. Despite the constant attacks on people of the African Diaspora, we're coming together in ways most of us have never witnessed. We're learning about our heritage and sharing elements of our culture with transatlantic siblings.One way we can show our connection to the continent is what we wear and consume. The Afrikrea Marketplace is a one-stop destination for you to find authentic art, crafts, and fashion made from African craftsmen.Not only is this an incredible opportunity for consumers, but the marketplace offers creators the chance to get their products in front of a global audience.At a time where our culture is routinely co-opted for the benefit of others, it's nice to be able to support our own.Afrikrea was created by two African entrepreneurs, Moulaye and Kadry, who say their mission is to "enable fans of African creations to realize their passion while allowing creators to live theirs."Take a look around their diverse marketplace of goods, and grab a fabulous piece.When I spoke to first-time author Tanzania Glover, she told me that her primary literary influence was Terry McMillan. McMillan became a hero to Black women readers in the 90s because of her warm, affirming depictions of Black women's struggles and friendships. Even as she's been consistently underappreciated in the mainstream for books that are filled with dramatic plot twists and exceptional character development, McMillan is an icon to our community.The spirit of Terry McMillan can be felt in Glover's first novel, The Soundtrack: #musictomyears. The book draws readers in with its many ups and downs, but it carefully gives as much care to the lives of its Black women protagonists as anything we've seen in Glover's idol.Jauri, the story's central figure, is a fiercely independent and opinionated woman looking to make her mark on the music industry. But she makes a series of unforced errors in her personal life (men, will do that to you) throughout the book's 400+ pages that require her to be lifted up by her family and her best friend, Ashley. Despite the missteps, Jauri never loses herself. In fact, she provides an important reminder of the tenacity we'll all have to tap into at some point.We pick up different books for our different moods. The Soundtrack: #musictomyears is a light novel you'll want to dive into for a fun escape to a world that centers Blackness. Tanzania Glover is putting a new spin on the familiar urban novel format that's perfect for millennial Black women.In our conversation, Tanzania Glover dove into the novel's intricacies and her journey to publishing it. Kimberly FosterTake this survey after reading our interview for a chance to get a free copy ofThe Soundtrack: #musictomyears.For Harriet: All right, let's start from the beginning. Where did the idea for this book come from?Tanzania Glover: Before I was telling you about how I was so obsessed with celebrity culture and I thought I would try to turn it into something meaningful. You know how we all have our faves and what not and think we know how they are in real life. I've always wanted to write a book that showed the real stories or the story how I saw it for women who are real Black women. I don't really wanna say real Black women, but Black women who are non bi-racial, not mixed, not always lighter. You know, how we don't typically get to see women like that in the glamorous roles.I wanted to write a book and see how putting someone like that in that role and seeing how they would react. I read a lot about the obstacles that some of the younger dark skinned Black women artists are dealing with and it disturbed me. For instance, I saw what s happened with Sevyn Streeter. She has had some of her visuals lightened in the past.I saw that happening with Normani Kordei from Fifth Harmony and Justine Skye and it's just like, "Oh this is kind of what happens to them and it's the norm." I wanted to write about it and how it shouldn't be acceptable and how to navigate the industry while still being true to yourself but trying to be successful as well.For Harriet: Okay.Tanzania Glover: I definitely had an agenda when I was going into it. I wanted to focus on that because we always talk about, Well, why do we only see one shade of Black women or one look for Black women? And I wanted to talk about this whole different take on the Black women who are now rarely put in these positions.For Harriet: Is this your first book?Tanzania Glover: This is the first that I ve published.For Harriet: How long did it take you to write it?Tanzania Glover: I started writing it at 14 or 15. It was 2005, so 15. But I've taken several breaks. This is the third draft of it and I was determined to finish it this time. I got a lot of inspiration from trashy reality shows and Lipstickalley and just seeing a lot of big celebrity moments over the years. Definitely the whole Beyoncé Lemonade album. I love how that was described as a love letter to Black women. I thought like, "Well, what if I had the ear of the whole Black community, specifically Black women. What would I say to them?" And I came up with, Your past doesn't define you. Sure it's a part of you and it will always follow you, but you re not limited by it. My Lemonade advice would be don't accept mediocrity because Black women are always helping whoever needs help sometimes to our own detriment. When we help and give it s not mediocre so we shouldn't accept it back. You