Ra Malika Imhotep on The Reparations Show
Ra Malika Imhotep, a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of African American Studies with a DE in New Media, recently hosted the Reparations Show. The Reparations Show is a variety show that centers the stories of Black and Indigenous artists. It was created to offer paid opportunities to BIPOC artists.
Ra Malika Imhotep is a Black feminist writer and performance artist from Atlanta, Georgia currently pursuing a doctoral degree in African Diaspora Studies at the University of California, Berkeley with a Designated Emphasis in New Media. Her academic and creative work tends to the relationships between Black femininity, Southern vernacular aesthetics, and the performance of labor. She is a co-convener of the embodied spiritual-political education project, The Church of Black Feminist Thought, and a member of the curatorial collective, The Black Aesthetic.
As the host of the Reparations Show, Imhotep conversed with performance poet and writer, Dr. doris diosa, Ph.D., about poetry, oppression, feminism, sexuality, and scholarship. Imhotep also featured her co-collaborator on The Church of Black Feminist Thought and fellow Cal Ph.D. student, Miyuki Baker. She and Baker talked about how the California housing crisis is impacting peoples' lives, local Bay Area art-activist projects, spirituality, and more. Malika then segued into a brief break for audience members to move and get active, before talking with poet Amira Barakat Al-Baladi. Amira Barakat Al-Baladi is a mixed Palestinian Muslim woman who is part of the LGBTQ community and has experience in the adult entertainment industry. Al-Baladi and Imhotep discussed how sex work can be empowering and healing and how sexuality can exist without fetishization. Al-Baladi also spoke about how her poetry dealt with conventionally taboo topics, like her experience as a sex worker, and how she intertwines her spiritual practice with her sex work. She is interested in exploring and honoring the sacred side of sex work.
Overall, this episode of the Reparations Show provides an engaging discussion and is particularly of interest to those passionate about African American Studies, Performance Studies, poetry, and Gender and Sexuality Studies.
To watch the full show, click here!