This week we’re featuring an excerpt from the Kitchen Sisters’ special, House/Full of Black Women.
For eight years now 34 Black women have gathered monthly around a big dining room table in Oakland, California. They meet, cook, dance, and strategize — grappling with the issues of eviction, erasure, gentrification, inadequate health care, and the sex trafficking of Black women and girls that overwhelm their community.
Spearheaded by dancer/choreographer Amara Tabor-Smith and theater director Ellen Sebastian Chang, these women have come together to creatively address and bring their mission and visions to the streets. Over the years they have created performances, rituals, pop-up processions in the storefronts, galleries, warehouses, museums and streets of Oakland.
Special thanks to Alexa Burrell. Kevin Clarke, Ricardo Iamuuri Robinson and all the many House/Full members of House/full of black women, see some of their work here.
This story was produced by The Kitchen Sisters (Davia Nelson & Nikki Silva), Ellen Sebastian Chang and Sital Mokhtari in collaboration with Brandi Howell and Nathan Dalton. Mixed by Jim McKee. With funding from the Creative Work Fund, the National Endowment for the Arts and PRX. You can hear the full version of House/Full of Black Women and more stories on the Kitchen Sisters Present podcast.