know, reciprocity and all that jazz. Just always have high standards and put your own needs and well-being first. You ll live longer.For Harriet: One thing I was really struck by is the majority of the book is set in Chicago. I feel like I don't read a whole lot of books where that is the case, particularly books about entertainment. Why'd you make that choice?Tanzania Glover: I am from Chicago. I researched Los Angeles. I researched New York, but I wanted to stay true to home because I'm most familiar here, so it felt completely natural writing about riding the train at night or being here, being there because I've seen those places. One scene in particular by the Chicago River where a character talks about being molested, I go to that spot every summer and I love those famous winding stairs. I'm so familiar with that so it felt really cool to put places that I go all the time and see and it just felt so much more special than if I were to research some random place in Los Angeles. I really enjoyed writing about Chicago. It's actually funny because the sequel will not have any Chicago in it. For part two I'm going to have to do a lot of research and I'm considering traveling for it.For Harriet: In the book if you read it carefully, it seems like there are some familiar Chicago artists or composites of artists that we might be familiar with.Tanzania Glover: Yes, there are a lot of archetypes. The big phenomenal female artist who has a lot of stans and a huge, huge following. The narcissistic Gemini celebrity who is always in trouble because of his big ego. And it's funny because I was just thinking, "Wow these celebrities are oddly going through a lot of stuff right now."For Harriet: Yeah.Tanzania Glover: There's a lot going on with celebrities as people and what it means to be famous is evolving in front of our eyes with social media. With this book, I wanted to give some background into how I view them and what I believe is the motivation behind some of their actions and their art. I was trying to be--I don't wanna say relatable. It sounds so predictable. I guess I was trying to put out celebrity archetypes that we re all familiar with.For Harriet: What kind of function do you think that serves? Is it to hook in a reader when they feel like they can see Kanye is having a meltdown?Tanzania Glover: I hope so. That was the plan.So far the feedback that I've gotten has been amazing. People instantly recognize it because I'm so not great at being subtle, but the names were very deliberate. Everybody picked up on it and they actually really like that part of it. I've got the whole BeyHive who love the Beyoncé references and stuff like that. Wait I'm not supposed to confirm or deny who the characters are.I think that was a great addition to it and it's actually fun seeing people try and guess who the stars are based on because you have some big personalities in there. That's always really fun.For Harriet: One thing I really thought was innovative about the book was the structure. I was so drawn to this idea of each little section having an accompanied song to go with it and also I thought it was interesting how you switched between voices in the book. One moment you're reading the protagonist, Jauri, and the next you're reading Orrin. How did you come up with that?Tanzania Glover: I'm gonna start with the first question. The songs happened because I'm a big music nerd. I listen to music 24/7. I have a catalog of music that's out of this world and I listen to music when I write so I was almost thinking of these chapters as songs. I started out with song lyrics because I actually have a version with the song lyrics, but I couldn't legally put those in the published version so I have it as a keepsake for myself. The song lyrics woven together beautifully tell the story for the book and it hurt to not be able to include them, but luckily I found a legal work around. I also have playlists on Spotify and YouTube for people who want to actually hear the music as they read.For Harriet: You couldn't legally use the lyrics because they're copyrighted?Tanzania Glover: Yeah.I would have had to get the permission for 80+ songs. Some by the same artist, but that process would have taken so long. When I realized that, I was all done.But the structure with the his and hers chapters and the dual chapters and the back and forth, I'm honestly just very scatter-brained. When I was writing, I would be at an event with Jauri then I would jump to Orrin and wonder what he was seeing? And I was so stuck on writing traditionally that I'd try to do her chapter ten pages, his chapter ten pages. I realized that it just didn't work for me. I realized that I'm the boss so I really just made up the rules as I went because I hate trying to put everything into the same neat box. You'll see some chapters are 20 pages while some are only 5. I would start and I would stop when it felt right and I liked it that way.For Harriet: Have you seen another book that's done this before because I haven't?Tanzania Glover: I haven't either. I don't want to claim that I'm the first to do it this way either because there could be others, but I just did what felt right for me and the story I wanted to tell.Also, I wanted to directly connect to social media with the hashtag in the title and the musical element. I'm a one person team here. I wrote it. I did the editing. I created the cover. I did it all. So