I am Yamla, your host, your guide, a teacher for salm, and a soft place to fall for others. And I was a miserable failure in my relationships until I love myself enough to be able to share my love with other people. Welcome to the r Spot, a production of Shondaland Audio in partnership with iHeartRadio. My guest today is a native of Jersey City. Grammy nominated author artist Kevin Powell.
Kevin is a hip hop activist, meaning he understands, teachers and promotes the depth and value of hip hop culture, and that makes him a cultural activist. He's also a television and personality of writer an author. I first became aware of Kevin when I was still a resident of
the Nation of Brooklyn. I think he was in college back then, but he wrote for the Black American newspaper, and he covered the story about the killing of Michael Griffin and Howard Beasts Howard Beach Queen's which was a huge story back then, akin to the Michael Brown story in Ferguson, except that Michael Griffin was killed by citizens,
not by police. Kevin is the author of fourteen books, including My Favorite, The Education of Kevin Powell, A Boy's Journey into Manhood and my second favorite, which recently came out. Kevin also served for many years as a writer for one of my favorite magazines, Vibe Magazine, which was launched way back in the day in the nineties with the Blessing and the Guy guidance of Elder Statesman Quincy Jones. Now as a recent contribution to African Voices magazine, also
from the Nation of Brooklyn. Celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of hip hop, Kevin wrote an article that really is a love story and a historical treatise about hip hop. I'm not telling you this to impress you or to establish that Kevin is somebody special. I want you to understand that he has a long term commitment and history to the evolution of people and humanity based on the culture
and contribution of people of color. However, He's not stuck in just people of color because Eve Ensler, the author of the Vagina Monologues, is one of his mentors, which Kevin speaks to in his album Grocery Shopping with My Mother. I love this man. I love him for his heart, for his commitment, for his voice. His latest offering to the world. Grocery shopping with my mother sent chills through my body. I didn't know if I should weep or
do the Hallelujah dance. If you are wondering who you are or how to be as a mother, as a son, as a person living in the twenty first century. So it is my sheer, delight and honor to welcome this incredible, incredible activist and author and son as a mother. It is my honor to witness or his unfolding and to welcome him to the r spot. I want to start with this. I want you to hear this. Dear God, please.
Do not take my mother from me anytime soon. I am not ready. God, I do not know.
What I would be without her.
She has been my mother and my father. So she pushed and pulled me through her earth the way a jagged little pill shoves its way around the mouth of history. I love my mother like I love breathing air, even when she bruises me with her words, with her rage.
God, Mama has forever bruised.
Me with her words, with her rage.
And that was an offering from grocery shopping with my mother. All right, our spot has joined me and welcoming Kevin Powell. Hi, Kevin, welcome to the art spot.
First of all, thank you so much, and I'm just humbled and grateful for everything you said. And you took me back when you mentioned the Michael Griffith peace and the Black American way back in the day. I actually was in college. That was my first check. I think I got twenty dollars for that article back in the day as a writer.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I you know, I just want to say thank you for you and all that you've done. You know, it's interesting. I just just thank you. I just need to say thank you. You know, we both have lost some folks in the last couple of years, and I don't take for granted being here and just thank you for all you've given to our communities. I just need to say that to you publicly. Thank you.
You know. I lost my daughter this year. You sent me that lovely, lovely text and email. And in my healing process, one of the things that I was doing was just praying because I just I had to keep my mind and in my prayer one day Spirit said to me, or I heard the guidance. You know, I don't like to say Spirit said to me because then people think I'm crazy. I hear voices, so I just said I was guided and it said in twenty twenty four, you're going to do a lot of work with men,
and I said, okay. So when I heard about grocery shopping with my mother, and you know, we've known each other forever. I remember it was in two thousand and one, two thousand and one, Kevin, My daughter Jamia was still alive when you and I set up in the Brooklyn Church and we did an audience of men. Do you remember that, God, Yes, we must have had about two hundred men in that church and that was It had to be two thousand and one because Jamia died in
two thousand and three. So I know that she was still alive because she was there. So we've been connected for a long time. I've watched you evolve.
Thank you so much.
This for me is so powerful, grocery shopping with my mother because that relationship between the mother and the son is it's a challenging relationship, but it's a blessed relationship. And I always tell women when I speak to them and they're going through breakdown with their son, remember Mama, you are raising somebody's husband and somebody's father, Okay, And I also believe that a man is who is mother
makes him. And so in this album, you talk about your mother, you talk about your father, but the beauty is you also talk about all that you learned and gathered and put together even in spite of or because of your relationship with your mother.
