Mami Wata and The Little Mermaid w/ Natasha Bowen
Spirits
Multitude
4.8 • 2K Ratings
🗓️ 6 April 2022
⏱️ 45 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
We’re joined by author Natasha Bowen, who spins us the tale of her love of mermaids, the darker fairy tales of her youth, and connecting to the West African mermaids of her family.
Content Warning: This episode contains conversations about or mentions of drowning, slavery, death, grief, and racism.
Guest
Natasha Bowen is a New York Times bestselling author, a teacher, and a mother of three children. She is of Nigerian and Welsh descent and lives in Cambridge, England, where she grew up. Natasha studied English and creative writing at Bath Spa University before moving to East London, where she taught for nearly ten years. Skin of the Sea is her debut novel and the start of an epic series born out of her passion for mermaids and African history. Natasha is obsessed with Japanese and German stationery and spends stupid amounts on notebooks, which she then features on her secret Instagram. When she's not writing, she's reading, watched over carefully by Milk and Honey, her cat and dog. Follow her on Twitter at @skinofthesea. You can order Skin of the Sea, and pre-order Soul of the Deep.
Housekeeping
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- Recommendation: This week, Amanda recommends the Rivers of London series by Ben Aaronovitch.
- Books: Check out our previous book recommendations, guests’ books, and more at spiritspodcast.com/books
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Transcripts are available at http://spiritspodcast.com/episodes. To buy merch, hear us on other podcasts, contact us, find our mailing address, or download our press kit, head on over to http://spiritspodcast.com.
About Us
Spirits was created by Julia Schifini, Amanda McLoughlin and Eric Schneider. We are founding members of Multitude, an independent podcast collective and production studio. Our music is "Danger Storm" by Kevin MacLeod (http://incompetech.com), licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0.
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Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Welcome to Spirits Podcast, a boosy dive into mythology, legends, and folklore. |
| 0:10.7 | Every week, we pour a drink and learn about a new story from around the world. |
| 0:13.8 | I'm Amanda. |
| 0:14.5 | And I'm Julia. |
| 0:15.7 | And we're joined today by author Natasha Bowen. |
| 0:17.8 | Natasha, welcome. |
| 0:18.9 | Thanks for having me. |
| 0:20.1 | It is our pleasure. I'm really excited |
| 0:23.0 | because I picked up the book recently and I'm just very, very stoked. But can you do us a |
| 0:28.3 | favor and tell us both a little bit about yourself and about Skin of the Sea? So I am a former |
| 0:34.9 | teacher, mother of three. I've been writing since I could read, which was quite young, actually. |
| 0:42.4 | I loved The Little Mermaid growing up and wanted to not necessarily do a retelling, |
| 0:50.1 | but to tell a different version of The Little Mermaid. |
| 0:53.1 | So I focused on West Africa, which is where my father's from, |
| 0:57.0 | and basically enjoyed immersing myself in history and different myths that represent |
| 1:02.9 | what happened in the 15th century and what people believed and how that joined in with |
| 1:08.0 | versions, different versions of mermaids. |
| 1:10.1 | That's incredible. And would you mind giving us a quick summary of the book to kind of entice |
| 1:15.2 | our listeners to like, hey, go pick it up because you're going to love it. So Skin of the Sea is the |
| 1:20.1 | story of Simi. She is Mammi Wata. She's a mermaid. And she's been remade by a goddess called |
| 1:27.1 | Yamoja. And her focus is to help gather the |
| 1:32.1 | souls of those who pass in the sea in order to return them home to their maker and one day |
... |
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