I was trying to be creative with my nonexistent marketing fund. There's a lot of social media use in this book. So it's like dating in the social media age and blocking people on Instagram. I'm on Twitter and it's just so fun to me to see celebrities do this every day. We literally get news alerts. "Oh, this person blocked their ex or this person unfollowed so and so. It's so funny how it's a part of everybody's life and I just really wanted to talk about that as well.For Harriet: Okay we're gonna get into some of the plot points on that, but I'm just so shocked that you are saying that you did all of this yourself.Tanzania Glover: Yeah I did and it took a while, but it s mainly because I was broke and didn t have a choice lol. I didn't have money for an editor. I didn't have money for someone to create a book cover. What I did was I taught myself how to use a Photoshop-type/Adobe program and during the free trial I created two covers-- one for the first book and one for the sequel. I paid I think it was 23 dollars total for both images. I just designed them as simply as I could because after looking at the top 100 books on Amazon to see trends in cover designs, I saw that most were pretty simple. I thought, "Hey, I could do this." I tried it and hopefully people will get what I was going for.For Harriet: There is just so much happening in this book. I haven't read a book like this in a long time. I read a lot of nonfiction, but I was engrossed in this. I thought it was really interesting that there are a couple of characters in this book that talk about suffering molestation or sexual abuse. I'm wondering why you felt it necessary to insert those kinds of plot points?Tanzania Glover: First of all, my mom is a survivor. So that has been a big part of my life since I was born because she has never shied away from telling her story. She's just such a hero to me for that because as black women we're just expected to suffer in silence, but she told the truth. She's always pointed her finger and said, "No, you did this to me. Even when no one believed her and she was called crazy, she never wavered from the truth and I ve always respected her for that.I always want to dedicate at least a few lines for her in whatever I write because she's just so brave and that's something that happens in the Black community so much more than we're willing to talk about so it was important to include that as delicately as possible.It's such a big plot point for Orrin. He was the child star who things happened to and he is still dealing with it and he thinks he's over it, but he's not. He pretty much has to realize that he's never going to get over it. It's something that happened to him. It's a part of his life so he has to come to a point where he realizes that it's not like a wound where it heals and then it's fine. No, it's always going to be slightly open. He ll always have to treat it. He feels like, "It happened. I dealt with it. I did what people said I should do. I went to therapy. I talked about it so I should be fine." That's not the case and it always resurfaces. He has to deal with it and he chooses not to and we see what happens in the book.For Harriet: I thought it was so interesting that you had both a woman and a man who were survivors of abuse. I feel like I don't necessarily see the men's perspective explored as much. Tanzania Glover: For Book Two I actually go more in depth with it because one of my friends pointed out that I never used the words "raped" or molested" in the book. I didn't realize that. I guess I was trying to be sensitive because it is based on real celebrities and their stories and their rumors and what not. I was trying to be sensitive because I absolutely do not want to use that as a draw. I just wanted to write how I interpreted the situation as a fan of the artist and their subsequent behaviors. But Book Two actually explores that where he begins to say the words and really heal because Book One was just peeling off his bandage. He still has more growing to do as you can see by the ending.For Harriet: I loved the character of Jauri.Tanzania Glover: Me too! She is like every friend of mine. She's so flawed, but I don't care. I just love her. She's so funny. She's so relatable. She wants to be bougie so bad, but then she's really down to earth. She's just everything. She's so talented.For Harriet: I appreciated how she changed throughout the course of the book. I think that seeing her open up with Orrin and get hurt in the process it was so real. Her reaction to dealing with somebody trifling--I felt like those reactions were really honest.Tanzania Glover: Right because she's such a closed book. Like the people who are the closest to her, like her sisters and Ashley, don't even know things about her that we do. So it's almost like we're her friends too because she told us everything with no filter.For Harriet: She seemed like a really normal Black girl, you know. I love that you mentioned early about trying to write against the colorism that Black women experience or how we're erased in media. I thought this is definitely somebody that I would know. And the way that you described her physically, it felt like somebody who was very familiar.Tanzania Glover: She is just your normal Black girl in Chicago. She's been through some stuff. She's rolled around in the mud a little, but she's dusted herself off. I love seeing her confidence