Busy Being Black W!ZARD Studios

Role Model is a brand new podcast that launched this week that I think you’ll love. It’s hosted by British supermodel Leomie Anderson, who each week, speaks to special guests such as Winnie Harlow, Slick Woods, and more and find out the truth behind their road to success. Available on your favourite podcasting platform now.
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One of my favourite quotes is from Civil Rights icon Bayard Rustin, who said the proof that one truly believes is in action — and there are few who embody Bayard’s words as wholly and unapologetically as Abdul-Aliy Muhammad (they/them). 
An organiser and activist born and raised in West Philadelphia, Abdul-Aliy has grown into a firebrand. Whether standing up for queer Black and brown communities in the face of systemic violence, or holding leaders in politics and at not-for-profits to account, Abdul-Aliy’s work is loud, considered and high-impact. 
Today we discuss the on-going impact of the 1985 bombing of the MOVE headquarters in West Philadelphia, the moments they were radicalised, what they learned about how people view those living with HIV, after they went on a medication strike as part of their organising action — and learning to trust when their body tells them what to do in defence of what’s right.
About Abdul-Aliy Muhammad
Abdul-Aliy Muhammad is a "Magical Black Queer", organiser, activist, writer and poet based in Philadelphia. They are one of the co-founders of the Black and Brown Workers Co-operative, a labor organising cooperative fighting contemporary forms of subjugation and dehumanisation in workplaces, classrooms and communities by expanding democracy and agency.
About Busy Being Black
Busy Being Black is the podcast exploring how we live in the fullness of our queer Black lives. Thank you to our partners: UK Black Pride, BlackOut UK, The Tenth, Schools Out and to you the listeners. Remember this, your support doesn’t cost any money: retweets, ratings, reviews and shares all help so please keep the support coming. 
Thank you to our newest funding partner, myGwork – the LGBT+ business community.
Thank you to Lazarus Lynch – a queer Black musician and culinary mastermind based in New York City – for the triumphant and ancestral Busy Being Black theme music. The Busy Being Black theme music was mixed and mastered by Joshua Pleeter. Busy Being Black’s artwork was photographed by queer Black photographer and filmmaker Dwayne Black.
Join the conversation on Twitter and Instagram #busybeingblack
Busy Being Black listeners have an exclusive discount at my favourite publisher, Pluto Press. Enter BUSY50 at checkout.
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Content warning: Today’s conversation includes references to sexual violence. Please listen with care. 
I caught up with Taitu Heron in December 2020, as a way of bringing to a close a difficult year with one of my favourite people. Taitu is a development specialist, human rights advocate, scholar and performance poet and we first met in St Lucia in February 2020, on the eve of the onset of the global pandemic. In St Lucia, we spent long nights righting the worlds wrongs and she offered wisdom and insight that would prove so helpful as 2020 unraveled around us. She shares her thoughts on leaving behind those people and habits who no longer serve us, creating more space for ourselves and those we care about to thrive and to breathe, and how we balance our professional, personal and creative obligations. 
We dive into the complexities of silence, including her thoughts on what Audre Lorde meant when she wrote Your Silence Will Not Protect You. We discuss what it means have personal power, how we get it and keep it and whether or not it can be taken; and how we bring ourselves back from the brink after traumatic experiences. We touch on the uses of the erotic, the different and important forms of intimacy and how we find and even lose ourselves in the pursuit of our desires.
About Taitu Heron
Taitu Heron is Head of the Women and Development Unit at the University of the West Indies Open Campus and her publications and poetry focus on the girl child, gender based violence, the Divine Feminine and women’s sexual and reproductive health rights in the Caribbean.
About Busy Being Black
Busy Being Black is the podcast exploring how we live in the fullness of our queer Black lives. Thank you to our partners: UK Black Pride, BlackOut UK, The Tenth, Schools Out and to you the listeners. Remember this, your support doesn’t cost any money: retweets, ratings, reviews and shares all help so please keep the support coming. 
Thank you to our newest funding partner, myGwork – the LGBT+ business community.
Thank you to Lazarus Lynch – a queer Black musician and culinary mastermind based in New York City – for the triumphant and ancestral Busy Being Black theme music. The Busy Being Black theme music was mixed and mastered by Joshua Pleeter. Busy Being Black’s artwork was photographed by queer Black photographer and filmmaker Dwayne Black.
Join the conversation on Twitter and Instagram #busybeingblack
Busy Being Black listeners have an exclusive discount at my favourite publisher, Pluto Press. Enter BUSY50 at checkout.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

