Amena Brown:
Welcome to HER With Amena Brown, a production of the Seneca Women Podcast Network and iHeart Radio. I'm your host, Amena Brown, and each week I'm bringing you hilarious storytelling and soulful conversation while centering the stories of Black, Indigenous, Latinx, and Asian women. Join me as we remind each other to access joy, affect change, and be inspired.
Amena Brown:
Welcome to this bonus episode of Her With Amena Brown. For this episode, I wanted to give you a little bit of a window of what some of my stage performances are like, and this is actually one of my favorite stories of all time to tell on stage. You are hearing a recording from me performing at one of Atlanta's fantastic venues, Eddie's Attic, and just know, as of this recording, we are still in a global pandemic and I miss the stage so bad, so I thought that we could all reminisce on what it was like when you could be in a venue and hear someone performing.
Amena Brown:
For me as a performer, getting to hear everyone laughing, gasping, however they respond. This story is as a reflection on the amazing things that I get to learn from my grandmother. My grandma is wonderfully inappropriate, as you should be when you are in your 80s. This story that I'm telling right now on stage is me talking about when I was bringing my now husband, then boyfriend, home to meet my mom and my grandma and what my grandma's subsequent relationship advice was. Check it out.
Amena Brown:
I love my grandma because, I don't know if you get a chance to hang around with people who are 85, but it is amazing the ways that when you're 85, you lose some concerns about the ways people might feel about the things that you want to say right now. You just need to go ahead and tell them the truth, that you're going to let them work it out, how they feel about it. Like, I'll go to visit my grandma and she'll be like, "Mena, how you doing baby?" I'll be like, "I'm doing good, grandma." She'd be like, "That's good. I want you to keep doing that, and when you exercise, do some of these."
Amena Brown:
I'll be like, did my grandma just tell me to work on my midsection, with a smile though? I don't know. I don't know how to do. I don't know what to do about that. When I was 25, I went to my grandma and I said, "Look, grandma, if the way to a man's heart is through his stomach, not going to get there. I'm not going to get there like this, because I got spaghetti, got meatloaf. Is tuna fish, does that count as a thing? I got spaghetti. That's all I have grandma. You need to tell me."
Amena Brown:
Over the years, she's been taking me in her kitchen, showing me how to make some of the soul food staples. Showing me how to make the collard greens, the mac and cheese, some of these Southern things, the rutabaga, some of y'all like, what's that? Search this, because it's delicious. You need to be a part of it. It's a turnip. It's amazing. You could turn up and turnip. Okay.
Amena Brown:
By the time I started dating my now-husband, grandma got me educated on some things, so I'm kind of feeling prepared, but I go to her and my mom and I'm like, "Look, I done met this man, and I want to bring him to y'all to have dinner," so this is immediately like a, "Hmm. She's never brought a man here to have dinner with us. What does this mean?" Right? Take Matt over there. My mom inspects him. She asks him all the Godfather Corleone questions necessary.
Amena Brown:
My grandma's all in his business. Kind of flirting with him a little bit, but we'll talk about that later. Dinner goes great. Everyone's happy with one another. Matt and I get engaged. My grandma at this time decides to start giving me relationship advice. Every time I see her, she's like, "Sit down, baby, got something to tell you." I'm like, "Tell me?" I'm like, "I just got back from the mall, grandma. I bought this, did that, the third." She's like, "Oh, did she buy Matt something?"
Amena Brown:
"But I was buying a dress for myself." "Well, I know you did that, but did you buy Matt something? What'd you have for lunch?" "Well, I had salmon. I went to Fresh to Order." "Oh, that's good. Did you order Matt something?" I don't know if y'all have the kind of grandma that like be shading you, but she looking at something else. That's how my grandma is. She'd be like, "I want to know, did Matt get something to eat?"
Amena Brown:
This one particular day, I come in and she's like, "Mena, we got to talk." I'm like, I'm sitting down at the kitchen table, like, "What's going on?" She's like "Mena, I'm going to tell you something. Don't kiss Matt too hard." There's a moment in your relationship to your family members where you're trying to understand if you should let curiosity carry you down a road, because I'm a very nosy person, so I'm immediately like, "What's this? Tell me more."
Amena Brown:
But then there's another part of me that's like, is my grandma about to tell me something that I can't unknow? Like, once she say it, I can't unknow it, I can't unsee it, but I'm like, I'm going with it. I'm like, "Grandma, why can't I kiss Matt too hard?" She's like, "I'm trying to explain to you that white people bruise easy." For those of y'all that haven't seen The Color Purple, there's a scene in The Color Purple where Celie is about to shave Mister, and some of y'all are like, I don't know what this is. We really want you to Google this. There's like a whole lexicon of things you're missing out on.
Amena Brown:
But those of you that have seen it, follow me. Okay? Celie is about to shave Mister. This is straight razor shave, where you sharpen the straight razor on the leather strap. Okay? And for various and sundry reasons, I don't want to spoil the plot for you, Celie has reason to not shave Mister and do other things with the straight razor instead. Okay? Shug Avery is in a field of lavender flowers, painting her nails. Things I wish I could do. As she's painting her nails, she realizes its time for Celie to shave Mister.
Amena Brown:
She realizes that Celie might kill Mister, so she starts running, and you hear all the African drums and Shug's trying to catch Celie, because she don't Celie to catch a case over this man. My mom is basically Shug Avery in this scenario. Okay? My mom is running from the back of her place to try to catch my grandma before my grandma say something we can't unsee. Right? My mom, like Shug, when Shug make it to Celie, She catch Celie wrist right before Celie was about the shave Mister.
Amena Brown:
My mom walk in, she like, "Mom, you don't need to tell Mena she can't kiss Matt too hard. They about to get married. She can kiss Matt as hard as she want to." Here go my grandma, "She better watch it, right here." Y'all, I love my grandma. I hope that grandma's story gave you a good laugh. I have many more grandma stories to tell.
Amena Brown:
Plus, I have a lot of great guests to bring to you, a lot of thoughtful, and what I hope is hilarious content to bring you, so I cannot wait for you to check out these next episodes of HER With Amena Brown. Stay tuned. HER With Amena Brown is produced by Matt Owen for Sol Graffiti Productions, as a part of the Seneca Women Podcast Network, in partnership with iHeart Radio. Thanks for listening, and don't forget to subscribe, rate, and review the podcast.