grow, even though it got shaken through some of the plot points. I love seeing her, but especially someone who looks like her, still winning in the end.I have this thing where I want to write this ruthless Black woman character who just does not care what anybody thinks and she is all about winning for herself. I actually have a separate book for that character, but I think about The Coldest Winter Ever. Every Black girl I know fiercely loved that book. The character Winter was so selfish and because of that she had to have a bad ending. She had to be tragic. It was like a warning. Like, "Black women don't be like her." I hated that because as bad as she was, I was rooting for her. I wanted her to win.For Harriet: I love that. I love that about this book. Even despite all of the ups and downs in the plots, and there were lots of ups and lots of downs, I loved that on the very last page I felt like things in this woman's life are not perfect, but she's fine. She's okay.Tanzania Glover: She has every reason to fall and stay down, but she's not. She is slowly getting back up. She's being accountable for her actions and I love that about her because she's not the kind of person that's going to wallow forever. She'll take her punches and she'll, you know, be hurt because she's normal and she has feelings. As you can see, she is very hurt, but she's not going to stay that way. She can't so she'll reinvent herself again and again.For Harriet: This book has a lot of drama in it. There are lots of twists and turns. It's interesting to me that you were still able to balance the dramatic stuff, the things that can, if not handled properly, devolve into a soap opera or a bad reality show. I appreciate that you're able to balance that.Tanzania Glover: Thank you. I wanted to toe the line because we all have our guilty pleasures. I love Love Hip Hop and Basketball Wives, but I didn't want it to be that. I struggle with the respectability politics thing. I struggle with not wanting it to be--I don't want to say "urban" because I am urban. I fully embrace that, but I didn't want it to be stereotypical and cartoonish. I wanted a normal Black experience where the readers could say that it feels real because they ve seen it or something like it.For Harriet: Yeah, I love rejecting respectability politics. I can imagine that this is a book that somebody might write off as being you know too something. Did you worry about that or do you worry about that, or do you just feel like this will speak for itself?Tanzania Glover: When I had to categorize it on Amazon, that was when it hit me again, like what category do I put it in? I thought urban romance. I think it's an urban book. I think it's a black pop culture book because I wrote it for Black women like myself. If anybody else reads it then that's great for them, but this is for Black women. This is for us because we don't get these kind of stories and we don't get to see ourselves as the love interest being doted on, as the special one. She's [Jauri] all of that. Things happen, of course, but it's not a "woe is me" story at all.She doesn't want that. She wants the spotlight. She wants that badly and she wants to work for it the honest way. This book was conceived pre-#MeToo movement, but it has a lot of the same themes of sexual harassment. You have to sleep with the guy whose finger is on the button. It has a lot of that and it wasn't intentional, but it was. I wanted to talk about it casually because it's not a big deal in the industry. It's just not. I would love if my book could add to that conversation for black women s treatment in the music industry and Hollywood.I was actually shocked to see this movement pick up so much steam because when I was doing research, all I saw was how it s just expected and accepted. You have to do these things, these sexual favors or you're not gonna make it. It s so normalized that I didn't want to write about it like it was traumatic even though it is traumatic. Women should not have to do these things, especially to people that they look up to. Like these are their heroes who they find out are monsters in the worst way. But most have to weigh it and play the game accordingly because everyone else is. It's just not fair for women to have to compromise themselves in order to be successful.For Harriet: I loved that Jauri was in it and then she decided, "No, I don't want to do this anymore." She was in control of herself and her body.Tanzania Glover: Yes. Book Two definitely explores it more. I'm gonna give you like a little spoiler because we already know Jauri's not gonna stay away from music. She just can't. So in the future, she has her own record label and she's setting the example and doing things the right way for her artists. And when we're talking about this topic, we have to be honest about why there s so much abuse of power. It s because men rule Hollywood and the music industry, hell the world, but specifically for entertainment I do believe a lot of this would go away if female label heads and producers and creators were represented more.So yeah she is taking that next step in Book Two. But as far as Book One, the reason that she has so much control over herself and her image and her body was because she had the capital to do so. It was really interesting to see a Black woman do the right thing with her money and invest it in herself. The last couple chapters, when Orrin