Amena Brown:
Hey everybody, welcome back to another episode of HER with Amena Brown. And y'all, I just have to give y'all your shout outs, your thank yous, because this is episode eight, and y'all have been rocking with me every episode. I was going to say y'all have been increasingly rocking with me because we are gaining more and more listeners on this show, and I just wanted to tell you thank you for listening. Thank you to those of you that have been checking out the show notes. Thank you to those of you that have been following me already, or have just started following me from listening here on the podcast. And also, thank you to those of you that have been sending these amazing reviews. You are appreciated.
Amena Brown:
And speaking of appreciation, I'll tell you about one about thing that I was thinking about recently, I was thinking about, what does it mean to say yes to yourself? That also makes me just want to give you a plug for Shonda Rhimes' book The Year Of Yes. If you are looking for a wonderful read and a read that will really encourage you to embrace life and embrace the joys and opportunities that come in life, the Year Of Yes was fabulous. So that's another way you can say yes to yourself, is by getting yourself the Year Of Yes. I had a situation come up recently where I had this fork in the road.
Amena Brown:
It was not a huge life-altering decision, but it was a big life decision, there were different repercussions that could come from making either choice. So I'm at this fork in the road and having to decide. I felt like, inside myself, turning left at this road is what feels good and right to me, it's what feels like that will bring me the most peace, that will bring me the least regrets. But even though I felt like I was leaning towards, air quotes, turning left at this proverbial road, I also immediately started to feel all of these voices creeping in to that moment.
Amena Brown:
I don't know if you're anything like me, but sometimes when we are hearing those voices, sometimes those voices are actual people, could be actual conversations we're having, or could be conversations we had in the past. And when we reach certain points of life, we still hear the voices from that old conversation. But a lot of times for me, those voices are really faceless, nebulous people. They are the critique that I imagine I will receive, or they are the pushback I imagine I will get, they are the ways I perceive other people might judge me for whatever the choices. They are ways that I perceive other people might judge me for whatever the choice is.
Amena Brown:
And in this moment, as I was contemplating this choice, I felt like, "Okay, here's what I think I feel comfortable doing." And it was something that my husband and I also talked about and processed, and he was like, "Okay, you feel good about it? Then I feel good about it. Okay." And then I had the weekend to sit with it, and also to sit with a lot of those voices. And I realized there are a lot of times in my life, some small decisions and some big decisions I've made in my life that I have made thinking mostly about other people, thinking about what other people will think about the choice that I've made, thinking about how this choice might make someone see me differently.
Amena Brown:
Just all sorts of things that have a lot to do with what people may think about this externally from me, or how they might perceive it. But not thinking about, "Is this truly the thing that I want to do? Is this truly the thing that feels right to me, that feels good, that feels peaceful?" When I say good, I mean feels good and right inside myself. And I realized I have decided this choice, I have chosen this path on the fork in the road, because this is an opportunity for me to say yes to myself, it's an opportunity for me to say yes to something that I want, or to say yes to something that I believe is the right path forward for me.
Amena Brown:
And I think it is interesting when we think about saying yes to ourselves, that that can feel so selfish or feel like it's better, it's a more strong yes or it's a better yes if we say it because of how other people might think about it. So as I was thinking about that, I said, "I want to make sure I come on here and share that in our HER living room," because I hope you think about that this weekend as we are rounding the end of a very wild and crazy, and for a lot of us, traumatic year. I want you to think about the choices that you make whether they are small choices or whether they are major life-altering choices.
Amena Brown:
I want you to have the wisdom and counsel of the people in your life that you care about, but I also want you to hear your own voice and to hear your own thoughts and to access your own power of being able to make choices, being able to decide. And sometimes we are at these forks in the road that are the rock and the hard place, and trying to decide between those two. And I just want in the beginning of this episode to hold space for those of you that may be in the middle of a decision-making place, you're in the middle of having to decide something that maybe it will just affect you, maybe it will affect you and your family, or and other people that are around you.
Amena Brown:
But I hope that you can access the wisdom that you have inside. And I hope that you can discern most of all, what is it that you really want in this season of your life or in this moment. When you were at that fork in the road and if you had to think first of, what is it you really want to do without judging yourself? What is the thing that would bring peace to you? What is the thing that would feel like the wise choice moving forward in your life? And I hope you get a chance to practice saying yes to yourself, because it can be good and wonderful to have moments where we can say yes to the things that we know are right for us, and see what that yes has for us moving forward.
Amena Brown:
Welcome to HER with Amena Brown, a production of the Seneca Women's Podcast Network and iHeartRadio. 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. Y'all, I want to also confess to y'all about something. And if you're in a relationship, I want to offer you these things that may be helpful to your relationship. And I just want to tell you that if you want to know or test the strength of your relationship, there's two tasks that you could do and know the strength of your relationship. One of them is trussing a chicken, and the other one is peeling and deveining the shrimp. Let's discuss.
Amena Brown:
My husband and I got an air fryer. I think we got an air fryer last Christmas. And we got the Instant Pot Vortex Air Fryer where you open it up... It almost looks like a little mini oven. You open it up, it's got the two trays inside. But one of the perks of this machine is that it can rotisserie chicken. So in our first several weeks of using the air fryer, we were very excited to try this mechanism. What you don't realize when you're getting ready to rotisserie a chicken is if you're going to do that inside of this type of air fryer situation, like the type of air fryer that we have, we went and looked at the instructions. The instructions were like, "This is how you season the chicken. This is how you put butter under the skin, gives you all of that stuff."
Amena Brown:
And then it was like, "Oh yeah, you need string so that you can truss the chicken." It's T-R-U-S-S. It's truss, not trust the chicken like trust it with your life. It's truss the chicken in the sense that you're going to take this string, and there's a certain sort of survivalist way that you are getting the string around this whole chicken so that the wings and the legs stay close to the body of the chicken so that while it's rotating on the rotisserie, everything is staying close together, all of the juices are percolating as needed.
Amena Brown:
Now, if you're going to truss the chicken, I'm sure it's possible to truss a chicken alone. I'm sure it is. But we decided to try this together, and I don't do any like events or sessions where I talk to other couples have give them advice, but if I did, I would be like, "We all are going to truss chickens together. You're going to get your person, you're going to get your spouse, your partner, your significant other, you're going to get them and y'all going to truss the chicken together. And you're going to learn a lot about your communication."
Amena Brown:
So basically, what happens is, my husband's the one who's getting his hands dirty. He's the one who's got to put his hands inside the chicken to get the herbs and onions and apples and whatever you're putting in there. He's the one who's buttering the chicken, and seasoning it. He is also the one who is doing the actual trussing. I am the one looking up the instructions, telling him what to do, but it's a very interesting experience to have because it's like the one person is just the hands there waiting to get told what they should do, and the other person is doing the telling, but their hands are not actually doing the thing.
Amena Brown:
And we survived trussing a chicken together. We've trussed chickens together several times now. We've even gotten to the point where now that we know how to truss a chicken, my husband trusses the chicken just by himself. We don't even need the partnership moment anymore after that. But we made it through that. And I was like, "I'm proud of us," because trussing a chicken brings up a lot of strange feelings. You're trying to listen to the person giving the instructions, but then you've got some question marks about like, are they really telling you the right things?
