Day 6: Family History as Folklore

Описание: This recording weaves personal family history, Black American folklore, and critical reflection on labor, race, and industrialization in the United States. Moving between my father’s lived experiences as the child of sharecroppers and the enduring Ballad of John Henry, I reflect through creative autoethnography, folklore, and theology on how Black bodies, labor, and childhood have been shaped, mythologized, and erased.

By situating family lore alongside archival histories and cultural myths, this reading questions Disneyfied representations of Black folklore and asks what is lost when depth, suffering, and structural violence are smoothed into heroism.

Thank you for listening, for holding space with care, and for engaging with these histories.

00:00 – Finding ancestral selves & paternal folklore
00:17 – Daddy’s childhood, sharecropping, and rural life
01:46 – Poverty, food security, and “feeling rich”
02:15 – Orphanhood and loss of education
03:26 – The Ballad of John Henry
05:33 – Creative autoethnography & family lore
06:35 – John Henry, industrialization, and racial capitalism
07:50 – Folklore, theology, and the burdening of Black bodies
08:30 – Chain gangs, railroads, and lived labor history
09:56 – Black childhood, post-slavery, and Disneyization
10:49 – Revising folklore and missing historical truths
11:47 – Questioning heroism and glorified suffering
12:33 – Family survival after the Great Depression
13:06 – Closing, practice, and gratitude