WFHB Bloomington Community Radio
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 29:30 — 40.5MB)
Subscribe: RSS
“Untethered is a love letter to women of a particular age and size, paying tribute to a woman who was the boss at the time when being black and female and in charge was not the norm – late 1960s in rural Alabama.” – Angela Jackson-Brown
Katia Daniels lives a life steeped in responsibility. At the Pike County Group Home for Negro Boys, she pours her heart into nurturing the young lives under her care, harboring a longing for children of her own. Katia’s romantic entanglement with an older man brings comfort but also stirs questions about the path she’s chosen. The weight of her family’s history bears down on her; a twin brother is missing in action in the heart of the Vietnam War. Having lost her father to cancer, Katia took up the mantle of caretaker, ensuring her mother and brothers were looked after. Her sense of duty extends to the boys at the group home, creating a web of obligations that stretches her emotional bandwidth thin.
When it becomes time for me to exit stage left, I want to be able to whisper to the ancestors, “I did what you wanted me to do. I told your stories and I didn’t leave anything out.”
ABOUT the Author
Poet, novelist, playwright, and professor, Angela Jackson-Brown is the daughter of sharecroppers on her father’s side and her great-grandparents were enslaved. An Associate Professor in the creative writing program at Indiana University in Bloomington, she also teaches in the graduate program at the Naslund-Mann Graduate School of Writing at Spalding University in Louisville, KY.
MUSIC
Willie Mae “Big Mama” Thornton
“Hound Dog”
“My Heavy Burden”
CREDITS
Narrator: Angela Jackson-Brown
Producer & Host: Robert Shull
Audio Engineer and Music Director: Doug Storm
Literary Consultant: Shana Ritter
Musical Theme: “Firetime” by The Keithe Lowrie Duet
Executive Producer: Josh Brewer