For almost a dozen years, 34 Black women gathered monthly around a big dining room table in an orange house on Orange Street in Oakland, CA — meeting, cooking, dancing, strategizing — grappling with the issues of eviction, erasure, gentrification, inadequate health care, and the sex trafficking of Black women and girls overwhelming their community.

Spearheaded by dancer and choreographer Amara Tabor-Smith and theater director Ellen Sebastian Chang, this House/Full of Black Women — artists, scholars, healers, nurses, midwives, an ice cream maker, a donut maker, an architect, a theater director, a choreographer, sex trafficking abolitionists and survivors — 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.

This hour-long special features sound-rich “episodes” of performances and rituals, interviews with sex trafficking abolitionists, personal stories of growing up in the Bay Area, music, Black women dreaming, resisting, insisting.

Produced by Ellen Sebastian Change, Sital Muktari and The Kitchen Sisters, narrated by Sital Muktari, mixed by Jim McKee, in collaboration with Nathan Dalton and Brandi Howell and an evolving House/Full of Black Women collective.

Funding for this House/Full of Black Women special comes from The Creative Work Fund, The National Endowment for the Arts, The Kaleta Doolin Foundation, The Texas Women’s Foundation, Susan Sillins, listener contributions to The Kitchen Sisters Productions, and PRX.

Original funding for House/Full of Black Women was provided by Creative Capital, Creative Work Fund, The Kenneth Rainin Foundation, MAP Fund, and the Hewlett 50.

House/Full of Black Women is part of The Keepers series produced by The Kitchen Sisters,. Archival sounds, recordings and compositions by Alexa Burrell. Visuals created by photographer Robbie Sweeney and designer Kevin Clarke. Ricardo Iamuuri Robinson created some of the soundscape. For names of all the many House/Full members who have had a hand in this project visit deepwatersdance.com.

Lured in by a blackboard sign on the street in Davia’s neighborhood announcing “Spotlight on Black Entrepreneurs,” we enter the creative and growing world of Black-Owned Pet Businesses. Lick You Silly dog treats, Trill Paws enamel ID Tags, The Dog Father of Harlem's Doggie Day Spa, gorgeous rainbow beaded Dog Collars from The Kenya Collection, Sir Dogwood luxurious modern dog-wear.

Chaz Olajide of Sir Dogwood wasn’t finding communities of pet owners or pet businesses owned by people of color. “I did a deep dive into the statistics —I just wanted to see if maybe I was an outlier, like maybe the reason why I’m not seeing more diversity in these companies is because maybe the demand isn’t out there. Actually, you know, that’s not really the case.”

“The dog training world—it’s a white dominated space. It’s kind of male dominated, too,” says Taylor Barconey of Smart Bitch Dog Training in New Orleans. “On our profile on Instagram we have Black Lives Matter, it’s been there for a year now. Before 2020, we would have not felt comfortable putting that up at risk of losing our business because people would have blacklisted us. But now, we feel like we can finally breathe and be open about things that really matter to us—speaking out against racism and not feeling shy about it.”

Brian Taylor, owner of Harlem’s Doggy Day Care lost both his uncle and long time mentor to Covid. During the pandemic his business slumped by 80%. So with some help from his pet parents and supporters he decided to hit the road with “The Pup Relief Tour offering grooming services to anyone going through rough times and in need. “All together we had about 63 African American dog groomers that went on tour with us across the country and we groomed over 829 dogs.”

Dr. Kwane Stewart, is an African American veterinarian who walks skid row in downtown LA tending the unhoused dogs of unhoused people. He was named CNN's Hero of the Year in 2023.

House Dogge in LA — artisanal dog tees, hoodies, toys — is committed to helping unwanted, neglected and abused dogs.

This is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to Black-owned pet business entrepreneurs. There are tons more across America and you can support their businesses and services.  

Fresh Paws Grooming in Brooklyn. The animal advocates at Iconic Paws, a customized pet portrait gallery with flare. Pardo Paws in Georgia, an all natural company with a lotion bar in the shape of a dog paw for dogs with dry noses and paws made of cocoa butter, olive oil, coconut oil, beeswax, calendula. Precious Paws Dog Grooming in Bloomfield, New Jersey.

Little L’s Pet Bakery and Boutique in Brooklyn. Scotch and Tea — stylish and durable dog accessories. Bark and Tumble, a luxury and contemporary brand of hand made dog garments in Britain. Pets in Mind a Holistic Pet Supply Store in Coconut Creek, Florida. Beaux & Paws in Newark, Pet Plate — an online black owned pet food delivery service. Duke the Groomer in Chicago, Ava’s Pet Palace started by Ava Dorsey, age 13.