was trying to buy her out of her contract, she realized that she couldn t let him because he would be using his money to basically buy her and not the contract so she had to do it herself.For Harriet: I love that she was able to write her own checks.Tanzania Glover: Yeah. She wrote her own check. She did it on her own terms. I wanted to come full circle with that because in the first chapter, we see her getting dressed to meet Wayne . She's wearing her hair how he likes and wearing clothes that he picked out for her. But in the last chapter, she s wearing her big hair how she wants to, dressed how she wants and she's summoning him to her. I just thought that was so beautiful. I cried writing that scene. Like, "Oh, my God! It's over. She's done. My baby s all grown up." She's not a victim. She's just not into victimhood. And there's nothing wrong with being a victim, but she recognizes that there are people who are victims to things out of their control. She feels that she controlled a lot of what happened to her in her past and would definitely be in control of things from that point on.So she's thinking about, "Where did I go wrong? What could I have done differently?" And she realizes that we look over red flags and signs and we compromise on things all because we like someone. We can t do that anymore. I have readers that are still holding out for a certain ending in book two and I want to shake them because they didn t get the message. He was not good for her at all!She realizes exactly where she messed up. She takes responsibility for her part. Not for all of it, because it is not her fault. But she realizes where she will never compromise again and that's really interesting for the sequel because she is put in a position where she could backtrack or she could just keep it moving. I really want her to remember the woman on the roof at the end of Book One that was saying she would never be in that situation again because she has learned from her mistakes.For Harriet: I am glad that we had the conversation about how to categorize this because it felt really reminiscent of my favorite novelists. Do you have any people that you look up to, people who inspire you?Tanzania Glover: Terry McMillan. I've read everything that she's ever written. She's like the quintessential author for true Black sisterhood, Black female joy, and getting up again after life punches you in the gut. She is just everything to me. She's everything.For Harriet: She's literally amazing. One of the best conversations I've ever had in life was with Terry McMillan. She is literally the best.Tanzania Glover: Oh, my God! I'm so jealous. I'm so jealous. It literally started for me. I was maybe five when Waiting to Exhale came out in theaters. I was there because my mom couldn't get a sitter. I remember seeing Black women on the big screen loving on each other and fighting with each other, but that bond was still there. When I got older and realized that it was a book first, I had to read it! I found her other books and I ve watched every movie based on them dozens of times. I just love how she showed the full spectrum of Black womanhood. She is just the greatest of all time.For Harriet: Do you have any final thoughts about what you would want readers to take away from this book? You mentioned your Lemonade message of Don't accept mediocrity. Is there anything else?Tanzania Glover: I think the message is pretty straightforward. Love yourself more than you love anyone else. Have a code of conduct. Don t have unprotected sex. Just don t do it. That got her [Jauri] into a lot of trouble. I think as Black women, we have to be more in control about who we allow into our lives in that way because of kids and STDs. We see how much these things affect us in our community. This is something that is fully controllable and preventable. She didn t get off easily, but Jauri is lucky that things weren t worse for her. I just want us to take more responsibility for our sexual health because that is the beginning and the end to a lot of avoidable problems.I really don t want to come off as preachy because I have the tendency to come off that way in real life if you ask my friends. I am just so passionate about my love for black women and girls that I want to see us live long, healthy, fulfilled lives on our terms. Whoever we chose to date or be intimate with, I just want us to set healthy boundaries and live and do things for ourselves and not because someone manipulated us into it. That s it. That s the book in a nutshell.Purchase a copy ofThe Soundtrack: #musictomyears.See this #AmazonGiveaway for a chance to win: The Soundtrack: #musictomyears (Kindle Edition). https://giveaway.amazon.com/p/67b5fb60f80670c7 NO PURCHASE NECESSARY. Ends the earlier of Jul 14, 2018 11:59 PM PDT, or when all prizes are claimed. See Official Rules http://amzn.to/GArules. Disclosure: For Harriet was financially compensated for this post.By Kimberly FosterAja Monet has the voice of a blueswoman, husky and songful. It is was what first drew me to her.That voice compelled me to listen more closely, taking note of her tone and cadence as a poem leapt from her mouth. I'm rarely able to resist a performance as masterful as the one captured in that two-minute video, but the work, the words, have stayed with me, too.Then I read her book, My Mother Was A Freedom Fighter. Her voice rang just as clearly. I heard Aja as she