Wanda's Picks Radio Show, Wed., November 21, 2018

This is a black arts and culture site. We will be exploring the African Diaspora via the writing, performance, both musical and theatrical (film and stage), as well as the visual arts of Africans in the Diaspora and those influenced by these aesthetic forms of expression. I am interested in the political and social ramifications of art on society, specifically movements supported by these artists and their forebearers. It is my claim that the artists are the true revolutionaries, their work honest and filled with raw unedited passion. They are our true heroes. Ashay!

1. Toni-Michelle Williams is an activist and co-director of Solutions Not Punishment Coalition (SNaPCO) in Atlanta, Georgia. She is a celebrated community organizer in prison abolition/prison reform issues, and the criminalization of poverty and Black transgender people. She is in town for Violence Against Trans Women: State of emergency at Commonwealth Club of CA in SF, 11.26/2018, 6:30 p.m.

Playwright, Sikiru Hutchinson, Ph.D.

2. Sikivu Hutchinson, Ph.D. is an educator and author who has written and published extensively on the African American experience in Peoples Temple and Jonestown; CHARLOTTE WILLIAMS (Hy Strayer) charlotteevelynwilliams.com; ELVINET PIARD (Jess McPherson/The Night Watchwoman) is trained in communication and performing arts, Elvinet is an L.A.-based actor and voice-over artist. They join us to talk about the upcoming production of “White Nights, Black Paradise,” written by Sikivu Hutchinson, directed by William White, Fri., Nov 30 – Sun, Dec. 02 at the Hudson Mainstage Theatre, 6539 Santa Monica Blvd., Hollywood.http://www.blackjonestown.org/events/

ELVINET PIARD 

 

Charlotte Williams

3. We close with an archived interview with Ntozake Shange, playwright, “for colored girls who’ve considered suicide when the rainbow was enuf" and co-director, Cassandra Henderson. The performance was at Black Rep in Berkeley.