Amena Brown:
And then the person who's giving the instructions might be like, "Well, maybe I would have done it like this or that," but it doesn't matter because you're not doing it, it's not your hands that are dirty. The second thing I'm going to tell you that tested our relationship and yet we survived is peeling and deveining shrimp. Now, normally, if I buy shrimp, I just like to buy it in a big, old, frozen bag where its already peeled and deveined. And then you throw it in your skillet, your wok, whatever you have, you throw it up in there, you sauté it, you grill it, you bake it, whatever you do to it.
Amena Brown:
But my husband happened to go to the farmer's market and he picked up four pounds of shrimp with the shells still on. So we've been staring at this shrimp for weeks. Our whole freezer basically was starting to smell like fresh shrimp because every time we would think about a shrimp dish we wanted to try to make, we were like, "Oh yeah, we have those shrimp." And then we would immediately be like, "Oh my gosh, we're going to have to peel and devein those shrimp. Oh no." So we finally decided one date night, I'm not necessarily encouraging you to peel and devein shrimp for date night, I'm just telling you that we did this and we survived it, but I'm not encouraging you to do it with your person, okay?
Amena Brown:
Anyway. So we get the shrimp out, and y'all, we're going to take turns at first where each of us gets a task. I am doing the peeling. My husband is deveining. And we got maybe like a fifth of the way through this four pounds of shrimp, and we're immediately getting super disillusioned with the deveining. And I'm going to tell y'all the fact that I learned. It is mostly Americans that are obsessed with shrimp being deveined. Why? Because we don't like how it looks. Most other cuisines cultures, countries, they just eat the shrimp. They just eat them. They just eat them. They're not worried about the deveining.
Amena Brown:
But we decided maybe after we got a third of the way through, we were like "You know what? We give up on deveining." We have decided. It is just concern about taking the shells off. Y'all, we started our little date. I don't even know what time it was. Probably 7:00, 7:30. Two hours later, y'all, we are just getting finished peeling the shrimp with like a third of them deveined. But, we made it through that. So listen, if you are listening to this, you are in a pandemic safe relationships situation where you can see your person in-person. Maybe try a little deveining together, try a little peeling of the shrimp, try and truss the chicken. You will learn communication skills. You will learn how to work together.
Amena Brown:
And then guess what? At the end, you have delicious food that you can eat. But I'm going to tell you, get a small chicken. And I'm going to tell you, don't do four pounds of it because that might be too much. You might need to really be on more of a one pound, two pounds. And you know what? At the end of the day, if you need to, just get you a bag of frozen shrimp that's already peeled and already deveined. Hey, hey, there's no judgment here. These are your relationship tips. Get you somebody that you can truss. See what I there?
Amena Brown:
This week, I'm talking with writer, artist and musician, Morgan Harper Nichols. This episode was recorded in the before times. This episode is coming from the HER archives. And Morgan shares her creative process of combining inspirational writing and visual art and the power of holding space for other people's stories. Check out our conversation.
Amena Brown:
I want to welcome today's guest, writer, artist, musician, creator of the inspiration subscription app Storyteller. Welcome to the podcast, Morgan Harper Nichols.
Morgan Harper Nichols:
Hello. Well, thank you for having me. I'm so excited to be here.
Amena Brown:
Oh my gosh. Listen, I'm so excited. Of course I have been following you, Morgan, for a long time, particularly on Instagram. And I am just hating on the fact that we lived close to each other for awhile.
Morgan Harper Nichols:
I know.
Amena Brown:
I don't think we actually like connected online as far as like... I don't remember if it was a direct message for some reason that we were talking to each other, but I think I realized... Oh, maybe you were doing,... One of us was doing an event close to the other person, and that was when I realized, "Wait a second, she's actually lived close to me for a while, and I just discovered her." Discovered you to talk to you, and then realized, "And now she's not here anymore."
Morgan Harper Nichols:
I know. I'm just curious, how long have you been in Atlanta?
Amena Brown:
I've been in Atlanta since 1998.
Morgan Harper Nichols:
Oh yeah. Well, I grew up there, so we were both in Atlanta in the same time for a very long time.
Amena Brown:
Oh my gosh. Life is so crazy. Shut out to Plywood Presents. Plywood Presents is a conference, gathering, put on by Plywood people. I really recommended it. It's one of the few, this sounds so shady, but it's true. It's one of the few conferences that I have paid my money to go to where I wasn't speaking or participating in any way, and I just went there to learn and listen and really got a lot out of it. But I was very excited, Morgan, that you were there last year. Number one, because it was just great to get a chance to hear more of your story, which is what made me excited about our interview today. But also, it gave me a reason to run up and hug you. I almost tackled you. Your husband was probably like, "Who is this girl?" I don't know who this is.
Morgan Harper Nichols:
No, it was great. I was just as excited to meet you, so it worked out perfectly. I'm so glad that we were able to meet in person and connecting. I love what you do as well.
Amena Brown:
Y'all, I'm going to have to post our really cute picture that we took. And our picture was, if I remember right, Brandon Harvey from Good Good Good newspaper and company. He took our pictures. So it was like this triumvirate of all the awesome things that can happen to you. I'm in a picture with Morgan Harper Nichols, we're getting to meet each other in person for the first time, and Brandon Harvey's there just randomly taking cute pictures of us. He's like, "You guys stand in front of this door. I think the colors on this...
Morgan Harper Nichols:
Oh yeah, I totally remember that.
Amena Brown:
The colors on this will be great. And I was like, "Oh my gosh, Brandon. Thank you for just taking some amazing pictures." Y'all, me and Morgan right going to keep working on this, and we won't see each other again in person. Every time we see each other, we're going to take a picture. I don't care if we got makeup or not, we're taking this picture.
Morgan Harper Nichols:
Yes, ma'am. Yes.
Amena Brown:
Morgan, I'm really excited to have you on and just talk more about creating and creativity with you because you are so inspiring in the content that you put out, but not just like what it says, but how you say it and how it's presented visually as well. So I'm really excited we're going to get into this, and I think it will help a lot of listeners who are also creatives or want to understand more of the process and some of those things. So I want to start first asking you an origin story question. I'd like to start off every episode with this. And one of the things that I love about your work is that you've been able to combine beautiful writing and beautiful visual art with it.
Amena Brown:
And you are not only a writer, but also a visual artist, which is just fascinating to me because I only got the stick figures, that's all I have to give. But my sister is like you, she can write and she can produce visual art, which for some reason is like a person who can write an ad. It's like my mind's like, "How do you do these things?" So can you talk about, were you always a person that combined those two things, or was there a moment in time that you were thinking, "Well, here are these two things I do, maybe there's a way to bring them together?"