Most all of these businesses are giving back in some way to their communities working with at-risk youth, taking them in with mentorships and internships that hopefully lead to jobs, and donating generously to shelters and rescues and neighborhood food banks.

Produced by The Kitchen Sisters (Davia Nelson & Nikki Silva) with Nathan Dalton and Brandi Howell. This story was produced and originally aired in 2021.

Lady Gaga, Marion Anderson, Beyoncé, Frank Sinatra, Pete Seeger, Maya Angelou — musicians and poets have been powerful headliners at inauguration ceremonies across the years signaling change, new beginnings and reflecting the mood of the country and a new administration.

In January 1973, following the Christmas bombing of Vietnam, conductor Leonard Bernstein gathered an impromptu orchestra to perform an "anti-inaugural concert" protesting Richard Nixon's official inaugural concert and his escalation of the war in Vietnam. One of the main performances of the official inaugural was the 1812 Overture with its booming drums replicating the sound of war cannons.

In 1973, the United States was reaching the concluding stages of our involvement in Vietnam.  And while the war would soon come to an end, the weeks leading up to the second inauguration of Richard Nixon were met with some of the most intense and deadly bombing campaigns of the war.

The anti-war movement was unhinged. They had marched, they protested — to seemingly no avail when it came to changing Nixon’s foreign policies. So what to do next...

Leonard Bernstein performed an “anti-inaugural concert” — a concert for peace — following his belief that by creating beauty, and by sharing it with as many people as possible, artists have the power to tip the earthly balance in favor of brotherhood and peace.

This story was produced by Brandi Howell with special thanks to Michael Chikinda, Alicia Kopfstein, Matt Holsen, and Bernie Swain. 

Edna Lewis was a legendary American chef, a pioneer of Southern cooking and the author of four books, including The Taste of Country Cooking, her memoir cookbook about growing up in Freetown, Virginia, a small farming community of formerly enslaved people and their descendants established in 1866. 

Before she began writing books, Edna had been a celebrated chef at Cafe Nicholson in New York City in the 1950s where Eleanor Roosevelt, Paul Robeson, Marlon Brando, Tennessee Williams, Truman Capote and Marlene Dietrich all came for her Southern food and legendary chocolate soufflé.

The Taste of Country Cooking chronicled the traditions and recipes of the community where she grew up — a rural settlement that celebrated the events and traditions of daily life across each year with special suppers and ritual meals — Emancipation Day Dinner, Early Spring Dinner after Sheep Shearing, Morning After Hog Butchering Breakfast, Christmas Eve Supper and Christmas Dinner to name but a few of the dishes and stories that fill this book.

In 1983 The Kitchen Sisters went to talk to Ms. Lewis about her life and the Christmas traditions in the tight-knit Virginia farming community where she came of age.

For Christmas, The Kitchen Sisters Present... Edna Lewis: Christmas in Freetown

On the occasion of her 80th birthday in 2000, The Kitchen Sisters, along with food writer Peggy Knickerbocker, visited the home of Cecilia Chiang, the legendary Chinese-American restaurateur, chef and founder of The Mandarin Restaurant in San Francisco for a bit of an oral history.

Cecilia Chiang introduced regional Chinese cooking to America in the 1960s, revolutionizing what most Americans thought Chinese cooking was. Elegant and savvy, her restaurant drew in celebrities and food enthusiasts, including Pavarotti, John Lennon, Jackie Onassis, Mae West, Henry Kissinger, and others. She inspired James Beard, Marion Cunningham, Alice Waters, Julia Child, and generations of chefs and restaurateurs, including her son Philip, founder of P. F. Chang's. Cecilia died in 2020 at the age of 100.

A pioneer in her field, Catherine Bauer Wurster was advisor to five presidents on urban planning and housing and was one of the primary authors of the Housing Act of 1937. During the 1930s she wrote the influential book Modern Housing and was one of the leaders of the "housers" movement, advocating for affordable housing for low-income families.  

Catherine Bauer’s life divided into two names and two geographies:  her urban east coast youth, and her later life in the Bay Area. She hobnobbed with the bohemian elite of the interwar years….brilliantly charming  the big architect names of the Weimar Republic, Paris cafe society, and the International Style:  Gropius, Mies, Corbusier, Oud, May, and her lover, Lewis Mumford. 