worked through the complex, often fraught, ties that bind us to our families and communities, as she imagined a world that holds everyone dear.That kind of clarity is not incidental. It doesn't just happen. When I spoke to Aja by phone, she discussed how difficult creation can be. Even those who are blessed with natural gifts have to wrestle because talent and ease should not be confused.The world is, in her words, "a fucking mess." (Who could disagree?) She creates anyway. For herself, and for us.I periodically like to read an essay from W.E.B. Dubois, where he basically argues that all art is propaganda. If that's true, then what message are you trying to spread with your poetry?I don't know if there's any one specific message because what I'm writing can be very personal and intimate. It depends on what I'm going through or what I'm grappling with, what ideas I'm trying to work through. Maybe even sometimes I don't know what the idea is. I just know I have a feeling and I need to get the words out somehow.And so if it is propaganda, then I guess I'm concerned with how do we do this thing called life better? You know? What are ways that we can use language to help us reimagine, re-articulate our loneliness, and therefore, our need for each other, and our ability to collectively work towards freedom. Freedom from poverty, freedom from oppression and sexism, and classism, and all these things that we could maybe imagine another way of doing this thing called life.And I guess that that is maybe a bit of the propaganda he's talking about.So, when you create, there's no singular mission statement? It's what's moving you at the time?Yeah, but it varies, you know?For me, the principle factor, and I will kind of lean on June Jordan in this sense, the principle factor for me is truth telling, you know, to be concerned with the business of truth telling. And in order to be able to do that, I have to be able to get to some level of personal confrontation, you know, with myself.And it does differ. Because in my book there are poems that start very personal, because that's where I was. That's how my entry point was to poetry. And then I started to realize, "Wait, poems do more than, you know, gratify my self needs or self worth." They do more than just affirm my personal belief system.I've had poems that I've read, or even that I've written, where it has uprooted an entire belief system, or disrupted a certain narrative that we are taught is supposed to be the dominant narrative. And so, maybe in that way he's right. Maybe in that way it's propaganda. I don't know. But I guess I'm a little resistant to the word propaganda in my mind because of how it's been used and manipulated against us.When you say that some of your work has uprooted dominant narratives, do you mean for yourself or for the audience you are presenting the work to?I would say more for myself. And my hope is that it does something, sharing it with people. I don't know if necessarily that was my initial hope when I first started, but what I learned in sharing poems is that it was doing something for people that I hadn't necessarily intended. I knew that I needed to write poems in order to process the life and the struggles that I was living. I knew that I was experiencing my interior world, the way I emotionally responded, or the way I imagined things, was not always in alignment with the literature, the books, the media, or the education system I was taught.So I feel like in the work that I was doing with the poems, I was able to find my own voice, and shut everything else out for a second and listen intently to what I really was hearing in the world, whatever I was really seeing and in that it shifted something for me. It disrupted something for me. And other poems did that for me.Other poems I've read have helped me understand a situation differently, a conflict, a way of being, a way of seeing the world. And my only hope is that something in what I share is truthful to the point to bring somebody else closer to telling their own truth, or to demanding a more truth telling society, so to speak. A healing.You were talking about working through things via your work. I've heard different artists have different ideas about the usefulness of trying to work through trauma [in their work], that sometimes the art is not the best place to try to do that. What do you think?Well, healing is a real immaterial thing, right?We talk about it very elusively in community spaces, often times. And for me, there's no all-of-a-sudden I'll put a bandaid on something so it's healed. It takes care. It takes nurturing. It takes tenderness. It takes concern and attention. So every wound you have, and I'll use the body as a physical metaphor, you have to clean it. You have to put an ointment on it. You have to make sure it doesn't get infected. You have to let it breathe. So I feel like the poem is a means to the end. It's not the end. It's the way of getting to the place of understanding what needs to be healed, what needs to be resolved.Just to give you some context, because I've been around before there was Youtube, I started very young. I was, like, 14, 15 when I was doing poetry. And I was one of the younger poets that was in the adult poetry community, at least in New York. So what ended up happening was, I was ... we were kind of thrust into this community, and into these scenes as part of the youth poetry