Morgan Harper Nichols:
Yes. That's such a good question. I started at a very young age, and I have to give my parents, especially my mom, a lot of credit on this. My mom was very intentional with both my sister and I with giving us notebooks when we were a little kids, even before we were really of writing age or of school age. She would just give us crayons and markers and colored pencil and just regular dollar store notebooks, they weren't anything fancy. And she would just tell us and encourage us like, "Create something every day, make something every day."
Morgan Harper Nichols:
So my sister and I both would just travel with, if we were going to the bank, we were going somewhere where we had to go sit and wait and we would just scribble in our notebooks. Sometimes that came out as words, we tried to make up little stories and I would draw pictures with them. I always felt more of a writer than I did an artist. For me, the art was more of trying to illustrate what I said and what I wrote, if that makes sense. It took me a while to figure this out, it took me going back to my childhood notebooks and looking at what I did, because one of the things that I dealt with, even though I was starting to write little stories and I was four or five years old, I also have dyslexia.
Morgan Harper Nichols:
So writing was very therapeutic to me, but at the same time, it was very challenging. The way I look at it now is I'm like, "I feel the art, it was just a soothing way of like, this is a way that you can communicate without that pressure of if you spelt that word correctly." I even struggled writing my own name, the G in Morgan, I would write it backwards. There was always this pressure associated with it, but at the same time, I loved to challenge myself to do it. And the reason why I say I give my parents a lot of credit is because they never made me feel like I couldn't write or I couldn't keep trying.
Morgan Harper Nichols:
They were never like, "Oh, well you have this, maybe you're just not going to be good at it." My thing was like, "Oh, this is just something I deal with, but I'm just going to keep trying." So art was a way that I was just like, Let me just keep that hand moving and keep creating even while I'm trying to figure out how to write better and how to write my letters in the right order." Of course I didn't articulate it that way as a child, but looking back, I definitely think that it was heavy in the writing, that's where I really wanted to be, but because I had those struggles, I started to want to use color and want to paint little pictures just to continue to tell that story.
Morgan Harper Nichols:
That just continued through my elementary and middle high school years, but I will say that I was heavier on the writing side than I was the visual art side as I got more comfortable with writing, but I would just always write something and I would just have these visuals. I'm like, "I just feel this looks this way. And maybe if it were a song, it would sound this way or maybe if it were a painting, it would look this way." But it wasn't until I think later, I think in my freshman year of college, there's this season like, "Oh, I'm in, let's see." I started college freshman year in 2006.
Morgan Harper Nichols:
And if you're in my age bracket, you might remember this, but there was a season where everybody wants to be a photographer, I was definitely a part of that. So I got into photography and that I think was a huge moment for me where I was like, "Oh wow, there's this whole visual world that I can really tell a story with." And we are in college, now you're thinking about career, so I'm like, "Wow, there are people that do this for a living. They're not just taking pictures, they're telling stories with their pictures." It took a good 10 years to get to the point where I was like, "Oh wow, I can take what I'm writing and take visuals that I want to create and put them together and make them one thing."
Morgan Harper Nichols:
So from 2006 to literally 2016, that's when I actually started doing the art, in 2016, that I do right now in terms of painting digitally and including art, but it was a 10-year journey of exploration of, "Maybe it's photography or maybe it's film." Or I'm like, "Wow, well, I hate editing, so it's probably not film." But I loathe editing. I have a sister who's two years younger than me, and kind of you're talking about your sister, she's that way too. She's a writer and Storyteller, but she loves film. She can spend five hours just editing film. She's made documentaries. I'm like, "That sounds like a nightmare to me."
Morgan Harper Nichols:
We all have our things, but that's why I'm just such an advocate for just exploring and being okay when you get to those things where you're like, "Hmm, I don't know if that's for me." That's okay. Just keep going, just keep trying. So it took me about 10 years to get to the point where I am now, where I'm illustrating and painting and writing and bringing it all together.
Amena Brown:
There's a couple of things inside the story you told that are I really love. One of the things I love is just the ability to be open to the exploration. I think there's this myth, I try when I'm in rooms with college students or anyone who's in that 18 to 21 age range, I try to say out loud like, "It's okay if you don't know you want to be a thoracic surgeon right now. And you're like, 'That's what I'm going to be, and I'm going to do that for the rest of my life that.'" That's okay, it's part of how a lot of, air quotes, adults, who are you? Like you're looking at when you're younger and you're like, "Oh my gosh, that person they know what it is they want to do."
Amena Brown:
"It's discovery that has happened to them over these years of exploring, of learning. Ooh, no, I can't do that. I don't want to do that." Honestly, Morgan, when I was graduating college, I was English major, I wanted to be a novelist. I wanted to be young Toni Morrison, young Alice Walker. I'm terrible at writing fiction. I'm just not great at it. I'm very like on a dark and stormy night, this Black woman, whatever. It's like I write cliché plot novels. That's how my novels came out. So part of that exploration though is what led me to discover like, "Well, you can take the things that you loved when you read Toni Morrison and use that in writing poetry."
Amena Brown:
Or, I didn't even know at the time that there was a such thing as creative non-fiction, which is also something that I ended up doing later in life. So I loved in your story that there was this just willingness, and maybe at the time you weren't like, "I'm willing to explore these things." I mean, consciously you were doing that, but it was the season of time that you got to explore and see like, "Hey, let me try that. Let me try my hand at it and see." So that's part of what I try to tell younger people like, "Take your time and figure out, get a job, discover if you hate it, if you like it."
Morgan Harper Nichols:
Exactly. That's so true. That's so true. And like you said, in the beginning, it wasn't willingness, it didn't feel that then, but now when I look back, I'm like, "Wow, that's what it was." But in the moment, the word that I feel probably explains what I felt the most was just desperation, especially in my college years, I was just looking at everyone else and like, "It seems they have a little bit more of idea what they want to do than I do. And here I am, I'm not good at anything related to math or science, not even psychology. There's so many things that I just don't feel skilled." I was like, "There's got to be something I'm here for. There has to be something."
Morgan Harper Nichols:
And when I was in the moment, I just felt like I was grasping in this trying, I'm just like, "God, just give me a sign. What am I supposed to be doing?" But when I look back on it, I'm like, "Wow, it didn't look it then, but that was courage, that was strength that I just kept going." When I would try to have my little photography business and it failed and I tried to get into film and I couldn't keep up with my SD cards. All of these little things, but I still kept going, and it didn't feel it then, but it certainly matters now. So I definitely try to remember that.
Amena Brown:
Can you tell me more about your journey as a creative because you are a writer, you also are a visual artist, you also are a singer songwriter. And I'm curious to know in your journey to where Morgan Harper Nichols, the brand is now. Was there a moment where you were going down a path of music and realized, "Ah, I don't really want to go down this." Or was it a moment where you were like, "I'm going down this path with this music. I also want to explore this side of my writing more. I also want to explore this side of visual art." How did you decide about that journey or how did that journey come to you or happen to you?
Morgan Harper Nichols:
At the end of my senior year of college, I have gotten to this point where I was like, "Okay, I know I love creative things, but I love to write, I love to explore, but I'm not going to be able to pay my bills that way."
Amena Brown:
A word. A word today.