Wow. I you know if I can say this because I have to pay homage always to our ancestors. I listened to a lot of Nina Simone, Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gay and putting that together, and obviously people like Nikki Giovanni and the Last Poets and you know, Sonya Sanchez and Varaka Mary Baraka and he rest in peace as well. But I just wanted to do something that was in the tradition of who we are as poets, as artists. And I just love music and I'm a house music head.
I'm a dance head. I actually grew up. I was dancing hard when I was younger, and I was like, oh, the first track to be a party track, and I wanted to be in the spirit of bringing community together as you do, and that's where it came from. But you know, It's just I wanted to I wanted to take people on a journey musically because I just I listened to all kinds of stuff. I'm definitely a hip
hophead for life. That's never going to change. But I've been blessed to be exposed to classical music, to jazz, to African rhythms to arrange this stuff, reggae. I'm a big fan of reggae, big big fan of Caribbean music, and so it's all there, and I just I'm still in shock if I can say this. You know, we we I got to shout out Tanisha Hill, got to shout out black women because black women hold it down. This album will not exist without tiny Sha Hill, who's
an amazing singer, songwriter, vocal arranger. But you know, she and I started talking about I said, you need to be the producer with me on this album, so there'd be no Grammy nominations as much her Grammy nomination as mine because she we worked together for eight months in the studio putting this thing together through all kinds of stuff happening this year, you know what I'm saying. So I just got to acknowledge that that's important to.
Me to say that, well, you know, I'm a music fanatic too, and all of those things. And it's important because I think some of the youngins today they don't know amer they don't know Nicki, they don't know some of the things that you grew up on some of my peers, who you know, I'm an elder now, I can't believe it, but you know, if it wasn't for Nicki and Amri and Hockey Matabooty and so many people
that some of the youngins don't know. So for you to be influenced by them and bring it into the twenty first century with the hip hop vibe, that's how you do that. So let me ask you this question. Why grocery shopping with my mother? Why that?
Well five years ago, so my mom got sick, as I talk about in the title poem song on the album. And I'm an only child. I was raised by my mother. I mean, she had me young, and you know what I'm saying, And I grew up on welfare, foods, Sam's government, She's poverty. I wouldn't wish on anybody. My mama had migrated from the South, from South Carolina up to Jersey City and she got sick, and she said she needed help going to the grocery store. That's how it started, Ayana.
I had no intention of writing a poetry book, which came out last December with that title. No, we're doing an album. What I was doing was simply like walking behind my mother, helping her pick out stuff because she insisted on going to the grocery store herself. I said, mine, you know we can have grocery deliver. Oh no, I ain't gonna do that. She didn't. My mother just she got a cell phone, she got a flip phone. She got a flip phone. But there's no texting, there's no
online banking, nothing. So she's like, I gotta go to the grocery store. So I had to take her to the grocery store every week for about a year or so, crying behind her, trying to get her to change her diet. You know, she would curse me out in that mama kind of way. Boy, you're trying to I raise you. You know how it is with our folks. I raised you. I'm older than you. I was here before you were here.
I was like, Mom, but you can't, you can't get all that she oh for the cookies, you go for the ice cirl like, okay, mom, And you know, I started posting on social media, just doing it. This is what we do. I just said, you know, I'm out here at grocery stop my mother. I had no idea black folks, lat next folks, white folks, Indigenous folks, Asian folks, people of all different identities saying that's me, my mother saying black women especially saying you know, that's my mother,
or that's me with my son or my daughter. People saying to me they had lost their mothers and that, you know, thank thank you for what you're doing. And it blew my mind, and out of it that came this long poem. And then I, you know, my wife stuck the photo that's the cover of the album and the book when we were at literally a grocery store and it was still you know, we were still wearing masks most of the time, and that how that's how we got the cover of My wife's a photographer, and
it's just but it's it's it's and it's funny. When I showed my mother the book, she said, who's that want to cover with you? I said, man, that's you. But I wanted to write. It's something, you know. I thought a lot about Tupac Chakor's Dear Mama, rest in peace. Yeah, and I didn't realize you were born on set Timber thirteenth or day to pop past. I didn't realize that. Wow, that blows my mind just to think about that. And I thought about all the songs we've had about mamas
and black mothers through the years. You know what I'm saying, and you know, and also the dear God part comes from the color purple. To be quite honest about it, I was always affected by how Seali would say Dear God in the book and you would hear her voice in the movie version, because my mother's very spiritual. I was raised up in the church. I've been Christian, I've been Muslim, I've been a few things at Yalla Vanzane. You know what I'm saying, But what it always comes
back to is that spiritual piece. And so I just I said, I wanted to write something that reflected the kind of black churches that we went to in New York and New Jersey when I was growing up, where my mother was constantly calling on God. Because I was calling God honestly with that poem, grocery shop with my mother, Like I I she's the only constant in my life. I was born the only Wow. Yeah, I only knew my father. I alays saw my father two or three