Her glamour and charismatic presence endeared her to trade unionists, labor leaders, and politicians—who she tried to turn to her vision of housing as a worthy responsibility of the government—sexier and leftier during the Depression. Her arguments were a harder sell in the red scare fifties and ran into a dreary deadlock in the suburban sixties, as she later wrote from her west coast stronghold at the University of California, Berkeley. In the Bay Area she developed an academic career that also included her husband architect William Wurster, a daughter, and a house on the bay – all surrounded by the nature she quickly grew to love. Her legacy lives on to this day, as even the latest of housing legislation echoes the progressive ideals she was advocating for in her prime.  

Produced by Brandi Howell for the New Angle Voice podcast from the Beverly Willis Architecture Foundation. Editorial advising from Alexandra Lange. Thanks to host Cynthia Phifer Kracauer. Special thanks in this episode to Barbara Penner, Gwendolyn Wright, Sadie Super, Matthew Gordon Lasner, Katelin Penner, and Carol Galante.  Archival recordings are from the UC Berkeley Bancroft Library. Funding from the New York State Council on the Arts.

The Kitchen Sisters Present is produced by The Kitchen Sisters (Nikki Silva & Davia Nelson) with Nathan Dalton and Brandi Howell. The Kitchen Sisters Present is part of Radiotopia from PRX.

Pushed to the side and rarely credited for her architectural work at Davis Brody, Phyllis Birkby became a significant figure in extending the lesbian women's movement to architecture during the 1970s. Her environmental fantasy workshops played a crucial role in galvanizing the community, providing a creative and empowering space within a male-dominated profession. 

Growing out of other consciousness raising techniques, freed up in her classes, Phyllis released the rigor of her conventional training to get down on the floor,  and lead the group in sketching their fantasies however outlandish on giant rolls of butcher paper. She encouraged the women to imagine architecture above, below, and beyond the norm. 

Birkby's work not only contributed to architectural discourse but also fostered a sense of collective identity among lesbian architects, highlighting the intersectionality of gender, sexuality, and professional identity in the field. In her later years, she focused on architecture for people marginalized in other ways – by addiction, by age, and by disability, again imagining spaces of community and support.

This episode was produced by Brandi Howell for New Angle Voice, a podcast from Beverly Willis Architecture Foundation. Thanks to host Cynthia Phifer Kracauer. Thanks also to Alexandra Lange for editorial advising. Special thanks in this episode to Stephen Vider, MC Overholt, Gabrielle Esperdy, Matthew Wagstaffe, Leslie Kanes Weisman and the Smith College Special Collections.  Funding from the New York State Council on the Arts.  

The Kitchen Sisters Present is produced by The Kitchen Sisters (Nikki Silva & Davia Nelson) with Nathan Dalton and Brandi Howell. The Kitchen Sisters Present is part of Radiotopia from PRX.

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It is Tuesday, November 5, 2024, the day when millions of Americans go to the polls to vote for who will lead their towns, their states, the nation. Souls to the polls today across the country, and so much hangs in the balance.

On this fraught and tender Tuesday, when all our nerves are frayed, we offer a moment of respite and contemplation — an episode of the podcast Constellation Prize from radio producer and filmmaker Bianca Giaever, featuring writer, poet and activist Terry Tempest Williams.

Constellation Prize is a podcast from The Believer Magazine. This story is Episode 1 of a 4 part series. You can hear the whole Nightwalking series and more episodes of Constellation Prize wherever you find your podcasts.

Our thanks to Bianca, The Believer, and the poet laureate of nightwalking, Terry Tempest Williams, for allowing us to share this story.

The music in Nightwalking is by Ishmael Ensemble, John Carroll Kirby and Elori Saxl. Our theme music is "Day of the Dead" by Ted Savarese.

We’re dropping this podcast on Tuesday, November 5. If you’re hearing it today and haven’t already voted we hope you’re headed to the polls for a little night voting.

The Kitchen Sisters Present... is part of Radiotopia from PRX, a network of independent podcasts that widen your world.

Thanks for listening.

July 17, 2024, Washington, D.C. Some 200 young people from across the nation aged 14-19 — aspiring poets, storytellers, MC's, activists — are gathered in the nation’s capital for the 29th annual Brave New Voices Festival — four non-stop days of slam poetry competition, coaching, workshops, late-night freestyling and in 2024, voting information.

In summer, as the election loomed larger and larger we decided to turn our microphone to young people across America to hear their thoughts and feelings about the nation, about voting, about the election. Everyone always says young people are the future. But the truth is they are the present. And it is all on their plate.

The Kitchen Sisters and producer Bianca Giaever traveled to the Brave New Voices Festival to take in the poets and their poetry, to listen and take the pulse of the moment. The hope, the scope, the vote. 

On July 21, the day after the festival ended, President Biden dropped out of the race. Keep that in mind as you listen.  

