Collected Item: “Jeida K. Storey Oral History, 2023/06/01”
Title
Jeida K. Story
Who conducted the interview? List all names, separated by comma.
Kit Heintzman
Who was interviewed? List all names, separated by commas.
Jeida K. Story
Email Address(es) for all interviewers. Separated by comma.
kheintzman@gmail.com
Use one-word hashtags (separated by commas) to describe your oral history. For example: Where did it originate? How does this object make you feel? How does this object relate to the pandemic?
#ancestors, #author, #Black, #community, #diviner, #genealogy, #groceries, #healer, #hugs, #land, #masking, #motherhood, #nature, #NorthCarolina, #pregnancy, #queer, #race, #racism, #slavery, #spirituality, #Tarot, #television, #testing, #Texas, #TheSouth, #Womanism
What is the format of your recording?
Video
In what ZIP code is the primary residence of the interviewee? (enter 5-digit ZIP code; for example, 00544 or 94305)? In what city/town/village does the interviewee live? In what country does the interviewee live? All comma-separated.
Charlotte, North Carolina
What is the gender of the interviewee? Be sure to allow interviewees to self-identify their gender in the pre-interview or interview. *Do not assign a gender identity to interviewees.*
woman, she/her
What is the age of the interviewee?
25 to 34
How does the interviewee describe their race or ethnicity? Be sure to allow interviewees to self-identify their race/ethnicity in the pre-interview or interview. *Do not assign a racial or ethnic identity to interviewees.*
Black, proud descendent of enslaved Africans in America
Describe the oral history.
Some of the things we discussed include:
- Being born and raised in The South.
- Living in Dallas, Texas when the pandemic started.
- Ancestral connections to the land; connecting with nature and Water Spirits.
- Being three months pregnant at the start of lockdown; daughter’s birth in October 2020.
- Spiritual connection and support while pregnant.
- Young children’s experiences and understandings of the pandemic; watching a 2 year old who just wants to play.
- Connecting with family history during the pandemic; great great grandmother’s experience of the Spanish Flu & great great grandfather Rev. Oscar C. Green (married to Mariah Green) experiences as a minister in southwest Georgia.
- Worrying about family dying.
- People are still dying of COVID, even if the pandemonium has stopped.
- Comparing three pregnancies: a miscarriage; a difficult pregnancy pre-pandemic - missing milestones due to constant bedrest; missing pregnancy milestones during the pandemic.
- A toddler’s Zoom birthday party.
- Husband doing most of the out of the home activities.
- TV programming normalizing the pandemic.
- Being a child when 9/11 happened; fear.
- Masking as community care; the cult of individualism.
- The difficulty of determining what news is accurate and what’s sensationalist; getting information from Twitter.
- What it was like to just move and not know your neighbors in early pandemic; not being able to ask far away family for help.
- The February 2021 Texas power crisis - having a 2 month old at home; feeling abandoned by the government.
- Changing safety practices over the course of the pandemic.
- It being more difficult to find current COVID stats than earlier points in the pandemic.
- Tabling at first in person event since the pandemic; Tarot readings and ancestral work at Black Healer’s Market.
- Being raised Christian; connecting to Indigenous traditions.
- Wishing history had honored the humanity of enslaved Africans.
- The murders of Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, George Floyd, and Oluwatoyin Salau.
- Coming to spirituality in 2020; discovering Womanism and practices that centered Black Women.
- Reading slave narratives.
- Time as non-linear.
- Doing genealogical work during the pandemic - difficulties of geological work as the descendent of enslaved Africans.
- Toni Cade Bombara’s The Salt Eaters (1980) dialogue “Do you want to be well?”
- The shooting of 14-year-old Cyrus Carmack-Belton on 28 May 2023.
- Uncle, Michael Porter, dying for a lack of healthcare
Other cultural references: CDC, WHO, Blue’s Clues, Grey’s Anatomy, The Resident, CNN, Dayna Lynn Nuckolls (The People’s Oracle), James Stewart (Conjure Cleaning), Alice Walker and The Color Purple (1982), Bathsheba, ancestry.com, standing in the gap, the writer’s strike (2023), YouTube
See also:
https://www.jeidakstorey.com
- Being born and raised in The South.
- Living in Dallas, Texas when the pandemic started.
- Ancestral connections to the land; connecting with nature and Water Spirits.
- Being three months pregnant at the start of lockdown; daughter’s birth in October 2020.
- Spiritual connection and support while pregnant.
- Young children’s experiences and understandings of the pandemic; watching a 2 year old who just wants to play.
- Connecting with family history during the pandemic; great great grandmother’s experience of the Spanish Flu & great great grandfather Rev. Oscar C. Green (married to Mariah Green) experiences as a minister in southwest Georgia.
- Worrying about family dying.
- People are still dying of COVID, even if the pandemonium has stopped.
- Comparing three pregnancies: a miscarriage; a difficult pregnancy pre-pandemic - missing milestones due to constant bedrest; missing pregnancy milestones during the pandemic.
- A toddler’s Zoom birthday party.
- Husband doing most of the out of the home activities.
- TV programming normalizing the pandemic.
- Being a child when 9/11 happened; fear.
- Masking as community care; the cult of individualism.
- The difficulty of determining what news is accurate and what’s sensationalist; getting information from Twitter.
- What it was like to just move and not know your neighbors in early pandemic; not being able to ask far away family for help.
- The February 2021 Texas power crisis - having a 2 month old at home; feeling abandoned by the government.
- Changing safety practices over the course of the pandemic.
- It being more difficult to find current COVID stats than earlier points in the pandemic.
- Tabling at first in person event since the pandemic; Tarot readings and ancestral work at Black Healer’s Market.
- Being raised Christian; connecting to Indigenous traditions.
- Wishing history had honored the humanity of enslaved Africans.
- The murders of Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, George Floyd, and Oluwatoyin Salau.
- Coming to spirituality in 2020; discovering Womanism and practices that centered Black Women.
- Reading slave narratives.
- Time as non-linear.
- Doing genealogical work during the pandemic - difficulties of geological work as the descendent of enslaved Africans.
- Toni Cade Bombara’s The Salt Eaters (1980) dialogue “Do you want to be well?”
- The shooting of 14-year-old Cyrus Carmack-Belton on 28 May 2023.
- Uncle, Michael Porter, dying for a lack of healthcare
Other cultural references: CDC, WHO, Blue’s Clues, Grey’s Anatomy, The Resident, CNN, Dayna Lynn Nuckolls (The People’s Oracle), James Stewart (Conjure Cleaning), Alice Walker and The Color Purple (1982), Bathsheba, ancestry.com, standing in the gap, the writer’s strike (2023), YouTube
See also:
https://www.jeidakstorey.com
On what date did you record this oral history?
2023-06-01T18:04