times until I was eight years old. Then he was gone. The next time I saw my father was when he was in a gravesite in South Carolina when I found them years later with the help of a wonderful sister genealogist. But other than that, it's my mama, It's my mama. It's my mama. And that's the poem is a plea to God, you know, to give me more time, you know. And my mom is you know, she comes from the old world, as we say, you know, whether your family's from the South or the West Indies. You know what
I'm saying. It's like they have their ways, They're rooted in it, you know. So it's been a complicated relationship. But at the end of the day, I'm clear that I would not have sixteen books the life that I've had my mama. I mean, my mother has an eighth grade education in Yalla van Zane. She took me to the library when I was eight years old. We didn't have many books in the house. We had a Bible. That was it. She didn't know that, you know, she didn't know. She just was like, I got to make
sure he gets an education. When I was three years old, three or four years old, she was telling me I was going to go to college. The only time my mother ever set foot on college campus is when she dropped me off at Rutg Universe I was eighteen years old, because my cousins had a car to drive us there and Central New Jersey. She had never been on a cough campus, you know. But this is someone, This is
the power of black women. This is the power of black mothers, this remarkable vision against all odds, coming through slavery, colonization, segregation, all the craziness that y'all have had to deal with, and then having to raise this child by herself. And I was definitely a boy that gave her a lot of problems. But you know, I can see my mother
all in me. The work ethic comes from her getting up early every morning, like there's still like I'm around roosters and chickens down south, you know, is a part of where I come from, you know, And I just you know, I would like her to be here as long. She's gotten better, thank god, you know, but she still walks slowly, and she's still you know, insisting in doing things her way. And I've suggested yoga to her, and you know, Ma, there ways to deal with all.
Yoga.
Oh yeah, I was like yoga. No, oh no that you know, it's funny, you know, it's deep. I have referenced you probably a thousand times. I've said to so many people, people like my mom and them did not have an a Yalla van zandt or you know folks growing up, they didn't have y'all, you know, and so they now when you try to introduce this, they're like, no, I'm good, I just need the Lord, you know what I'm saying.
That's right, that's it. We'll talk more about it when we come back. Welcome back to the r spot. Let's pick up where we left off. After that beautiful testimony to your mother, she bruises me with her words and with her rage. I acknowledge the ways that I bruised my son more with my words than with the rage.
But the words.
Probably came from rage. Talk to me as a son, because I've got some mothers I want to bring on, but talk to me as a son, Hey, how did you recog nis you were bruised? And then what did you do about it?
I recognize it as a child. I mean, listen, my mother is a beautiful, dark skinned black woman. And all black is beautiful. Everybody's beautiful, We're all beautiful. But she, my father was a high yellow Negro what they would call a red black, red, red, red bone, red bone back then. Yeah, and you know, my mother did not have the kind of educational background formerly that you have that I have, where she could understand the history of it,
so she spoke from a lot of pain. Sometimes my mother would say to me when I was a child, you know, you're just like your father. And then she would say in the next breath, don't be like your daddy. Now you're eight nine years old. You don't have to
process that. And I think what often happens, and I've said this in spaces with black women who have sons, you know, I understand the hurt that you all feel, particularly when black men have been so washed in sexism as men, thinking that we can abuse black women or women period anyway. We feel like and physically verbally, emotional,
spiritually everything. And if you you know, and if you don't go to counseling, into therapy, the things, the work that you've been doing, you know, thank you for the work you've been doing to try to help people to heal. There was no healing space for my mother. There's not a healing space for a lot of our black mothers. They just have you all have to just suck it up, which is going all the way back as you know, Yalla Vanzanne. So those plantations, black women had to be everything.
Black women had to be everything. And so I was hurt as a boy, not just the physical beatings, but the verbal beatings, the stuff that was set to me. I mean, if I could be honest about it, I mean, you know, my mother would call me the names that Fred Sanford would call his son, lamont On Sanford and his son you know what those words were, yeah, I mean, and they were hurtful. Here, I am an a student
because my mama demanded excellence out of me. I could not have a B or anything, nothing less than the A. But then being told that you're not even intelligent, it took me years. I was hurt. I was hurt. I was devastated. I got to college with no relationship skills. I had never been hugged by my mother, you know, because she didn't know how to hug. There was no I love using any of the stuff. The stuff I
say in the poem is very is very real. And it took me learning black history when I got to college, to Rutgers and understanding the devastating effects of slavery, all
of it on us. But more importantly, Yana, it took me going to therapy to forgive my mother, you know what I mean, and to begin to forgive like I understand it because I don't know what it's like to be a black woman who has to deal with racism and sexism, and if you're a poor black woman the way my mother was, the way you were at points in your life, the classism as well, I have no idea what that did to her, you know, And so she was just operating out of what she knew, you know.
