The Pilgrims of Blackness

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In this here flush i wanted to get out of kind of spirituality that didn't come at the expense of my blackness. It would be so hard to tell our family's story without telling the story of blackness you know not that our our generational story can encapsulate it but i just wouldn't be telling a true story. What are our rituals what are our loves and desires? They have room in the conversation as opposed to being kind of um pushed down, he says. I try to let it let it breathe yeah.

Welcome to the Wintering Sessions with Katherine May.

This week Katherine chats to writer and poet Cole Arthur Riley, author of This Here Flesh and creator of Black Liturgies.

Unable to speak up as a child, Cole talks about how she learned to find her voice amid a family of gifted talkers and storytellers. Cole describes her father and grandmother as inspirational figures who nevertheless were marked by the generational trauma experienced by so many African Americans. But from this emerges Cole’s own, unique spiritual account of the world, overseen by a God who lives in our hurting, imperfect bodies, and who sees us as we are.

Cole is one of the most lyrical, perceptive and moving writers of her generation, at once cerebral and earthly, and always rooted in the body. We talk about Cole’s hair turning grey as a child, her wise grandmother and inspirational father, and the moments when she came to realise that both of them needed her care.

COLE LINKS

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This Here Flesh

Black Liturgies

All other Cole links HERE

KATHERINE LINKS

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