Diaspora Podcast

Marie Stuppard
  • 5.0 (1)
  • Personal Journals

The Diaspora Podcast explores what it truly means to live between cultures, identities, and worlds. Through powerful conversations and personal stories, this podcast highlights the experiences of immigrants, first-generation families, and members of the global diaspora as they navigate identity, culture shock, language, family traditions, and belonging. From leaving home to building a life in a new country, each episode dives into the emotional, cultural, and personal journeys that shape the immigrant experience. We talk about the challenges of adapting to new environments, preserving cultural roots, raising children across cultures, and finding pride in where we come from. Whether it’s stories of migration from Haiti, reflections on growing up between two cultures, or conversations about language, heritage, and community, Diaspora Podcast celebrates the resilience, complexity, and beauty of living between worlds. If you’ve ever felt caught between cultures — or proud to carry multiple identities — this podcast is for you. Subscribe and join the conversation as we explore stories from across the diaspora. Produced by Juming Delmas Studios (JDS) — a premium podcast production company helping creators turn conversations into impact, authority, and growth. This podcast is part of the JDS Podcast Network, a curated network of shows designed to amplify voices, expand reach, and create powerful cross-platform visibility.

Episodes

  1. 1d ago

    Reclaiming the Delmas Name: Juming’s Haitian Story

    In this deeply personal episode of Diaspora, Marie sits down with her producer and “little brother,” Juming Delmas, founder of Juming Delmas Studios, for a powerful conversation about identity, tragedy, Haitian heritage, and reclaiming your own story. Marie and Juming first connected through LinkedIn, but what stood out to Marie was his last name: Delmas, a name tied to a well-known area in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. That connection opened the door to a much deeper conversation about Juming’s family history, his complicated relationship with his Haitian roots, and the journey that led him to embrace the name he once felt disconnected from. Juming shares the painful story of losing his father on March 12, 1993, the same day as the historic “Storm of the Century.” He opens up about the violence that shaped his early life, including his father’s dangerous life between Haiti and America and the tragic home invasion that took the lives of his father, his father’s pregnant girlfriend, and a young sibling. Raised by a loving and supportive American stepfather, Juming grew up separated from much of his father’s side of the family and from Haitian culture. He speaks honestly about once feeling embarrassed by the negative stereotypes surrounding Haiti and how media portrayals shaped his understanding of where he came from. Marie and Juming also discuss the broader Haitian diaspora experience, including how mainstream media often reduces Haiti to crisis while ignoring its power, history, beauty, and importance as the first Black republic. Together, they reflect on Haiti’s legacy of defeating Napoleon’s army, winning independence in 1804, and carrying a history of resistance that deserves to be remembered with pride. The conversation also explores how Juming chose to build a new legacy through Juming Delmas Studios. By putting his full name on the business, he made a conscious decision to bring prestige, excellence, and pride to the Delmas name — proving that his story, his heritage, and his identity belong to him. This episode is about survival, identity, family, legacy, and the courage it takes to reclaim your narrative. Content note: This episode includes discussion of family tragedy, violence, and loss. Learn more about Juming Delmas Studios at jdelmasstudios.com. Listen to The Un-Traditional Entrepreneur Podcast on all major platforms.

    43 min

  2. Jun 24

    What They Carried: The True Story of Haitian Vodou

    In this episode of Diaspora: The Soul of a People | Haitian Soul, host Marie offers a historical and cultural correction that has been owed for a long time: the word is not “voodoo.” The word is Vodou. For generations, Haitian Vodou has been distorted by movies, colonial narratives, early anthropology, and popular culture. It has been portrayed as evil, frightening, primitive, or superstitious — but those images were never the truth of the tradition. In this episode, Marie traces Vodou from its roots in the Kingdom of Dahomey, present-day Benin, through the Middle Passage, into Saint-Domingue, and across the wider African diaspora. This episode explores Vodou as a complete worldview: a religion, a system of medicine, a philosophy, and a framework for justice built on the relationship between the visible and invisible worlds. Listeners are introduced to Bondyé, the remote supreme creator; the lwa, spirits who bridge the human and divine; the oungan and manbo; the peristil; and the meaning of possession not as horror, but as sacred liturgy. Marie also examines how enslaved Africans from multiple nations — including Fon, Yoruba, Kongo, Ewe, and others — created a shared ritual structure in Haiti under the unimaginable violence of slavery. Through the règléman, they preserved different spiritual traditions and gave them order, meaning, and survival. The episode then turns to the Code Noir, the 1685 French colonial law that required Catholic baptism and outlawed African religious practice. In response, enslaved people used camouflage and spiritual brilliance, hiding the lwa behind Catholic saints and keeping their traditions alive inside the very churches meant to erase them. From there, Marie discusses the Bois Caiman ceremony, the Haitian Revolution, and the role Vodou played in helping enslaved people recognize one another, organize, and imagine freedom. The episode also addresses the demonization of Vodou after Haiti’s victory, including the role of Western scholarship, Hollywood horror, zombie mythology, and the false association between Haitian Vodou and “voodoo dolls.” At its heart, this episode is about survival. Vodou survived slavery, colonial law, occupation, religious campaigns, academic misrepresentation, and a century of horror films. It survived because the people carried it — across water, across language, across violence, and across generations. This is not a story about superstition. It is a story about memory, resistance, spirit, and the religion that helped make Haiti free. Find us at @DiasporaPodcast25.

    28 min

  3. May 18

    Haitian Flag Day: Memory, Revolution, and the Soul of a People

    In this episode of Diaspora: The Soul of a People, Marie Stuppard reflects on the meaning of Haitian Flag Day, a celebration rooted not only in national pride, but in revolution, memory, sacrifice, and identity. Observed every year on May 18, Haitian Flag Day marks the creation of the Haitian flag in 1803 during the Haitian Revolution, when the people of Saint-Domingue were moving toward the birth of the first free Black republic in the modern world. The flag was adopted during the Congress of Arcahaie, and Haitian tradition remembers Catherine Flon as the woman who sewed the first Haitian flag after the French tricolor was transformed into a symbol of unity and liberation.  Marie explores why the Haitian flag carries so much weight for Haitians both at home and throughout the diaspora. The blue and red are not simply colors. They hold the memory of a people who fought slavery, colonialism, and erasure — and who dared to imagine freedom on their own terms. This episode looks at the flag as a living symbol: one that has been carried through schools, churches, parades, family gatherings, street celebrations, and quiet moments of remembrance across generations. The conversation also reflects on the emotional meaning of Haitian Flag Day in the diaspora. For many Haitian families outside Haiti, May 18 becomes more than a holiday. It is a way to teach children where they come from, to speak the language of belonging, to honor ancestors, and to remember that Haitian identity was forged through courage, survival, and collective will. In cities with large Haitian communities, Haitian Flag Day has become a visible celebration of culture, music, food, history, and pride.  At its heart, this episode is about more than a flag. It is about what a people choose to remember, what they refuse to surrender, and how symbols can carry the soul of a nation across oceans, borders, and generations. Haitian Flag Day reminds us that Haiti’s story is not only one of struggle, but also one of imagination, dignity, and revolutionary possibility. Hashtags #HaitianFlagDay #HaitianCulture #HaitianHistory #HaitianRevolution #CatherineFlon #HaitianDiaspora #DiasporaPodcast #CaribbeanHistory #BlackHistory #Haiti