organization Urban Word, and we would be encouraged to go up there and tell our stories, and be truth tellers, and all these things. And yet, what I saw happening was students would go up there, young people would get up there, and they'd pour their guts out. But then there was no, there was nothing there, there was no one to hold them after. You know, there was no one to process what the remnants of what had been left, what had been scattered across the stage.And so I had moved away from the poetry community and I had gone through all this. I went to college, left the country, and I had become really disillusioned with my mentors and the people that I saw in the adult community because I felt like, "You guys weren't readying us for the world." They were exploiting our stories, but it wasn't preparing us to really do something about the realities we were dealing with. And so I think because I got disillusioned, I saw a lot of people become very famous and do very well with poetry in that span of three years when I had stepped away.Then I came back, and I was doing my own thing and sharing things on the internet and stuff. I would organize my own readings, and I would really have the support of one of my good friends, Daphne, who is now managing me, to really get back out there. And she's like, "You know this is what you're supposed to be doing. This is your purpose." I didn't feel that way at the time, but in having her support and having someone who really paid attention to what I was writing about, and also what life I wanted to live. I wanted to heal.I spent time not writing. Another poet, Ada Limón, she said, "People ask me, 'Oh, what do you do with writer's block?'" And she says, "I don't write." We live in a capitalist, individualist society where the assumption is you have to constantly be producing. You have to constantly be sharing it. You have to constantly be putting things out there. And for me, I was like, "Wait. I need to live a little. Can I get some time to live? Can I breathe? Can I take care of myself?"So, my writing was the beginning stages of me understanding, "Oh something is there." I'm feeling something. I'm deeply moved to speak and write, and I wish I could sing it, but I'm going to use words in a way where maybe I can try to sing through it. And then I look back on some of those poems, some of them that are in the collection, and I say to myself, "I'm glad I had to write them to understand what I was feeling and experiencing or seeing." But then I have to do something different in my life that's going to change those conditions. I can't put a poem out and think that's going to change the world.And not even the world, but let's bring it back to me. Can I write a poem and think that's going to change me? At the end of the day, I have to do the work to heal, to resolve the inner conflict that I'm working through in the poem.I imagine that because you've been a publicly performing poet for so long that, in your work, you are working through different experiences, and discovering new things about yourself and the world, and so that creates a kind of conversation. I'm wondering if you've experienced those sort of epiphany moments or those moments of self-realization, self-actualization, and what you've learned?Yeah. Well, I always feel self-conscious about answering these sorts of questions because I know that I am growing, a constant work of process and progress, and all these things. So, what I feel today, who knows if I'll feel the same way tomorrow. You know?I feel like I'm a student of life. I'm not speaking in an all-knowing "I." You know? So, in that I say what the conversation has revealed to me is that. It's precisely that. I have a lot to learn and the more time I have spent with myself, I have been able to confront and engage a deep reservoir of knowledge, and emotional wisdom. My faith is very much connected to my upbringing and what I witnessed and what I've seen, some of the magical scenarios that I witnessed as a young person, I realized that what people said is reality and what is fiction is blurred. And that the things we were told were impossible...we were told they were impossible because it served somebody else's interests.And as I started to delve into myself and question my own history, and my relationship with my family, and where my family had come from, and the Diaspora, and all the connections to other families, and other people's ways of thinking. I learned there is spiritual wisdom. There is internal wisdom and knowledge that has been passed on to us. As much as things have been passed on to us in books, and songs, and art. Our physical bodies have genetic memory. We are a library of eternal resources. And when I start to deal with the pain and the healing of what this current life has brought to me, I start to recognize that that is not everything. You understand? Does that make sense?The pain is not the entirety of the story. There's also stories of triumph, and resistance, and resilience, and strength, and overcoming, and practices to help us learn how to do those things that have been ripped away and torn away because of the breaking of our cultures, and our identifies, and our languages, and our relationship to our past.So in my conversations with my younger self, I think my younger self was a bit more fearless, and only now in my coming of age as a woman, it's only now that I'm starting to really