This episode features our conversation with Philadelphia’s Dr. Raina J. León, which was livestreamed on Saturday, March 25, 2023 to talk about her expansive body of work.
Dr. Raina J. León is Black, Afro-Boricua, and from Philadelphia (Lenni Lenape ancestral lands). She is a mother, daughter, sister, madrina, comadre, partner, poet, writer, artist, digital archivist, podcaster, and teacher educator. She believes in collective action and community work. She is the author of black god mother this body, Canticle of Idols, Boogeyman Dawn, sombra : (dis)locate, and the chapbooks, profeta without refuge and Areyto to Atabey: Essays on the Mother(ing) Self. She is a founding editor of The Acentos Review, an online quarterly, international journal devoted to the promotion and publication of Latinx arts, which celebrates its quince in 2023 and in that time has published nearly 1000 Latinx/Latine voices. She teaches at Stonecoast MFA at the University of Southern Maine and cohosts the podcast, Generational Archives, with Dr. Norma D. Thomas.
Raina believes in the profound power of holding space for the telling of our stories and the liberatory practice of humanizing education. As an educator of our present and future agitators, Dr. León served as full professor of education at Saint Mary’s College of California, being only the third Black person and the first Afro-Latina to achieve this rank at the institution. In addition to her work as a digital archivist, Dr. León is an emerging visual artist, writing coach, and curriculum developer.
On the podcast, Generational Archives, Drs. Thomas and León present a show where they connect, heal, uncover through intergenerational conversations and archival research. A mother-daughter team, they have been collaborating on writing, facilitation, education projects, and research for ... well all of Raina's life. This podcast explores the closeness of their relationship and how they are together practicing attunement with their ancestors through their ancestral recovery work. They are pushing to learn the forgotten and erased names ... and will teach you how to do that, too!
To learn more about Raina and to purchase copies of her book, please visit her website at rainaleon.com.
Find Raina on Instagram: @rainaleon.