Morgan Harper Nichols:
I was like, "Maybe this will just be a hobby." I was like, "Maybe this is just something I do on the side." In college, I had done quite a bit of music. In high school, I taught myself how to play guitar and I started singing, playing. And even that, that began as kind of an assignment for my mom. I was homeschooled, and my mom was like, "Hey, you should try to write a song." Because I started playing guitar and I was like, "Nobody does that, people don't write songs too." I was like, "Yes, I do, and I'm making it an assignment." That's actually how my music careers began.
Morgan Harper Nichols:
I just went along with it, started singing, my parents are pastor, so I started singing at church, started singing at local coffee shops and I enjoyed it and I was like, "Okay, this is fun." But I was like, "I don't really know if I can do this as a career. Maybe this is just something I just do on the side." So by the time I was a senior in college, I was like, "All right. If I get to music, if I end up doing it later, maybe it would just be something I do on the side." I actually applied for a job to be an admission counselor where I was graduating from, and I got the job.
Morgan Harper Nichols:
So I was like, "Okay, this is it. I get to be a real grownup now. I could have salary and I'll just do my little creative things on the side." Because I was still at, and I probably always am, but I was still in exploration mode, but I think in that stage, I was still making jewelry. At one point, I was curious about... I was tired of paying for really expensive hair extensions, so I was like, "I'm going to make my own." I started buying hair and dyeing hair.
Amena Brown:
Which is a whole complete industry now, you were an early adopter, trendsetter right there.
Morgan Harper Nichols:
I really was. It was hard to find all bright hair, back then. So I was watching videos and learning how to dye hair, buy powder bleach. I just did all these things. I was like, "I'll just do all this stuff on the side, that's how I will live my life, then I'll have a regular job and everything will be great." And at the time, my husband and I, we had just gotten married, so I was like, "This is so good, we're living a normal life." And then about a year and a half, I would say, into my job, my job was actually moving two hours away, and I couldn't move with the job.
Morgan Harper Nichols:
We had just bought a house in just a little south of Atlanta in Stockbridge, Georgia, we had just bought a house-
Amena Brown:
Yeah. I'm those Stockbridge. We were like down the street from each other. So I'm listening to this, there's a part of me that's like, "Oh, I know that place." There's a part of me that's like, "I'm mad that Morgan was literally down the street from me." Good to you.
Morgan Harper Nichols:
Yes, that's where we were. We had just bought a house down there and I was like, "We can't move, this isn't going to work." Long story short, I essentially lost my job and I was like, "Wow, this is great. We just got married, we don't have a ton of money saved up or anything." And my husband, he was still in school at the time and working, so I was like, "What does this mean?" I didn't really have a plan B, that was my plan A, I was like, "It was supposed to work." I have my job, I loved it, I was going to go back to grad school and I had it all figured out.
Morgan Harper Nichols:
But while I was in this really uncertain season, my sister who's two years younger than me, she had decided to pursue music full-time and her career ended up just like... When she was 19, she wrote the song, they got nominated for a Grammy, she was touring all the time, but she didn't have a team. So my husband and I actually went on the road with her. So while my job was reaching its end, I was like, "I don't really know what I'm going to do next." And my husband was finishing school, we were just like, "We're just going to go. We're just going to go on the road."
Morgan Harper Nichols:
That was what we did for the next three or four years up until 2016, early 2016, that's when we decided that maybe we didn't want to be on the road everyday all the time. And during that season, as my sister was getting out there more, I slowly but surely, I found myself on stage too and then we started writing songs together. So it was really more of, again, just that word desperation in a way of like, I was like, "I literally don't have a job and I don't know what to do, and maybe this isn't what I want to do, but maybe there's something here that I need to do so I can learn and I can grow."
Morgan Harper Nichols:
And that season of my life with doing music full-time was definitely that. And I'm so grateful for that season because it was so challenging. I'm naturally very introverted, other than talking to my husband, this is probably the most talk I will talk all week on this podcast, especially now that I'm writing and creating full time, I have to be really mindful about getting out of the house, getting sunshine. I can spend a lot of time at home, but music and you know this singer performer, you've got to engage with people in real time and feed off their energy.
Morgan Harper Nichols:
Even just the work that I've seen you do, I haven't seen you perform, but I'm like, "wow, it's just so powerful." And I love that. I'm like. "Ah, I want to do more of this just to challenge myself." And I'm so glad I did. And I still play shows, I still travel, just not as much as I used to. But yeah, that's how I ended up coming from exploring, my writing and drawing, and all these different things on the side to losing my job, to going on the road full time with my little sister. And that's what led me to around 2016, where I started that new phase of focusing more on writing.
Amena Brown:
I think sometimes as creatives or people who are visionary types, we can get this idea in our head that whatever we start doing and then subsequently whatever people know us for, is like this wall and chain now that we have to drag with us. It's like, "Well, the first thing people saw me do was make bow ties or whatever, so now I have to make bow ties. If I don't keep making bow ties, even if that's no longer inspiring to me or even if that doesn't feel like what I'm supposed to do in this season of my life, I better keep doing that or I will disappoint." Fill in the blank whoever those people are.
Amena Brown:
I think there's a lot of power in your story of just being able to shift as needed. And I'm a huge planner type, I'm a huge type A, which I'm unlearning, life is going to keep on happening to me and helping me unlearn some of the unhealthy parts of being a type A, but part of being a type A person is like, "Well, I made this choice right here. Obviously, this is what life is going to be for 40 years." Until whatever I had in my mind, I retire, I don't know whatever that was I had in my mind.
Amena Brown:
And I'm learning, I think especially for those of us involved in gate economy, involved in freelancing or entrepreneurial life, I think there's always a shifting. Either there's a shifting in the market that you're in or the market you would like to be in, or there's a shift in you of what you want to be doing or no longer want to be doing based upon whatever season. So I think there's a lot of power just in your journey, your willingness even to not carry around whatever your creative expression has been as weight, as extra weight. And instead, to say, "Well, these are things I get to hold sometimes."
Morgan Harper Nichols:
Yes. That's so true. That's so true. And I don't think I realized I was learning that in the moment. In the moment, I think I dealt with a lot of like, "Wow, you're an adult, but here you are, you don't have your stuff figured out yet. You should be further along by now, you should be more organized, you should have a better plan." In the moment, that's what I wrestled with, but at the same time, I felt I was being forced to have an openness and just an openness to just be in the wild of it all, really and just say like, "I don't know what's going to happen out here. I don't know if it's going to produce the results that I want."
Morgan Harper Nichols:
"I don't know what it's going to look in a decade, but I do know I'm going to learn and I'm going to grow. And whatever I do gather in this season, will prepare me for whatever is next, even if I don't know what's next." So that's definitely what I was learning. It did not feel like it then. When I read through my journal entries, then I'm like, "Yep, I didn't get it. I didn't see what was happening." It's so hard to see it when you're in it, but when you're on the other side of that, you start to see like, "Wow, I was holding on. I really was. I really was pushing through that."