And I think that it's important what I say to mothers all the time. Now, it's just really important that the hurt that you have felt by the society racism, sexism, classism, and any of the isms and phobias that you, whatever your identity or identities are, you know, but also if it happens to be the father of that child, that you not take out that hurt on the child, because
the child. It's the generational traumas. We didn't have the word trauma like we do now, but that's what I was carrying around and I ended up hurting a lot of people as a result of it. And I don't blame my mother. I simply was acting out what I learned. And then I realized when I got to college, well, hell, a lot of us are damage and were just acting out on each other right.
Well, you know that's what brings up the beauty. Very shortly, I'm going to talk to Courtney b Vans. He just wrote a book entitled The Invisible Ache. Wow, and my I'm on a mission. I want every man with two eyeballs just to identify his invisible ache. But what you say here is so critical that and in the album, what I recognized was based on what you were saying, you did something that is very important for men and
building a healthy relationship with their mother. A. You learned her story, yes, because you talked about her being dark skinned, You talked about her being born in South Carolina. You talked about how her father they used to beat her, which probably established her relationship with men, her thoughts about men, and although I think your mother and I might be around the same age, believe it or not, I'm heading
in that direction. But you talked about the impact of her history on her story and how her story impacted how she treated you. So many men don't take the time to learn their mother's story and they make it personal. She came after me personally. In fact, Kevin, I've got some mothers on the line, and I want you to talk to them as a son. Okay, greetings beloved, and
welcome to the R Spot. My guest and I my guest, Kevin Powell, and I are talking to sons about their mothers, and mothers about their sons so that we can get some healing on the table. Are you in good relationship or breakdown? Which a son right now used.
To be good? Now I'm in breakdown. He is a fifteen year old uh huh, and he's just we were very very close growing up, and over the past couple of years he has started to pull away and his grades are inconsistent up and down. He's smart, his work ethic is compromised. He's kind of isolating. I've had him. I've had him talk to somebody and she's like, yeah, he's a typical teenage boy. Don't even worry about it.
But the controlling person and the fearful person in me is kind of confused on how is a mom do I step back and start parenting him like a fifteen year old a young adult male, and without not without like having him end up on Doctor philm someday. So I want to give him his space to grow and develop, and I put full trust in you know, my creator that he's handling everything. But as a mom, I get worried. I do I just you know, I want him to be happy and live his life for what makes him happy.
He's not involved in anything. He's an incredible artist and poet. He doesn't do anything anymore. He basically just isolates.
Wow, where's his dad? Where's his dad?
Great question?
His dad is in his life. The only thing is is I'm kind of the disciplinarian and dad's the fun guy. So you know, I'm always bearing that brunt. I grew up and you know, my dad was was addicted to heroin and it was a violent household. And so I'm trying to parent things differently. I'm a first gen college grad.
I'm trying to kind of reshape things. And I think sometimes I'd a little bit of a helicopter because I'm concerned that he maybe go to he might go down the same path and struggles that I did, and I obviously want to shelter him from them. Different environment, but I still have my you know, my legacy issues from my ancestral issues from you know, growing up.
Yeah, I'm going to let you talk to a son. Yes, so, Kevin. You know, as a mom, I know what it's like to have a fifteen year old male. Aw blessing is she does have the father there. But as a son, what would you say to this mom?
Wow, I think it's important to really have some conversations with him about where he is. I just had this conversation Madam Caller and Ayana with a parent of single mom, a mother of a thirteen year old, and I just said, it's important for a parent to evolve with their child, and I wish, you know, this is a conversation I could have with my Mother's clear to me that you can have this with your son. I think we can't operate.
We can't parent from fear. We can't parent from For example, the way my mother parented me was, you know, don't get anyone pregnant, you know, as a teenager, don't get in trouble, you know, don't don't go outside. It was very fear based, and I think that is what is happening.
