To Love Ourselves Well (feat. Allison Russell)

“The journey to self-love is not quick, or easy, or ever over,” says musician Allison Russell, whose solo album Outside Child was released to widespread acclaim last year. In this episode, Allison and Hanif sit down to talk about healing and moving towards self-love through trauma—and the rollercoaster of emotions that often comes along with that work. How can we embrace the totality of our past, comfortably inhabit our contradictions, and love who we are in this moment—whether we feel shameless, ashamed, or both? This week, our playlist features songs about loving oneself. Plus, Allison and Hanif swap poem and book recommendations—check the show notes for links! For the playlist of songs curated for this episode head over to https://bit.ly/oos-self-love.

Music In This Week’s Episode:
Poison Arrow, Allison Russell
Feelins, Betty Davis
Deliverance, Sa-Roc
There She Goes, The La’s
Tomorrow Is My Turn, Nina Simone
Baby Can I Hold You, Tracy Chapman
Queendom, Girlhood
Nobody Knows, Pastor T.L. Barrett and the Youth for Christ Choir
Lost In The Paradise, Gal Costa

Show Notes: 

Our Native Daughters is a collaboration between Rhiannon Giddens, Amethyst Kiya, Leyla McCalla and Allison Russell. Together, they reinterpret and create new works from old ones, shining light on African-American women’s stories of struggle, resistance, and hope.

Allison Russell has been reading Hanif’s collection of poems, A Fortune For Your Disaster, and giving away copies of the book as gifts.

Allison Russell’s song Nightflyer was inspired by the gnostic poem, The Thunder, Perfect Mind.

Allison read the proposal for Hanif’s book, Go Ahead in the Rain: Notes to A Tribe Called Quest, as well as reading Tarana Burke’s Unbound: My Story of Liberation and the Birth of Me Too as part of preparation for writing her own forthcoming memoir

Allison works to raise money for organizations that prevent child abuse, such as the National Children’s Alliance and Little Warriors. Before the Me Too movement, she had experienced pushback when inviting advocacy groups such as RAINN to be present at events.

Check out Sa Roc and Mumu Fresh’s Tiny Desk concerts.
 

Credits:

This show is produced by work by work: Scott Newman, Jemma Rose Brown, Kathleen Ottinger, Rhiannon Corby, and by Hanif Abdurraqib. The show is mixed by Sam Bair. Extra gratitude to Joe Dawson and Saidah Blount at Sonos.