Morgan Harper Nichols:
So I'm grateful for that because I still have moments that now, I'm just like, "This is going to continue to happen in my life, I'm going to continue to reach places where I don't feel really that secure with where I am, where I don't feel I have a plan like I should." But if you just continue to be faithful in whatever way you can, it really does matter when you reach the other side.
Amena Brown:
When I first started following you on Instagram, you used to do this thing every Sunday that was storyteller Sundays. We never got to talk about this, but that was one of the initial things that I was watching you do when I first started following you those years ago. Before we got a chance to connect even online, I was watching you do that which I thought was so dope. And honestly, to tell the truth, Morgan, to tell the real truth, Morgan and listeners, I'm literally about to start talking to Morgan like we're on the phone, then I was like, "Oop, people are listening."
Amena Brown:
To tell the truth, there were so many Sundays that I would just see you post it, and I'm also a person who articulates myself better in speaking than I do when I write. Like if somebody were to ask me something and they want an answer in 30 minutes, and if I could press record and send them an email of me saying it, it'd be done more quickly, but if I email people back-
Morgan Harper Nichols:
I would be direct opposite.
Amena Brown:
Are you really?
Morgan Harper Nichols:
I just I love it. I just love the difference. I'm like, "Oh my gosh, that would terrify me."
Amena Brown:
I'll get on a text, if someone's like, "How are you on a text?" I'm like, three hours later and seven paragraphs, I can't get my life together. So that was me looking at your Storyteller Sundays and just... I really thought that that was such a beautiful thing that you started. And of course, now seeing how much storytelling has become so central to the creative work that you do now, and the ways you engaged people and the things that people felt comfortable to share on those threads. And there were so many Sundays that I would be somewhere and go to Instagram and pull it up, and I'm like, "Oh man, it's Storyteller Sunday."
Amena Brown:
And then I'd be like, "Man, I keep lurking on here." And I feel the community was starting to feel like, "Hey, you can't just lurk on here, you need to put some skin in the game too and share a story." And then I would be like, "Oh, I can't get my words together now." And then I'll be like, "Okay, maybe if I get my words together, then next Sunday." I'll prepare myself so that I won't be sitting on Instagram typing for an hour only for Instagram to refresh and lose my whole thing, I was typing. I would love to hear more about how as a part of your, and I'm using brand, it doesn't feel right, honestly, because I think it's deeper than that, what you're doing.
Amena Brown:
It is your brand because this is the work and business that you have, but it's also like, maybe calling is right, I don't know. There's another word there that I want to say about just the work that you do, there's this underlying principle of the importance of storytelling. And one of the things that I found really interesting, not only in Storyteller Sundays, but also in the fact that a part of your creative process with some of the work you make is other people sending you their stories. Can you just talk about how... Take us on the journey from what inspired Storyteller Sundays to how that became this thread now, and how do you hold space for the stories of other people in your creative work?
Morgan Harper Nichols:
Yeah. Well, first of all, that means so much to me that you know about Storyteller Sunday. I just thought about that the other day, and I was like, "Wow, I used to do that every single Sunday." And the reason why that started, I want to say it was probably in 2014 sometime when I started that, and I was in this place where I was doing music and I was traveling and meeting people. And for me, I'm one of those people, I just like to go deep, I like to go deep with people. But one thing when you're traveling and you're performing, you don't really get that, you're just in one city and then you go to the next one and you get opportunities to meet people after the show, but it's always so quick.
Morgan Harper Nichols:
And there was just these moments where I was just catch glimpses of things that people would share with me and they would just stay with me. I've always loved to read and I've always loved to read people's stories, but it was something about someone telling that story just in the moment. So I was like, "Well, what if there's some way, almost kind of a debriefing. " Because Sunday I always felt Sunday evening was always a time where you're just reflecting and you're thinking about the past week and getting ready for the next week. I was like, 'What if there's just a way where people can just sort of, in that time where they're reflecting that they can just have a place to share it."
Morgan Harper Nichols:
So that's really all it was, I didn't really have much of a vision for it beyond that, I was just trying it out, again, just trying things, not really knowing what was going to stick, but it's like, "Let me just try this. Let me just try that." There's so many things that I've tried. I think I've probably have had, I'm not exaggerating, 30 to 50 Instagram pages of just different ideas that I've tried, just different concepts. And this was one of them and it definitely resonated with people, I believe just because even though we have so much space to talk on social media, there's not a lot of space for people to just feel they're allowed to just share about themselves, especially on someone else's platform.
Morgan Harper Nichols:
It's almost if someone posts a picture, it's like, "Oh, I've got a comment on that person." It's not really an opportunity to say like, "This is how I see that. This is how what it means to me." So I was like, "I just want to turn the lens around and focus it on the other person and just give them an opportunity to just share." When I started doing that, that was a huge turning point for me because I realized something about one, about myself, and two, about just being an artist. And three, about social media, is that I had put so much pressure on myself to be this all-together person, or try to, figure out what you're going to do.
Morgan Harper Nichols:
If you're going to be creative, figure out what path you're going to get on and stay on that path. I put so much pressure on myself, and I put pressure on myself to present myself that way online that I was a singer-songwriter and I played this amount of shows, and this is how many people were at the show, and this is what happened. And now I'm traveling here and I'm doing this. I put so much pressure on myself to look this way, but really it was when it came down to interacting and engaging with other people one-on-one, them sharing their stories, people just, they weren't as interested in that.
Morgan Harper Nichols:
No one was saying, "Oh, I thought you were a singer-songwriter, why are you sharing stories now? Why are you doing this?" No one was saying that. And I think a lot of times we can put pressure on ourselves that when we do something from our heart and we try something new that other people are going to look at it and say, "Wait, but why are you doing something different?" And who knows, there may be a few people out there who saw that, but they certainly weren't the ones flooding the comment section. They certainly weren't the ones telling their stories.
Morgan Harper Nichols:
And it got to a point where there were so many stories were coming in that I didn't have time to worry about those doubts that had about, what does this look for my brand? I didn't have time because I'm like, "These are real people and there are people that would just share things that were just so touching, but also they're just currently dealing with such difficult things." And I would try to respond to as many as I could, and the more I did that, just the less time I had to worry and the less time I had to fret about, "Wow, if I pivot over here, what is it going to look like?"
Morgan Harper Nichols:
Even with the project that I have going on right now where people can actually send me their story privately, and then I make art for them, it's the same thing. The days that I spend that I'm able to spend responding to people's stories, those are typically the days where my self-doubt and things that I didn't get around sharing my art and making a brand, all those things, those are the days where it's not as strong. It's still present a lot of times, I deal with a lot of self-doubt and I'm working through that, but the days that I spend engaging with other people, I feel like honestly, it's God's way of grounding me, of just reminding me of like, "Yes, there's all this uncertainty in your life, but there are also other people out there who have uncertainty in their life."
Morgan Harper Nichols:
And just by being reminded on a Tuesday at 10:00 AM that they're not the only person who is feeling that way, that means something. And that's what I've just been learning in this season of my life. It's just that my life, my creative path is going to change, it's going to have highs and lows. There's some seasons where I'm going to be challenging myself creatively, there are some seasons where I'm going to feel like I'm just stuck in a routine, but through it all, there are thousands and thousands of people out there who feel the exact same way.