I believe with the boys, especially because unfortunately the way and I don't want to speak in the binary because I love all people in all identities, but if we're talking about you know, especially heterosexual boys for a second here, you know, a lot of times we're not even encouraged to express ourselves. Now, you said your son is an artist, which you know, I don't even know his gender identity doesn't really matter, but the fact that he's just an
artist means that he knows how to express himself. He's done it, and I think that there's something going on is causing him to shut down, and we've got to get to the root of that. And I think it's important to have some conversations with either you and him, or you and his father and him, just like, how are you feeling, you know, where are you at No pressure about college, no pressure what do you want to
do with your life? No pressure of what I got, which is at eighteen, you're going to be an adult and you got to figure something out. And for me, it was like, you got to go to college, You're gonna go to military, you gotta get a job, you
gotta do something. Just kind of because I think it's important to create a space where boys feel comfortable to talk because often in our society, we do not encourage boys to express themselves except through shutting down completely and making themselves invisible, or it comes out as rage in some sort of form, you know what I mean. We don't want that to happen, obviously, So I think it's about creating a safe space where they can say, you know,
at fifteen, I want to talk about some things. You know, here's what I'm feeling, Here's what I'm thinking. And so I think that that's important and I just and I want to say this too. In our society, I feel like it doesn't matter that the boys are black, white, latinx Asian Indigenous. I think that, you know, there's a crisis in how we define manhood here where I see the same patterns happening boys, and Yalla, you know what
I'm talking about. You know you want to ask I do one of your most famous interviews, conversations with DMX, I cite that a lot as here's what happens to us a lot of times as boys, and it ends up becoming self destructive behavior. And so for me at fifteen, ended up getting in trouble with the police. It ended up getting arrested a couple of times. You know, it ended up my mother ended up saying things to me like, I don't know if you're going to make I don't
know if you're going to actually make it. I did, thankfully, but she didn't have the the again, the full picture to be able to articulate or figure out what I needed. And I think what boys need is to say, then that we give to those who identify as girls. They need love, they need the spaces bit to express themselves.
And you know, I just spoke to four hundred young boys Ayana and call her on Saturday in Seattle, and what I wasn't a speech because they were teenagers, they were your son's age, but they got up there and they said things like, you know, boys should be able to cry without judgment, you know what I mean? We should speak freely when everyone's saying that there's something wrong with us, and I think what we got to create that space for them? You know, This is what a
Yalla's work has been about, you know. But there's very few spaces like hers where we say to boys, to males, hey, you know that you're hurting too. You got to say because if you don't do it, then think about the herd that. I'm not saying it's gonna happen with your son. But I was someone who grew up very in a violent world and I ended up being very violent. I talked about that openly because I didn't know there was other ways to express myself. And I'm a writer just
like your son's a artists, you know. But even there, you know, is he in safe spaces where he can be free to express himself as an artist or is he being dissed? Is he being bullied? We don't know if we don't have those conversations with him.
It's that balance and having those conversations, and I do have them. He's more resistant, but I know I can't give up, and I have to trust and how I've raised him. He has that freedom state. It is a little challenging because my husband can be a little bit like we'll call it neanderthali ish, like, oh, you can't do this, you can't do that. It's the pressures that these teenagers go through to be a certain way and do a certain thing. And and you know, it's that's
the that's the problem. It's the peer pressures.
Yeah, then we'll talk about that when we come back. Welcome back to the r spot. Let's get back to the conversation. Mama, this is mother to mother now Okay, okay, too many words, too much mind. Let me say something to you. And I'm saying this to you as a mother right now. You are not mothering him. You are fathering him.
Yeah, you're right, Yeah, I know my masculine energy. I'm not leaning into my feminine I know.
Yes, Yes. What is your son's love language? Words of affirmation as a love language, quality time is a love language, acts of service. This what I'm saying is how does he receive love? How does he recognize love? And it sounds to me like you're giving direction and you're trying to be there, but you're doing it from a headspace not a hard space. The fact that you doubt him or that you don't trust him, that you are highlighting what could be wrong. See, he is fifteen, so he's
in the stage of identity versus identity crisis. He's trying to figure out who he is, and his mother doubting him is devastating. I hear you say he's an artist, but you are dealing with him as though he is an engineer. Find out his love language, sometimes his love if his love language is affection, or if his love language is quality time. I didn't know my son's love language, which were words of affirmation, so I never affirmed him.
I corrected him, I guided him, I directed him. I told him what to do, and I never said you're fine, you okay. And my son raised by a single mom, when he turned eighteen, he went out in the street and did everything I told him not to do, everything that he couldn't do under my roof. He did it between eighteen and twenty one and ended up with a sentence in prison. He should have got could have got seven and a half to fifteen, but with prayer, he
got three and a half to seven. And all of that time he was in there three and a half years. All I did was pray because by then I knew his love language. By then I knew that I had never affirmed him. Oh baby, you're sitting in your room by yourself. I hope you getting good ideas. You need some tea, He asked not to be freaked out because he's in the room by hisself. And if you fill the space with an energy of worry and doubt and heat, Ma, he lived in your body. He heard your heart beat.
