WFHB Bloomington Community Radio
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 29:30 — 40.5MB)
We are listening to Dr. Maria Hamilton Abegunde read an excerpt from “When the Past Becomes Present, published in Let Spirit Speak!: Cultural Journeys through the African Diaspora.
“When the Past Becomes Present” is a story of the African Diaspora told in the voice of an ancestor. The language is a chant, an incantation, poetic and lush it shares the journey of suffering, resilience and hope as it washes over the listener.
Memory never dies, and healing takes time and responsibility. When we remember to heal in community, this can be gentle and compassionate.
Excerpts of her memory work, The Ariran’s Last Life, have been published in Trouble the Waters: Tales from the Deep Blue, Let Spirit Speak!, Warpland, Best African American Fiction, and The Kenyon Review. Co-edited works include Jane’s Stories III with Glenda Bailey-Mershon with whom she and others co-founded Jane’s Stories Press.
About the Author
Maria Hamilton Abegunde is an egungun (ancestral) priest in the Yoruba Orisa tradition and Reiki Master, a healer, birth and post partum doula, poet, writer, and Black Studies practitioner with a focus on the recovery of ancestral memory from the Earth and human body. Abegunde is the first doctorate from the African American and African Diaspora Studies department at Indiana University.
MUSIC
Babatunde Olatunji
Nigerian drummer and educator
“Cosmic Rhythm Variations”
“Oya (Aw-Yah)”
“Dawn Idaji”
CREDITS
Narrator: Maria Hamilton Abegunde
Producer & Host: Robert Shull
Associate Producer: Doug Storm
Literary Consultant: Shana Ritter
Recording Engineer: Cindy Beaulé
Musical Theme: “Firetime” by The Keithe Lowrie Duet
Executive Producer: Josh Brewer