Morgan Harper Nichols:
And I just try to keep finding ways to bring that to my work and bring that to what inspires me, because it's so easy to feel like you're the only one, it's so easy to feel like you should just be further along by now, especially as I get older. I'm 29, so there's all these things about like, "Oh, when you're in your 30s, you should do this. You should have accomplished this." Or, "When you hit your 40s, you should have accomplished this." And the more I just read other people's stories, and I engage with them, the more I'm reminded, I'm like, "You know what? I don't have to figure it out." But apparently, none of us do. And it's going to be okay, it's going to be okay.
Amena Brown:
I resonate with everything, I just resonate with what you said because I think it's interesting to me, one of the things that inspired me to start this is podcast is my love of storytelling, and I wanted women of color to have another space that centered around women of color telling their stories in their own voice, whatever that part of their story is. And one of the things I think is really inspiring about the ways that you engage storytelling, and sometimes that I forget about, because I think when those of us who are gifted in certain ways to tell stories musically or through dance or performing art or visual art, whatever it is we do, it's sometimes I forget that that's a gift to articulate the deep things that people feel and experience.
Amena Brown:
And it has happened to me where... Like I can think of one of my favorite singer-songwriter, Eric Roberson. He wrote this song called Pretty Girl, sorry, listening to his album and got to that song and just listened to it on repeat for three weeks. And I was like, "Girl, what is wrong with you? There's a whole album, why do you keep listening to this song?" But I kept listening to it because he found this way to articulate these deep things that I knew and experienced. And there was something about him putting words to that that it wasn't something I had gotten to a point where I could articulate myself.
Amena Brown:
I don't even know still if I could have articulated those feelings as well as he did in that song. And I think the power of the exchange of what you're doing in this part of your work is yes, it's important for us to tell our own stories in our own voice, and there will be times that those of us who are creatives get the honor of translating another person's story or experience or being inspired by that. And I think that's dope.
Morgan Harper Nichols:
Yeah. And I think that just shows that there's so much that goes on when we are taking the time to... Even if it's just writing in our journal, it feels like we're just getting our thoughts out, we're just saying what needs to be said, even if it's just for ourselves, but the thing is, even that is connected to a greater picture, it's connected to other people's stories. And whether you decide to share it or not, somebody else is going to feel reflected in that. And I find so much peace in that because it's so easy for me to feel, even now as much as I...
Morgan Harper Nichols:
There are some days where I'm literally putting out hundreds of pieces of art in terms of what I'm emailing to people. And there's some days where I'm just like, "Does any of this make sense?" Like, "Am I repeating myself too much? Am I saying the same thing over and over?" But the amount of emails that I receive back and people say like, "This is exactly what I need to hear, I feel the exact same way. Thank you for saying this." It just reminds me, I'm like, "You know what? It's not about me because I didn't try to do that. I just tried to write it out."
Morgan Harper Nichols:
Even when I'm actively doubting in the moment, I'm fighting through the doubt and I'm writing and I'm writing, just fighting through this doubt that I have, even that, somebody else is connecting with. There've been some times where I'm writing and I'll have a thought mid-stanza, and I'm like, "Oh my gosh, I've said this too many times." And I'll actually flip it, and I'll say that in the piece. And I'll say like, "Even when you feel like you've heard this over and over again... " and I'll just put what I'm actively feeling into that.
Morgan Harper Nichols:
And it's so neat to be able to look back on it, especially if someone says like, "Well, I relate to that." I'm like, "Wow." Even in my low places, even in my doubtful places, even when I'm unsure of what I'm creating, if I can just continue to be truthful and honest that I feel uncertain about this, even within the work, somebody else's going to feel reflected in that. I can talk about that all day, but I'm so fascinated by that.
Amena Brown:
Let me ask you a logistical, well, I don't know if it's logistical, it's maybe a creative process question. How does the exchange work? And I do want to also say before I ask you this question, I don't know why I feel I just want to make this point real quick, but I want y'all to know that Morgan has a whole business, so she's out here having different aspects of our business. So we're just talking about this one aspect, but there'll be other aspects of her business. It's a whole business.
Morgan Harper Nichols:
I'm trying to be a grown up.
Amena Brown:
I just want people to know when I say business, I mean, you pay her. This is not just a free exchange, so I just want somebody to know guys. When people decide to do this exchange with you, that is like this portion of your business and they're like, "Morgan, I want to send you this story to see how it inspires you, what you create from it," talk me through, how does that process typically look? And I'm sure it looks different depending on the circumstance, but talk us through that.
Morgan Harper Nichols:
Yeah. I do have for them that I've gotten into, so what I do is I have a form on my website where people can submit to have something written for either themselves or someone else in their lives. So they may want to have something encouraging written for a friend or their mother or something that. And I have on there, I'm like, "Look, you can tell your whole life story, or you can just say, 'I just need something to remind myself to have courage right now.'" So I have that form going constantly on my website. And all of the messages come to an email address that I check once a day.
Morgan Harper Nichols:
And instead of trying to go through every one, because there are literally thousands, I have no idea how many I've received at this point.
Amena Brown:
Right. I was wondering.
Morgan Harper Nichols:
I haven't counted because I know there's a part of me that's going to feel like I have to respond to every single person. I'm like, "Physically, I can't do it." So I haven't even counted it because the form has been open since October, 2017, so it's been going on for a while. So what I'll do is, I'll just click on a random page, like you know how you can go back several pages in your email. Sometimes I'll go to that present day, sometimes I'll go like a month ago, six months ago, and I'll just scroll through and I'll just randomly click on a person.
Morgan Harper Nichols:
There's a little subject line, the way the form comes in, it just says stories submission. So I have no idea what I'm going to open, honestly. So I just click on it and I'll see what the person shares. Sometimes it is a 10-page life story, sometimes it's a paragraph, sometimes it's just one word. And I just sit there for a moment and I just read it, and that moment, I typically ask myself some variation of this question. I'm like, "If I were that person right now, what I want to hear, what would I want to hear in that moment?"
Morgan Harper Nichols:
Because there's no way I can know what they want to hear, but the closest thing I can do is try my hardest to put myself in their shoes. And that's what empathy is, we can't know what that person's going through, but we can do our very best to try to put ourselves in their shoes as much as we can. So I'll just sit there and I think, and sometimes it just starts off as simple as, "It's okay that you're feeling this." Or, "You've been through so much, and I'm sorry that you went through that." Unfortunately, I receive a lot of messages that relate to abuse and assault and it's hard because it's...
Morgan Harper Nichols:
The first thing I want that person to know is that it was not their fault, and that's the first thing I want them to know, even if they've heard it 1,000 times, I'll be the 1,001st person to say that to them, "It is not your fault." So I typically start with something simple and just line by line. As I'm writing, it becomes more detailed, I guess you would say. And I'll typically just think of, like metaphors will come to mind. Like if I had to start thinking about mountains, then I'll incorporate that, or if I start thinking about the ocean, then I'll incorporate that.
