“Queen Sugar” Author Natalie Baszile: Black Farmers Can Help Save the Planet

The Mother Jones Podcast

Mother Jones

Elections, Politics, Scoops, Investigations, Journalism, News

4.5 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 5 May 2021

⏱️ 27 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Natalie Baszile knew she was onto something when she got the call from Oprah’s people. A novelist and food justice activist, Baszile had been working for years on a semi-autobiographical novel about a Los Angeles-based Black woman who is unexpectedly faced with reviving an inherited family farm in Louisiana. The book became “Queen Sugar,” was published in 2014 and, with Oprah’s backing, it debuted as a television series on OWN in 2016. It was executive produced by Oprah Winfrey herself and directed by Ava DuVernay. American audiences were getting an intimate glimpse into how reverse migration was reshaping Black life in America.

Now, in a new anthology, Baszile is broadening her scope. In We Are Each Other’s Harvest, Baszile offers up a carefully curated collection of essays and interviews that get to the heart of why Black people’s connection to the land matters. Mother Jones food and agriculture correspondent Tom Philpott recently published an investigation called “Black Land Matters,” which explores how access to land has exacerbated the racial wealth gap in America. The story also takes a look at a younger generation of Black people who have begun to reclaim farming and the land on which their ancestors once toiled.

In this discussion, host Jamilah King talks with Baszile about how this new generation of Black farmers is actually tapping into wisdom that’s much older than they might have imagined.

This is a follow-up conversation to last week's episode, which took a deep look at how Black farmers are beginning a movement to wrestle with history and reclaim their agricultural heritage. Check it out in our feed.

Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	This is the Mother Jones podcast. I'm Jamila King and Brooklyn.
0:11.2	On today's show, do you remember the empty shelves in the grocery stores early in the pandemic?
0:16.6	We all had this experience of going into our local supermarkets and, you know,
0:21.3	the shelves are bare. They've been picked clean. It was scary. But for some people, it was an
0:26.9	awakening, a call to grow their own food. Yep, how? That's what Natalie Bazil explores in her
0:33.6	new anthology, We Are Each Other's Harvest. From food deserts in Oakland to sugarcane farms in
0:39.8	Louisiana, to a hit TV show executive produced by Oprah. Natalie Bazil has criss-crossed the
0:46.9	country to document the movement of black farmers getting back to the land. Stick around.
0:52.9	Last week, we brought you the story of how a movement of black farmers are reclaiming their
1:00.9	rightful connections to the land after a century of dispossession. And how the system still keeps
1:07.9	them out despite making huge recent gains. Here's Leopheneman, the co-founder of Soul Fire Farm
1:14.9	and author of Farming While Black. There was a US commission of civil rights report in the 1960s
1:20.2	that said that the federal government at that time was the number one cause of the decline of
1:24.4	the black farmer and they predicted the extinction of the black farmer. This week, writer and food
1:29.3	justice activist Natalie Bazil knew she was on to something when she got the call from Oprah.
1:36.4	She'd been working for years on a novel about the trials and tribulations of a family that's
1:41.6	running a black owned farm in Louisiana. The book became Queen Sugar, was published in 2014,
1:47.2	and with Oprah's backing it became a TV series on own in 2016. What I'm proposing is a collaborative
1:54.8	where we stand together and advance together. It doesn't have to be the way it's always been.
1:59.6	It was executive produced by Oprah Winfrey herself and directed by Eva Duvernay.
2:04.3	The idea of Queen Sugar is something that I sort of had growing in my spirit when I came up with
2:11.4	this idea of doing a network. So to be able to tell stories that reflect the African-American culture
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Mother Jones, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Mother Jones and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.