“Let yourself unlearn everything you thought you knew about yourself” is one of the many important life lessons George M. Johnson shares with young readers in their new book, All Boys Aren’t Blue. George calls the book a memoir-manifesto and in it, they grapple with sexuality, gender identity, assault, consent and Black joy – and I found it to be an utterly invigorating read. 
We discuss the lessons we are being called to learn and to metabolise from our journey through an immensely challenging year, the important work of making ourselves whole and love as the starting point for friendship. George shares their thoughts on vulnerability as a necessity for storytelling (and how in doing so we let other people know they’re not alone), and why they felt it so important to open the book with a rather bold affirmation: I want to be immortalised.
About George M. Johnson
George M. Johnson is a writer and activist based in New York. They have written on race, gender, sex, and culture for Essence, the Advocate, BuzzFeed News and Teen Vogue. Their memoir-manifesto, All Boys Aren't Blue, is available wherever books are sold.
About Busy Being Black
Busy Being Black is the podcast exploring how we live in the fullness of our queer Black lives. Thank you to our partners: UK Black Pride, BlackOut UK, The Tenth, Schools Out and to you the listeners. Remember this, your support doesn’t cost any money: retweets, ratings, reviews and shares all help so please keep the support coming. 
Thank you to our newest funding partner, myGwork – the LGBT+ business community.
Thank you to Lazarus Lynch – a queer Black musician and culinary mastermind based in New York City – for the triumphant and ancestral Busy Being Black theme music. The Busy Being Black theme music was mixed and mastered by Joshua Pleeter. Busy Being Black’s artwork was photographed by queer Black photographer and filmmaker Dwayne Black.
Join the conversation on Twitter and Instagram #busybeingblack
Busy Being Black listeners have an exclusive discount at my favourite publisher, Pluto Press. Enter BUSY50 at checkout.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

My conversation this week is with queer Black poet and storyteller Jubi Arriola-Headley. Among his altogether brilliant debut collection of poetry is the tremendous "Every God Is a Slowly Dying Sun" — a heartbreaking reflection on Jubi’s relationship with the late poet Craig G Harris. 
original kink is available now from Sibling Rivalry Press.
About Busy Being Black
Busy Being Black is the podcast exploring how we live in the fullness of our queer Black lives. Thank you to our partners: UK Black Pride, BlackOut UK, The Tenth, Schools Out and to you the listeners. Remember this, your support doesn’t cost any money: retweets, ratings, reviews and shares all help so please keep the support coming. 
Thank you to our newest funding partner, myGwork – the LGBT+ business community.
Thank you to Lazarus Lynch – a queer Black musician and culinary mastermind based in New York City – for the triumphant and ancestral Busy Being Black theme music. The Busy Being Black theme music was mixed and mastered by Joshua Pleeter. Busy Being Black’s artwork was photographed by queer Black photographer and filmmaker Dwayne Black.
Join the conversation on Twitter and Instagram #busybeingblack
Busy Being Black listeners have an exclusive discount at my favourite publisher, Pluto Press. Enter BUSY50 at checkout.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I have fallen in love with the poetry of Jubi Arriola-Headley. Exploring themes of manhood, vulnerability, rage, tenderness and joy, his work speaks such truth to those of us reckoning with who we’ve been and who we want to be.
Jubi is a queer Black poet and storyteller and his debut collection is called original kink. Our conversation explores his relationship with his late father and his intimate and profound friendship with the late and great Craig G Harris. We discuss carrying on a legacy, gifts and grief, how we create the thing we wish we had, and Jubi’s coming-of-age during the AIDS crisis. And in a moment of particular resonance for me, Jubi talks about what it means to bear witness to our own failures. Jubi opens our conversation with his poem Peacocking.
"I want to live the rest of my life with an energy that ignites and irritates, burns and bubbles, soothes and inspires until it bursts from the atmosphere, dissipating into the cosmos." – Craig G Harris
About Jubi Arriola-Headley
Jubi Arriola-Headley is a queer Black poet and storyteller. He’s a 2018 PEN America Emerging Voices Fellow and holds an MFA from the University of Miami. His work explores themes of manhood, vulnerability, rage, tenderness and joy – and his debut collection of poems, original kink, is available now from Sibling Rivalry Press. 
About Busy Being Black
Busy Being Black is the podcast exploring how we live in the fullness of our queer Black lives. Thank you to our partners: UK Black Pride, BlackOut UK, The Tenth, Schools Out and to you the listeners. Remember this, your support doesn’t cost any money: retweets, ratings, reviews and shares all help so please keep the support coming. 
Thank you to our newest funding partner, myGwork – the LGBT+ business community.
Thank you to Lazarus Lynch – a queer Black musician and culinary mastermind based in New York City – for the triumphant and ancestral Busy Being Black theme music. The Busy Being Black theme music was mixed and mastered by Joshua Pleeter. Busy Being Black’s artwork was photographed by queer Black photographer and filmmaker Dwayne Black.
Join the conversation on Twitter and Instagram #busybeingblack
Busy Being Black listeners have an exclusive discount at my favourite publisher, Pluto Press. Enter BUSY50 at checkout.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices