All posts filed under: Conversations Front Page

The Mamas | Ten Questions for Helena Andrews

By Sherisa de Groot

RAISING MOTHERS:     What inspired you to tell this story?  HELENA ANDREWS:     “The Mamas” was born out of hilarity, frustration, and new mom exhaustion. When I had my first daughter in 2017 then joined the prison gang otherwise known as my neighborhood mom group, I could not get over how ridiculous and white everything was. Baby yoga? Music class for seven-week-olds? WTF and also sign me up. Since writing is the only way I know how to process things, including my personal struggle with this all consuming new identity, I began writing notes to myself about the entire experience of being an extra Black mom in gentrified spaces. I knew other women were having the same double-take moments but I’d never read anything about it, so I wrote it. RAISING MOTHERS:     What did you edit out of this book? HELENA ANDREWS:     Honestly? Not much. I’ve written four books now, including two of my own memoirs, and my literary motto is “leave it all on the page.” But because …

Neurodivergent People & Self Directed Learning: Rewiring Generational Curses

By Dr. Kimberly Douglass and Contessa Cooper

Dr. Kimberly Douglass and Contessa Cooper came together to host our first ever video conversation to discuss how self directed learning can help rewire generational curses that we all live and parent under, but particularly for neurodivergent parent and child dynamics. Please enjoy the conversation. Transcripts provided below.  Kimberly Douglass: Hello, I’m Dr. Kimberly Douglass and today I am with my colleague Contessa Cooper and we are bringing you “Neurodivergent People and Self-Directed Learning: Rewiring Generational Curses.” So, neurodivergent people and self-directed learning: rewiring generational curses—that is a mouthful.  I am Dr. Kimberly Douglass, and I am a coach to neurodivergent adults and I work with people one-on-one in group settings and also work with individuals who work with neurodivergent people and helping them be better advocates for what we need as neurodivergent people. You can reach me if you want to talk with me and I encourage you to reach out to me Dr. Kimberly Douglass on TikTok and it’s Douglass with two s’s. You can click the link in my bio and that …

Know the Mother: An Interview with Desiree Cooper

By Sherisa de Groot

  A 2015 Kresge Artist Fellow, Desiree Cooper is a former attorney, Pulitzer Prize-nominated journalist, and Detroit community activist. Her fiction and poetry have appeared in Callaloo, Detroit Noir, Best African American Fiction 2010, and Tidal Basin Review, among other online and print publications. Cooper was a founding board member of Cave Canem, a national residency for emerging black poets. She is currently a Kimbilio fellow, a national residency for African American fiction writers. I had the extreme honor to discuss motherhood, race, feminism, and her first collection of flash fiction, Know the Mother, recently published by Wayne State University Press. You were born and spent a large chunk of your childhood in Japan; you have ties to Virginia and you currently live in Detroit. Where is home? I was born in Itazuke, Japan. My dad was in the Air Force and I spent nine of my first 14 years in Japan (three separate tours of duty). No, I don’t speak Japanese, except for catch tourist phrases. To this day, my mother says hello in Japanese to me every morning. And I …