The Hope & The Scope was produced by The Kitchen Sisters (Nikki Silva & Davia Nelson) and Bianca Giaever and mixed by Jim McKee. In collaboration with Nathan Dalton and Brandi Howell.

Funding for The Hope & the Scope comes from The Robert Sillins Family Foundation, Susan Sillins & The Buenas Obras Fund.

Special thanks to all the poets, the teams, the coaches, to the fabulous Future Corps 2024 and to all the staff, volunteers and radiant community of Brave New Voices. And to all we interviewed at the festival.

Very special thanks to Youth Speaks, trailblazers of local and national youth poetry slams, festivals, mentoring, youth education and development — creators of the Brave New Voices Festival. Deep bow to Executive Director Michelle Mush Lee, Communications Director Bijou McDaniel, Stephanie Cajina, Joan Osato, James Kass, to Paige Goedkoop, Jamie DeWolf and Pawn Shop Productions and especially to Bianca Giaever who joined us in Washington, D.C. and came with her mic blazing.

The Kitchen Sisters Present... is part of Radiotopia from PRX, a network of independent, thought-provoking, deeply-produced, highly-entertaining podcasts that widen your world.

Thanks for listening. Thanks for subscribing.

Today, The Kitchen Sisters Present: “Tupperware” — an homage and a eulogy.

It was 1980. Nikki and I had just met. We had just named ourselves The Kitchen Sisters. And we had just bought our first cassette recorder, a Sony TC-D5M. We hadn’t even taken it out of the box or been trained on it when we were invited to a Tupperware party our friend Kirsten was hosting. This was 1980 in Santa Cruz, a stronghold of the women’s movement. You just didn’t get invited to too many Tupperware parties back then.

It seemed the perfect moment to break out the Sony and tape the party. The party was such a bonanza of story and plastic we went to another and taped that too. This time the Tupperware lady invited us and our new tape recorder to Tupperware headquarters in Salinas where Tupperware ladies were trained and where sales rallies were held.  

We went back to the studio at our local community radio station with a ton of tape and no real idea of what to do with it. These were analog days, days of cassettes and reel-to-reels, of razor blades and splicing tape.

The story you’re about to hear includes every mistake in the book. We mixed using two reel-to-reel tape recorders, two cassette recorders running through a mixing board we had no real idea how to use, onto a third reel-to-reel. We also had no idea you could splice takes of the mix together, we thought you had to do one complete running mix of the whole thing from start to finish. It probably took us 50 takes to do it. Nikki thinks this is Take 47, when all the levels were up at the same time and the sound started cascading and coming out of every machine at once, all at full volume. But out of that cacophony came our signature sound, a way of telling stories that holds with us to this day.  

Tupperware. What began shortly after World War II as a use for the plastic resins invented for the war, was sold like Avon lipstick using direct sales and home parties, gave generations of women a chance to make their own money outside the home and kept our leftovers fresh, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on September 17, 2024.  

Mergers and acquisitions, fewer parties and get togethers during covid, changes in the culture of selling, the work opportunities available to women, concerns about the eco-disaster that is plastic — so many factors seem to have been part of this collapse.   

Tupperware shuttered its only remaining plant in the United States in South Carolina this year, resulting in 148 layoffs.  The plastic is no longer fantastic. 

Today on the podcast, the third story The Kitchen Sisters ever produced for NPR, “Tupperware.”

As elections loom, we need to get involved, step up to the civic plate, take part in discourse. And that’s what Manny Yekutiel has been driven to do since 2018. He’s created a community-focused meeting place in San Francisco — a gathering space for people to watch presidential debates, meet people working on the front lines of social change, and discuss issues with policy makers in person. From community forums debating the new trash can designs in San Francisco, to town hall meetings with political candidates for the Senate and the Presidency, Manny’s is a place to commune, listen, and be heard.

They’ve got a restaurant — Farming Hope, a non-profit that hires formerly homeless and formerly incarcerated individuals and trains them in the food skills needed to work in the restaurant industry. They’ve got a bookstore specializing in local history and politics — with no pressure to buy books.

As church basements and social clubs fade as places where young people feel comfortable gathering, Manny has created a place — not home, not work — but a "third place" where people can come together to meet and engage with civic leaders, elected officials, artists, and activists.

Thanks to Precious Green and to the staff of Farming Hope. Thanks also to Valerie Velardi who led us to Manny’s, and to Manny Yekutiel for the time and the vision.

The Kitchen Sisters Present is part of the Radiotopia from PRX, a network of hand-crafted, independent, vibrant podcasts that widen your world.