He knows what you're saying, even when you don't say it. He feels you. Stop giving him words, give him your heart, find out his love language.
Thank you. I absolutely will and I do. When he said school, by the way, I do go in his room and pray, and I think prayers as I walk around.
His room, but he ain't in the room over him.
Yes, I will absolutely do that for sure.
Go ahead, Kevin.
You know my self esteem was shot as a boy growing up.
What does that mean? Break that down? Tell her what that means.
I was confused about who I was because I was given a lot of orders by my mom and never the affirmation that word did you just said to Yana, there were no affirmations at all. And I'm not saying that we need to baby boys, and some people like to call it quote unquote. I definitely don't want to enable boys to be irresponsible, you know. But I do think we take for granted, you know, when we participate in this this notion that that you know, girls can
be nurtured but boys can't be nurtured. I think we do the boys of the service, you know what I mean. And I don't think we actually develop as whole human beings in a way that people who are girls or women do and are in touch in a different way with their emotions, to Yanna's point. And so I was very all over the place. I just I didn't even know how to function outside of like, let me, let me go to school, let me do what my mom
tells me to do, and that's it. And when I got to college, honestly, my college year is other than my activism, and discovering I was a writer for real was really a disaster because I know who I was and now I'm out in the world on my own,
and I had no relation. Like I said a moment ago, I had no love skills, relationship skills, friendship, skills, I was socially awkward, all those kinds of things, and I just think, you know, to y'alla's point, I do feel there needs to be a shift, you know, and how we relate to our sons. I really believe that because I end up what ends up happening a lot of times is people like me are asked to have conversations with people's sons all the time, you know what I mean.
And I'm not just talking about the mother's. Oftentimes it's father's as well, you know, because people are trying to raise them in a way that they think they're supposed to. And I think it's important to be honest. And y'all please tell me because you are a mother, you've been a mother, I mean, haven't you had to reinvent the book along the way a few times?
Oh hell yeah, not reinvent the rule book, but throw the rule book out. And here here's the other thing. And my son told me this on a collect call from prison. Wow, okay, he said, the fears you had for me were not the fears I had for myself.
Yeah.
The other thing he said to me was you gave me enough rope to hang myself. And then when I did you beat me up about it? Yeah, my son said that to me. Yeah, sound familiar, Mama.
That just resonated because that is exactly what I feel. It's almost like you spoke his words like I don't have these, guess and I'm confident. Why are you doubting me? And I'm putting that energy back to him that he's absorbing.
Yeah, and it's.
Making him out himself and kind of say, will screw it? Yeah, And she doesn't believe this, and no one I might as well do it.
That's devastating. Listen and listen to this. Mama. First, I'm gonna say this to you again. Stop fathering him, back down, pump your brakes, stop trying to change him, and just give him space to unfold and become who he is. And as Kevin said, you cannot parent from fear.
No, no, no.
You cannot. That is so destructive. And so many mothers do that for their sons and their daughters, but it's devastating for the sons. Stop fathering him, mother him, and give him your heart. Too many words, too much mind, I'm a shut up.
Wow.
Thank you that I have been so incredibly helpful. I'm truly truly grateful for you both, and thank you so so much.
Thank you.
I'm all right, mama, thank you, good luck, thanks alrighty, thank you bye.
Grateful for you both.
Yeah, thank you so much.
Thank you, Kevin. That is so so important. Wow, when you hear these things and you think about this offering, because even your offering on your album to your father, Yeah, when you say I forgive you, Yeah, what what comes up for you? When you hear these things from these mothers?
You know?
It's profound? Is that.
I I.
Text my wife as I was listening, you know, I just said, Wow, A lots so many of us are hurting out here. Even a love song, the first love song on my album for you, because my wife and I talked very honestly about our dysfunctions that we were bringing to the table, our traumas, and I think we said, I say in that song that we don't want to be married to destruction, you know what I mean? Yeah, I just think that we have to The word is healing. The word is healing. The word is healing. The word
is healing. And you know, but we can't get to the healing if we're not willing to be honest about everything. And as you've been saying throughout this show and thank you for it, is what are you willing to take responsibility for? You know what I mean? Man? You know I heard my mother's hurt as I was listening to the last caller. I understand it, you know, I really do.
