Nana-Ama Danquah on the triple burden of mental health, menopause and being Black - THE SHIFT REVISITED

The Shift with Sam Baker

Sam Baker Ltd

Society & Culture, Health & Fitness, Personal Journals

4.8 • 525 Ratings

🗓️ 20 September 2022

⏱️ 47 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

One of my favourite things about making The Shift podcast is all the fascinating women I get to interview - and learn a little bit from. So I’m revisiting a few of my favourite episodes while I finish putting together the new season. I had never heard of Nana-Ama Danquah before I started The Shift and speaking to her was one of my most enlightening conversations. Nana-Ama's writing has recently found a new audience and was shortlisted for this year's Caine Prize. Here are the original show notes: My guest today is the Ghanaian American writer Nana-Ama Danquah. Nana-Ama found herself in the public eye when, in the late 90s, she published her memoir Willow Weep For Me about suffering from clinical depression - one of the first books to openly discuss black women’s mental health experience. Critically acclaimed by the likes of the late, great Maya Angelou, its description of the shame, dismissal, denial and out and out despair experienced by many black women started a much-needed conversation that was widely credited with “saving lives”. (It's currently not published in the UK - publishers I AM LOOKING AT YOU!) Now 53, Nana-Ama joined me from her home in (sunny) California (grrr) to talk about the double - in fact, make that triple - burden of mental health, menopause and being black, why black women are driving change right now, how menopause turned her into a hot mess and how she’s finally learnt the joy of doing what you do until you die. • You can buy all the books mentioned in this podcast at Bookshop.org, including the book that accompanies this podcast, The Shift: how I lost and found myself after 40 - and you can too by Sam Baker. Willow Weep For Me by Nana-Ama Danquah is not published in the UK, but you can buy it from amazon.co.uk or abebooks.co.uk. * And if you'd like to support the work that goes into making this podcast and get a weekly newsletter plus loads more content including transcripts of the podcast, please join The Shift community. Find out more at https://steadyhq.com/en/theshift/ • The Shift (on life after 40) with Sam Baker is created and hosted by Sam Baker and edited by Emily Sandford. If you enjoyed this podcast, please rate/review/follow as it really does help other people find us. And let me know what you think on twitter @sambaker or instagram @theothersambaker. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:30.1	Jamie Lang and Sophie Haboo have arrived on Disney Plus. We're having a baby. We're having a baby.
0:37.2	I've always wanted to be mom.
0:39.5	And we're bringing you on our journey through everything.
0:42.4	I have no idea what we're doing.
0:43.7	Thank you.
0:44.1	I have more of an idea.
0:45.7	I think of it like a Tamagocchi.
0:47.6	At the end of all of this...
0:50.0	We're going to have a little baby.
0:51.9	Raising Chelsea, a Hulu original series streaming exclusively on Disney Plus.
0:57.4	18 plus subscription required T's and T supply.
1:05.9	Hello and welcome to The Shift, the podcast that aims to tell the no-holds-barred truth about being a woman post-40,
1:12.4	created and hosted by me, journalists and author Sam Baker. My guest today is the Ghanaian American writer,
1:18.9	Nana Amadankwa. Nana Ama found herself in the public eye when in the late 1990s she published
1:24.8	her memoir, Willow Weep for Me, about suffering from clinical depression.
1:29.8	It was one of the first books to openly discuss black women's mental health experience and was
1:34.2	critically acclaimed by the likes of the late, great Maya Angelou. I said, I think I'm dying. I think
1:39.7	I've got some illness and I think that they're going to find out what the illness is, but I think
1:44.9	I'm dying. And she said, well, what's wrong with you? So I listed a bunch of things and she says,
1:49.8	girl, that's menopause. Now 53, Nana Ama joined me from her home in sunny California to talk
	...

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