Morgan Harper Nichols:
I love to incorporate nature because I feel like... Because I don't know what this person's everyday life looks like, but that's something that we can all connect with. We all know what an ocean is, we all know what a mountain is, we all know what a desert is. Even if we've never been there, we understand what those things are. So that's why I love to incorporate nature. I'll sit there and then... And it's so crazy, I've never really thought about it this way till right now. I'm like, "Wow, I'm doing the same thing I was doing when I was little." As I'm writing, if I see a visual as I'm writing, then that's when I'll stop and I'll create the art for that piece. And then I'll just put it in there, I'll just put it in the point.
Morgan Harper Nichols:
And sometimes wheat I send people, it's a few lines. There've been some people who, they probably opened it up their emails like, "Who is this person sending all this stuff? I didn't ask for all this." Because sometimes it will just flow out of me and I'll just end up sending them like five or like eight different pieces. And I'm like, "I didn't even know. I just couldn't stop myself." There's just something about what you said that just really spoke to me. I have moments like that. But what I do is, I'm sending it to that person, but I also share that art on my social media platforms.
Morgan Harper Nichols:
I never shared the person's story, their story is totally private and anonymous. So that's how I get my consent, if you will, is, it's from that real-time experience after I sent it to them. I always send it to them first, and then that's when I share it. publicly. This is the first time I've actually said all of this out loud.
Amena Brown:
Yeah. It makes total sense.
Morgan Harper Nichols:
It's all in my head or on my computer. I was like, "Whoa, I don't know if that makes sense, but yeah, that's the process."
Amena Brown:
And I know it can be weird too, to try to think. I think as creative brains, all of us, whether or not you consider yourself an artist or a creative, we all have creativity in our brain. And I think whatever the thing is that you do well, you could go from step one to step 36 in 10 seconds sometimes, so it's hard to go back and take another person through all those steps that happen in your own mind so quickly. So just thank you for sharing that, because I was really curious about how you take that in and just how you incorporate that in your creative process, I think. We can go through some really tough times and low times of life to where life can get so difficult for us that we almost don't have the words to articulate.
Amena Brown:
And I also have experienced just a wonderful joy or that ecstatic feeling of being in love that you almost feel like, "What words would I have?" And the idea of being able to go to someone who's got a gifting to articulate those things and say like, "Here's what's going on," whether it's really great or really horrible. And just the process of hearing how you're creating conversation artistically with that is just amazing to me. I love that. So thanks for it. Thanks for taking us through those steps that your brain goes real quick. Full thank you.
Morgan Harper Nichols:
Thank you for creating this space for me to do that, because I was like, "Wow, I've never explained this." I think you're a guinea pig on that, because I was like-
Amena Brown:
Yeah, you did great.
Morgan Harper Nichols:
"I've never explained it." So thank you.
Amena Brown:
So you have these types of exchanges and this way to be empathetic, you also have a book called Storyteller. Tell me more about your book. I have not had a chance to read the whole thing, but I got some poems in and I was like, "You know what? I'm not reading this before this interview so that Morgan and I are not going to be, really more so you, listening to me like ugly cry or whatnot." So once I got a couple of poems into that, I was like "You know what, mm-hmm (affirmative), no, Morgan's not going to get me. No. she's not going to get me now." But it was interesting that you talked about just how these were poems, but also letters. And some of them were for people.
Amena Brown:
Some of them seemed like they were for people you know. One of them, I'm going to butcher the description that you had as like the title, but one of them seems like a poem letter that you wrote to someone you were watching from afar, like on a train or on a bus somewhere. And just even that idea of us seeing people from afar and not having the opportunity to know their stories, but just writing for what we pick up in those exchanges. So talk more about how even this process you've told us here played a role in what became Storyteller, the book.
Morgan Harper Nichols:
Yes. Yes. I back up a little bit to where I started Storyteller Sunday where people were sharing their stories, and then that actually led to a song called Storyteller. And so I have a song called Storyteller as well. From that song, that just continued this... people were sharing their stories with me that they had with a song. And the lyrics of the song, they talk about your mountains and your valleys, and the times where you felt like that's all a part of the story you tell. And I just started to really dig into, just in my own thinking and just about life and my relationships.
Morgan Harper Nichols:
I'm like "You know what? There are times in life where I feel like I have a good idea of somebody's story enough to have empathy for them and to see," even if they're doing things that I don't agree with or understand, I'm like, "Wow, but that's where they came from." It doesn't mean I agree or accept what they've done, but I can see the story, I see how we got where we are now. But I started thinking about it, I was like "You know what though? We still have to have that mindset even when we don't know people's story." A lot of times, you hear these things like, "Oh, well, if you could just hear someone's story, then you can just really know where they're coming from and you can know so much about them."
Morgan Harper Nichols:
And I'm like, "That is absolutely true." But I was like, "I want to challenge myself to have the same amount of empathy for people's stories I don't know." And that's where I feel like the book, Storyteller, came about. It came from me wanting to be in a place where I'm like, "I want to be able to, just for my own personal growth, I want to be able to look at someone that I've met or someone that I know or a stranger that I pass on the street, and I want to be able to treat them as if I know their whole life story." And that's a challenge. For me, as much as I write about having empathy and I talk about that, it doesn't come to me very naturally, especially just in the scope of the world that we live in and everything that's going on.
Morgan Harper Nichols:
I get very angry really quickly. I'm very passionate about injustice, and sometimes I'll say things and I'll just go on rants, and I don't show a lot of grace. That's just my natural emotion sometimes. So it's a challenge for me. But I was like, "I want to live that way because there are people who don't know my story, but I want them to treat me with grace and with kindness, so I have to extend that to others as well." So a lot of the pieces in that book are really just me trying to take just little glimpses that I see of other people and have empathy for their story, even if I don't know their story.
Morgan Harper Nichols:
Because if you see someone on a flight or at the gas station, you don't know their story, but you do know where they are right now. Like, "Wow, you're here. You're here in this moment." Because I'm here in this moment. And that's why I use the word maybe and perhaps a lot because I'm like, "I don't know." And I'll say, "Maybe you've had a long day or maybe you've been working really hard lately and you haven't seen the results." I feel like it started as an inner thing, me trying to learn how to unclench my own fist, because I can just get... And I'm not very expressive in my anger, but I'll just hold it in. And I'll just keep it to myself like, "Oh, this makes me mad."
Morgan Harper Nichols:
I'll just be in the kitchen just making some rice, and I'll think about something like three years ago that happened, that makes me so angry, and I'm like, "Oh, that's so it makes me angry. I still feel anger for that." So I was like, "I've got to work through this." That literally will take a toll on your body. I have to work through this. So I feel like it started in that place and then it started to bleed into my art as well. So that's how that book came about. It was definitely a challenge to release it. And it's self-published. I guess it's a small book. I'll have more to come in the future, but it was definitely a pretty big moment for me to talk about those things in written form.