And you know you said something earlier like what helped me as a male I identify persons when I began to read women writers like yourself back in the nineties and Order Lord and Belle Hooks and you know, Tony Morris and Alse Well, just a range of sisters. Because I realized I was hearing my mother's stories in you all's words, you know, yes, and so it gave me compassion and empathy that I didn't have before. I gotta be brilli honest with you. I was angry at my
mother for years. We had a terrible relationship, and in my twenties she changed the locks on her door. She didn't want me to come back. She's like, you can't come back here, disrespect I was disrespectful to her because I didn't have anywhere to put that rage, that anger that I felt because of racism, systemic racism, because of the whole that you you know you talked about with my father not being there, and then there was no forward motional with my mother. I had to be the
one to evolve the relationship my mother. She still in many ways relates to me as if I'm a child, you know, because she's not able to she hasn't been able to grow, you know, she's she's still hurt from all the things that's happened to her. But I said, I gotta I can't change my mother, But what I can change is how I relate to my mother.
You know, yes, right there, say it again, Say it again, say it again.
I can't change my mother, though, yeah, it can change how I relate to my mother. Yes, And I made a constant decision that it needs to be with love. But I had to learn to love myself, a Yallabanzane. I had to learn to love myself and as you know, love self, love is a journey is never ending. But I was like, I got to figure this out, and now I'm not gonna lie to you my word. There are times my mother's words still hurt me. There's this still you know, things that are said to me or about me.
Was there anything that your mother could have done differently that would have changed who you are and your response to her. What could she have done differently?
This is getting very deep, mister y.
We grocery shopper. That's all.
I wish that my mother could have known what the physical beatings, including when I was asleep, which are the same things that happened to her when she was a girl by her father, and the verbal beatings, the damage that it did to me as a boy, as a child. I wish she would have known or could have known the confusion I felt when she said, don't be like your father, but you look like your father. You're just like that No good goddamn quote unquote, I'm going to
say his name. It was all taken I'm an only child, so it was all taken out on me. Yeah. Yeah, So I wish that my mother could have known that a hug, a kiss, I love you, the affirmations that you talked about earlier, the difference could have made.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It literally took me into my fifties. I'm in the same generation as your son, y'all, van Zan, I'm finally in a healthy, loving relationship my second marriage because I felt like I spent my entire adult life, through my twenties, thirties, forties, into my fifties trying to figure it, to undo all the damage that I experienced, not just for my mother, my father, my family, the society, all of it, because I simply did not have the tools emotionally and spiritually to be a man Kevin power.
Before I let you go, I want to ask you about this, but what.
She got sick? Lord, really sick. A few years back, I was terrified a loose to my mother. I had her speed dial to the hospital there in Jersey, has sprinted me as fast as I could to be with us.
I want to ask you this, Help me understand this. Terrified of losing her and angry at her at the same time. How do you wear that? How do you hold that? Because I think a lot of men are in that place. A lot of sons have this breakdown, upset with their mom, but at the same time terrified of losing her.
As much as I've talked about my mother in my life and my writings and my speeches everywhere, it wasn't until this show today with you You've said it a few times, reminding us that we were inside our mother's and heard the heartbeat. Felt the heartbeat was our heartbeat.
I never heard it put like that, Terrified of losing her now, twenty years from now, whenever it is, because that's the first sign of life I ever had, reconciling anger, because she still has that way of speaking to me that forces me at times to get off the phone really quickly, or even when I go over for things like Thanksgiving, I have an internal clock like I can only be here for a certain amount of time because I just don't want to feel like I have felt
throughout my life because of her pain. It's attention that is unexplainable. You know, you love your mother, but you also wish that your mother could evolve with you. You love your parent you wish they can grow as you've been growing. But you also have to accept that not all of them will, including maybe yours, and the best you can do is just be there for them. And that's why I was at that grocery store for my mother.
She calls me, she knows she's got me. I got a whole system at Yalla Vanzete Place for my mother in my hometown in Jersey City. Anything my mother ever needs, because at the end of the day. As I try to say in this poem on this album, Grocery shopping with my mother, It's a kind of love that is it can't even be defined. You know, I love my wife deeply. My wife is the most important person to
me in my life. But my mother gave me life, and I've had to figure out, through years of therapy and spiritual work and all the things that I do, how to forgive her and love her unconditionally even when she still hurts me. To this day. It is hard at Yalla van zandt. It is hard when I'm cursed at, when I'm called a name, to this day, when I'm ridiculed for decisions, when it's assumed that I, a grown man, don't know what I'm doing and saying it is hard.
But what helps me to get through it is I can't imagine what it's like to be born in nineteen forty three in this country and label colored or negro, to be a victim of racism, sexism, and classicism, to be a darskined black woman and told that she's not beautiful her entire life and not half in a Yalla van Zant or an Oprah Winfrey or any of the folks who have come along like you all have created healing spaces. That is how I'm able to love my mother.