    22 min

  4. May 6

    Mayi Moulen: Memory, Survival, and the Taste of Home

    In this episode of Diaspora: The Soul of a People, Marie Stuppard turns to one of Haiti’s quietest yet most enduring staples: mayi moulen, the ground corn dish that has nourished generations without glamour, prestige, or fanfare. Rather than treating it as a simple recipe, Marie uses maïmoulin as an entry point into a much deeper story about memory, survival, dignity, and the foods that sustain people even when the world refuses to celebrate them.  The episode begins by restoring corn to its proper history. Marie traces its origins to Mesoamerica, where Indigenous peoples cultivated it thousands of years ago, and then follows its journey into the Caribbean, where the Taïno of Ayiti were already growing corn long before European arrival. From there, she shows how maïmoulin became one of Haiti’s most dependable foods — not because it was considered luxurious, but because it was accessible, grounding, and reliable. In that sense, this episode is not only about a dish. It is about what people learn to trust when survival is never guaranteed.  Marie then explores the many ways mayi moulen appears in Haitian life: served with sòs pwa, prepared kolé-style with beans mixed in, eaten with herring or avocado, enriched with coconut milk, or transformed into other corn-based forms like labouyi and akasan. These details matter because they reveal maïmoulin not as one rigid recipe, but as a family of foods shaped by region, household practice, necessity, and love.  One of the episode’s sharpest insights comes in its comparison between mayi moulen and other globally celebrated cornmeal dishes like polenta, grits, ugali, pap, mămăligă, coucou, and angu. Marie asks why one bowl of ground corn can be described as rustic or artisanal in an upscale restaurant while another is dismissed as poor people’s food. Her answer is clear: the difference is often not the food itself, but class, race, cultural power, and who has the authority to tell the story. That question feels especially relevant right now, as food media continues to show growing interest in heritage cuisine, cultural storytelling, and long-overdue recognition for underrepresented food traditions.  The episode also connects mayi moulen to Haiti’s larger political and agricultural history. Marie reflects on the collapse of the Haitian rice industry after tariff changes allowed imported rice to flood the market, undercutting local farmers and weakening food sovereignty. Through all of that disruption, maïmoulin remained. It stayed on the table. It kept feeding people.  From there, the conversation moves into the sacred. Marie explains that cornmeal in Haiti is not only food for the body, but also part of the spiritual language of Vodou, where it is used to draw vèvè — sacred symbols that call the lwa into ceremony. In that way, the same substance that nourished the body also became a medium of memory, ritual, and resistance. The episode’s closing message is especially powerful: mayi moulen was never just survival food. It is a food of history, spirit, endurance, and belonging.

    11 min

  5. Apr 22

    Chabon: Smoke, Soil, and Survival

    In this episode of Diaspora: The Soul of a People, Marie Stuppard explores the long history behind charcoal in Haiti and asks listeners to rethink one of the country’s most misunderstood environmental stories. “Chabon: Smoke, Soil, and Survival” begins before colonization, in Aiti — the Taíno “land of high mountains” — where fire was already part of cultivation, cooking, and artistic expression. From there, the episode traces how French colonial rule transformed a balanced relationship with the land into a system of extraction, stripping forests for plantation wealth and leaving behind damage that independence did not erase. Marie connects that history to the indemnity Haiti was forced to pay after 1804, showing how debt, foreign pressure, and limited economic options helped turn charcoal into a survival fuel for rural communities. She also examines the present-day charcoal economy: who profits, who labors, who breathes the smoke, and why the burden falls so heavily on producers, market women, and poor households. The episode also looks forward, highlighting Haitian-led alternatives such as sugarcane bagasse briquettes and community-based reforestation efforts that make living trees more valuable than cut ones. This is not just a story about fuel or deforestation. It is a story about indigenous knowledge, colonial violence, economic survival, public health, and the resilience of Haitian people navigating systems they did not create. This episode is for listeners interested in Haitian history, diaspora studies, environmental justice, Caribbean politics, postcolonial economics, and sustainable development.

    14 min
  • 5 Episodes

About

The Diaspora Podcast explores what it truly means to live between cultures, identities, and worlds. Through powerful conversations and personal stories, this podcast highlights the experiences of immigrants, first-generation families, and members of the global diaspora as they navigate identity, culture shock, language, family traditions, and belonging. From leaving home to building a life in a new country, each episode dives into the emotional, cultural, and personal journeys that shape the immigrant experience. We talk about the challenges of adapting to new environments, preserving cultural roots, raising children across cultures, and finding pride in where we come from. Whether it’s stories of migration from Haiti, reflections on growing up between two cultures, or conversations about language, heritage, and community, Diaspora Podcast celebrates the resilience, complexity, and beauty of living between worlds. If you’ve ever felt caught between cultures — or proud to carry multiple identities — this podcast is for you. Subscribe and join the conversation as we explore stories from across the diaspora. Produced by Juming Delmas Studios (JDS) — a premium podcast production company helping creators turn conversations into impact, authority, and growth. This podcast is part of the JDS Podcast Network, a curated network of shows designed to amplify voices, expand reach, and create powerful cross-platform visibility.

Information

  • Creator
    Marie Stuppard
  • Years Active
    2K
  • Episodes
    5
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © 2026 Diaspora Podcast