Amena Brown:
I love that you talked about the power of maybe, and perhaps. I really love that. And thinking about some of your work that I've seen online, just thinking about the many ways you've used those words now, hearing you articulate that, I think that's so important. I remember when I was taking English classes, writing classes and different things, there were certain words your professor or your teacher might get on you about like that.
Morgan Harper Nichols:
[inaudible 01:09:27] I use that so much.
Amena Brown:
I love that. Why are you on me? And of course, we get a few more liberties, those of us that are writing poems or writing songs because we get to break some rules that would be harder to do than if it were an essay or something in some cases.
Morgan Harper Nichols:
Yeah, for sure.
Amena Brown:
I think one of the things I've been really thinking about as a creative and a communicator is, how can I communicate with more nuance? How can I hold space for the both end of a situation, and communicating less in this statement sort of way, "This is how it, duh, duh, duh." For example, I've had a few opportunities to speak at different things around Mother's Day or around motherhood, and so me of 10 years ago would have just walked up assuming maybe everybody's relationship with their mom is like my relationship is with my mom. I love my mom. We have a great close relationship. The older that I get, the more that relationship turns into a friendship as well between the two of us.
Amena Brown:
But now, like in a moment like that, I've learned over time to be okay with that maybe and that perhaps. That like, maybe every person in this room doesn't have their mom, maybe every person in this room doesn't have a good relationship with their mother. Maybe for some people, the word motherhood is a trigger point or brings up some grief or some hard feelings. And I've been trying as much as I can, which is really inspiring to hear that that's a huge portion of your work, gives people that nuance, that, "Maybe this is a great day for you. And also I want to hold space for you if it's not a great day too."
Amena Brown:
So I think that's so good. Okay. Girl, tell me about this app, honey, because listen, y'all listen to me. Because some of y'all, you late. I mean, you late, we've already been on the app. I'm just now finding out, y'all, that Morgan has a Storyteller app. Okay?
Morgan Harper Nichols:
I do.
Amena Brown:
Where you can go on there and you can subscribe to it and then new inspirations are there for you to experience. Let me just tell you why this is a big deal to me, Morgan. I know this is yours, so it's definitely a big deal to you. But let me tell you why it's a big deal to me. This is a big deal to me because there are a lot of us as women of color in various industries and fields of experience that have been creating work a long time and have not been getting paid for the work that we do. Other people have found ways to monetize the things that we create or build or make, and then those people run off and make all sorts of money with some stuff that we were making.
Amena Brown:
Girl, when I saw that app, I was like, "Come on in the building, Morgan. Come on." Come on and be like, "I am making these things, I want them out in the world, and I want people to feel inspired." Also, there are ways people can support this. I'm just all for women of color getting paid for the amazing brilliance that she makes. So tell me everything about this app.
Morgan Harper Nichols:
And I'm so glad that you said what you said just about putting your work out there and doing it for free and not getting paid for it, and assuming that that's okay, that that's just the norm or you just have to settle for that. And of course, I love putting out things for free, I do it every single day, but at the same time, I also have to pay the bills. And for me, I really struggled at first with the idea of doing any kind of subscription model because I was like, "I don't know if I have enough for people to pay for it. I don't know." And I was wrestling with it. So I actually was approached by this company, and they have developers and everything ,and they already had apps going.
Morgan Harper Nichols:
They're like, "Hey, would you be interested in this?" And at first, I was like, "Yes, of course." And then I asked them, I was like, "Oh, by the way, will there be a free version of the app?" And they're like, "Not really. It's not that kind of app." And I was like, "Well, I don't think I really want to do it."
Amena Brown:
Come on now. Really?
Morgan Harper Nichols:
And I was like, "Wait, so people just download it and they just pay for it? Okay. I don't know about that." So it actually took me a few weeks. I wrestled with that for awhile, feeling like it was okay to charge. It's $2.99 a month, so it's not like it's like $5,000 a month or something. It's $2.99 a month. And I struggled with that. I struggled with that. But I talked to my husband, and he was like, "You need to do this." I talked to my peers, they're like, "You need to do this." Different people in my life, they're like, "Morgan, you're allowed to charge for your work."
Morgan Harper Nichols:
Sometimes we just need that permission, we need to hear that from other people, even if it's already true, sometimes you just need to hear from people you trust. And that's how I was, I really struggled there. So I'm so glad you mentioned that and I wanted to add that in there because I'm like, "That's definitely something I dealt with." It is a monthly subscription. You can pay to have weekly series of just different devotionals, inspirational messages that I write exclusively for the app. And there's artwork every single day. There's like a night reading mode. You can get reminders in the morning.
Amena Brown:
Wow, come on. Night reading?
Morgan Harper Nichols:
You can have an alert for different times of day. There's a full archive where you can go back and read through any of the series that I've already written. If you just want to buy one series, then you can do that too. So I think one series is like $1 a night or something like that. And you can also pay for an annual subscription.
Amena Brown:
Come on. In-app purchases? We love an in-app purchase.
Morgan Harper Nichols:
Yes. I'm so proud of it. I feel like it's beautiful. I feel like it's a nice looking app, it has a interface it's easy to navigate through, and we're constantly working on it to improve it. So that's been a huge step. It has challenged me in a lot of good ways. It didn't think I would be capable of doing something like that, but here I am. So yes.
Amena Brown:
Morgan, it just gave me so much life. Everybody listening to go right now and subscribe. Go right now and do it. People always ask me what's making me feel hopeful, and I almost always say it's the work of Women of Color. And then people are like, "What can I do?" I'm like, "Support the work Women of Color are doing. Support them. Women of Color are coming out with books, buy their books. Women of Color got apps out here, subscribe to the app and then make these in-app purchases. Women of Color coming there to perform, pay them their full rates, their full rates not whatever that rate was you had in your mind. Their full rates. Think about what you would pay a white man, double that. Pay that to the Women of Color. I'm here for it."
Amena Brown:
Oh my gosh, Morgan, yes, thank you so much for sharing that.
Morgan Harper Nichols:
Yes, of course.
Amena Brown:
Since this interview, Morgan Harper Nichols has released her book, All Along You Were Blooming: Thoughts For Boundless Living. You can follow Morgan at @MorganHarperNichols, and you can check out her website at MorganHarperNichols.com. And you can get all this info and more in the show notes at AmenaBrown.com/HerWithAmena. And you can follow me on Twitter and Instagram @AmenaBee, AmenaB-E-E.
Amena Brown:
For this week's Give Her A Crown, I want to give a shout out to writer, actor and stand-up comedian, Jenny Yang. Jenny is one of Variety's 10 Comics To Watch For 2020. And she is the creator of Comedy Crossing, a stand-up comedy show inside the Animal Crossing video game and watched live via Zoom.
Amena Brown:
Since June, 2020, Comedy Crossing has raised over $30,000 in audience donations to Black Lives Matter related causes. She is hilarious, and she's using her voice to speak truth to power. Jenny Yang, Give Her A Crown.
Amena Brown:
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 iHeartRadio. Thanks for listening, and don't forget to subscribe, rate and review the podcast.