embrace the power of being a woman and discerning and realizing, "Wait! Hold up! Where I was when I was 15 is not where I needed to be!" Even though I was a stubborn, young kid, I definitely had more of a sense of self, and agency, and fire, and confidence that through heartbreak, and disappointment and betrayal, I start to question myself as I came of age as a woman. So I started to, as I'm writing, and I'm looking back at poems, and I'm looking back at conversations I was having with myself, [and] I recognized I never took time to really love that little girl in me. She was so beat down by all that she had endured and a lot of my journey now has been how do I love that little girl in me unapologetically in the ways that she was never loved before, that I need to be able to be the best person in my relationships, in my world, in my community. So part of me taking the time to write and create is a part of me loving myself. You know?In ways that I never was allowed to when I was younger, or I was never taught. I was never shown. So I think the conversation changes depending on what I'm grappling with. But it's funny when you think about your younger self. I don't know if you feel this way. I remember having a reading somewhere and a woman she took very good care of me, and she put me in this really beautiful hotel, and as a poet you're used to getting all types of treatment. You know, they say, I think it was James Baldwin or somebody said, "The artists are dangerous because they maneuver different classes." One day you could be eating out of a can of Campbell's soup. The next day you might be sitting around with somebody eating olives and hors d'oeuvres. It's just the range of life for a poet and artists. You never know.For me, there was this one moment where this woman had just ... I felt so appreciated because she had done so much to make sure that my stay was nice. And I remember that they had given me an upgrade at the hotel. And it seems very stupid and silly, but I just remember this bath. And I remember sitting in this bath, and it was a beautiful bathtub, and I remember trying to pour Epsom salt, and some lavender, and all these things into the bath and let the water bubble. And I created this bubble bath. And I remember sitting inside and thinking to myself, "I have never done this for myself before." And it sounds so silly. It's probably like the most insignificant thing. It's a minute way of showing appreciation to yourself, but it was one thing I had done for myself. And in doing it for myself, I literally sat in the tub, and I thought, "Man, if 15-year-old Aja could see me now, she would think I'm living the best damn life." She would have never imagined, never thought she would be here now.Maybe to me and my grown self, I don't think I'm doing enough, or I don't think I'm making the biggest change, or maybe I am hard on myself. As women we can be, or just as people. But, 15 year old Aja, she'd be like, "Oh you're killing it girl. And I'm proud of you." It was such a weird moment, but it was that one moment where you talk about a conversation. You know, that was a moment where I really did have a conversation with my younger self, and I could hear my younger self like, "Man I'm proud of you." And that meant a lot to me because, in order for me to be able to be something for other people, I have to be able to fulfill the love for myself. You know, if I don't feel it for myself, then I can't, I don't know how to show that to anyone else.My last question is, you've had incredible success with your work, and you get to do what you love, do you feel at peace?At peace? I have moments of peace, but I think moments are fleeting. You know, we go in and out. I believe the movements. So, right now, I don't need to tell you the world is a fucking mess.There are people who speak about this current moment as if they're somehow above it, or somehow the rest of the world is crazy and they aren't. Like they're removed from their own role in it. And I guess I'm cautious to say I'm at peace because I'm pissed off most days. I want things to change. I want a better world for our children, and I'm tired of fucking marching and protesting. I'm tired. And I'm sad that this Saturday our babies gotta go do that. They should be in school.And there are babies across the globe who gotta do even worse throughout every day. But what kind of world have we allowed to exist where our babies can't be at peace? If they're not at peace, I'm not at peace. There's no way. So it's a funny question. I try to create moments of sanctuary and solitude so that I can hear my own thoughts and my own voice and know who I am in the midst of all this noise out in the world, the hysteria of media, and social media, and all these things. I do try to definitely create moments of peace and solitude, but it would be remiss to me if I made it seem as if I'm just here living a zen, meditative life everyday, as if I don't look at the world around me and feel outrage, and the want to change, and help other people feel peace. I can't be at peace if everybody else is living in pure chaos, you know? So that's been my struggle. How do we reconcile the fact that, yes, self care matters, and healing, and resolution, but we have to be able to create a society where everyone has access to that. And until everyone has access to that, I can't rest.

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