Perseverance

Truth Be Told Presents: She Has A Name

American Public Media

True Crime, Personal Journals, Society & Culture

4.2 • 1.5K Ratings

🗓️ 3 March 2022

⏱️ 30 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In our society, Black parents may breathe a bit easier at night knowing their children are safe and accounted for. But when a tragedy takes that breath away, how do you persevere? What does it take to keep going after a painful loss?

Perseverance is defined as the continued effort to do or achieve something despite difficulties, failure, or opposition. This week, Tonya travels to Seattle to speak with Ayanna Brown, a mother who has done just that. In 2010, Ayanna and her family endured the heart-wrenching loss of her son, Alajawan Brown, who was murdered by gun violence in a case of mistaken identity.

In this intimate and thought-provoking conversation, Ayanna takes us through how she converts hate into love, reveals that anger once fueled her, and shares a vulnerable truth –– that she is just now learning who she is. The ways in which Ayanna propels herself forward each day can inspire us all to persevere.

We wrap up this powerful episode with the author of “Grief is Love: Living With Loss,” Marisa Renee Lee. Marisa shares insights on why we need to give ourselves permission to grieve more.
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Transcript

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0:00.0	Nikki Giovanni said when you go to somebody's house and morning you should bring a good
0:08.4	bottle of champagne so let me find one.
0:17.0	These days, reporters rarely get to go back to stories they covered. But sometimes we try.
0:20.0	I'm grabbing Champagne for a do-over with Iana Brown,
0:23.3	a woman I met 12 years ago.
0:25.7	I covered the death of her son.
0:27.4	Eliza Wan Brown was killed in April of 2010.
0:30.6	The shooter, Curtis Walker, was out on community supervision for drugs when he mistook the boy's
0:36.9	jacket for one of a rival gang member.
0:40.0	Elaguan was coming home from Walmart, where he'd gone to buy football cleats with money he'd saved from mowing his neighbor's lawn.
0:48.0	He was 12 years old. Every job has a dirty deed and there's this weird unnatural thing that reporters do and that's to turn on a camera place a mic in a person's face, and ask them to share in detail the worst thing that has ever happened to them.
1:08.0	I did this kind of journalism for 15 years, and the justification is that somehow a news report allow someone
1:16.4	to share their truth. But can you truly tell the complexities of black love and
1:21.2	loss in a two-minute spot,
1:24.0	especially for someone like Iana Brown.
1:27.0	Good morning.
1:30.0	Good morning. How are you? Beautiful how you doing? I am doing well. Are you?
1:38.0	I have kept in touch on and off through the years and recently we started talking again on the phone a lot has changed.
1:45.7	When we first met she was a school bus driver she since moved on to work full time for the
1:50.4	foundation she created in aagawa's name.
1:53.0	Her days are filled with granting scholarships for kids
1:56.0	who need help buying sports uniforms and equipment,
	...

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