I've had to come to an understanding. I realized she is silly in the color purple. She is those characters in those twenty Morrison novels. She is the journey of black women in this world where you all have to be everything for everyone, and then you wake up and there's nothing left for you. And I decided I have to give my mother something she deserved that eightieth the party I gave her. She deserves to be able to
be in a car service. She deserves to be able to have some things that she never thought she could have in her life because the son that she raised, that she gave an imagination to by taking to the library, has been blessed to better show my mother thinks she could even imagine.
But your sharing speaks to the importance of a son knowing his mother's story as a woman. I'm sorry to take you here, Kevin, but you are healing hundreds of thousands of sons today, So I'm gonna take it. I'm gonna use you till I use your up.
Yes, ma'am, Yes, ma'am, let's just take the card.
Says it helps her back. MA is afraid to fall.
MA ain't gonna fall in front of no strangers.
My mother's power is in the steering of the shopping car. She pushes it forward the way a truck driver enters their tractor through bumper from bumper traffic.
Wobbles slowly from the car when she spots an items she needs lord gree peaches, full red apples, five bananas, a package of chocolate chip cookies, a bunch of collar greens, a carton of orange juice.
That clip led into your speaking to when she fell in your house and you and her ended up looking eye to eye, and you said, here I am with a woman who never hugged me, never kissed me, never told me she loved me. And then I hear you speak to sending a car service for her and giving the birthday party for her, how you walk behind her in the supermarket, watching her pick those things up. And what comes to mind for me, Kevin, is somehow maybe you didn't even know that you you were doing this.
You separated your heart and love from your mother, from her behavior that bruised and wounded you.
Yeah, do you.
Know how you did that or are you aware that that's what you did? That? You put the behavior over here, but you allowed the love to remain over here. Do you know how you did that?
Therapy? Years of things?
Okay? Okay?
And how can I say I love black people if I can't forgive black people? How can I say we love We should love black people unconditionally. But I put conditions on my love for my mother.
M put conditions on your love for your mother. How many sons do that? They want their mother to be this way or that way? And what I'm hearing you say is that you accepted her exactly as you are and created boundaries to protect yourself. Get off the phone, only stay this amount of time. Don't take it personally. When she goes off, eighty years old, grown up with no affirmation in a racist society. You put that over there, and wow, she is blessed to have you.
You know, I'm blessed that she gave birth to me. And you know, as I was listening to you, counsel, I wish i'd put my mom on the phone with you.
No, she would cuss me out. I know that kind Oh yeah, baby, and you know what she says, I'm gonna plead the blood of Jesus over.
You, and then I could say nothing.
Kevin Paull grocery shopping with my mother. I'm going to speak into existence that you need to start writing your acceptance speech for that Grammy right now. But I want to also ask you, what is your message to mothers.
To all mothers? Thank you, thank you, thank you. I'm one man who has learned by listening through the years, and I continue to listen and learn from Mayana van Zan, from my mama, from my wife. My gosh, I can't even imagine what it's like to be a woman and too black women. You know what Malcolm X says when Beyonce sampled Malcolm X talking about how black women are the most disrespected people, you know, on her Elimonade album a few years ago. I mean, I say, to black women,
there's no world without y'all. There's no world without black women. There's no world without black mothers. There's nothing without black mothers. You know, not only have you had to raise your own children, but you have to help raise other people's children. I'm like, you know, thank you, thank you, thank you, and I apologize, just like you said apologies earlier. I apologize, and I'm doing my best now as a black man
to help other black males understand that. You know, no matter what we go through, we cannot, cannot, cannot take it out on black women.
And what would your message be to sons today? What would your message be to sons?
Heil, heil, don't be afraid men, boys out there, sons expressing how you feel. It's okay to be vulnerable. It's okay to cry, It's okay to say your hurting, is okay to say you're depressed. Don't sabotage yourself as I have done many times. You know, no judgment, no judgment, no judgment. But we got to learn how to love ourselves so we can bring love into this world.
Kevin Powell, cultural activist, author of the Grammy nominated album Grocery Shopping with My Mother.
Thank you, I love you, I appreciate you.
Thank you our spotters. I hope you've heard something here today that will heal your relationship with your son. If you're a mother with your mother, if you're a son, I hope that you go out and get this spoken word. The album and the book, and I hope that you find in this conversation exactly what it is that you need to support your healing. I am so grateful for this conversation. What do you think, Kevin? Should we take a few more callers and see how we can help them on their healing journey?
Yeah?
I say let's do it. Kevin and I will be back next week with a deep dive with two new callers, so we'll see you then. In the meantime, stay in peace and not in pieces.
Thank you.
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