Black people tell black history.

So welcome to another episode of Black People Tell Black History.

We are joined with the of Black People Tell Black History.

We are joined with the incomparable Ijoma Olu

and I am so so excited to have you here and thrilled to be in conversation with you. I would love if you could introduce

yourself for the few people who do not know you.

My name is Yijo Ma Onuul, and I am a writer and speaker on issues of race and identity in the United States, and I live in Seattle, Washington with my little family.

Oh, I love that.

Well, Ebb, I think it's going to kick it off.

I'm going to kick it off.

I mean, I love all the work that you do.

First of all I'm going to tell everybody real quick. Y'all going to have to go out and get this.

Get this real quick. Make sure that happens and make sure you actually read it. And so what I like about this book in particular, I'm not done reading it myself, but as I've started it, what are your thoughts about, I don't know how long it took you to write it, but I know that you've been doing this for a long time, writing and talking about abolition and writing and talking about abolition and talking about racism and it can almost seem like you're

talking into the void maybe because you go, you do these speaking towards all all the blood, sweat, and tears that go into talking about this and an emotional toll that talking about your pain and pain of our people takes on you. The foremost question that we get after all of those great

expenditures are, well what do I do? Or now what do we do? And so it's very frustrating for me

as somebody who educates or facilitates

and talks about race and racism and white supremacy.

So I'm wondering, what do you make of people's sort of knee-jerk default being,

but what do we do and coming to you as the person with the solution

and expecting you to have. It's definitely something that can get frustrating and

exhausting. Like I know that as someone who writes on these issues, It's odd to write these books and put this work forth and then

have people be like, now I can get my personal tailored request and just for me and just I'll get this custom labor and

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