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#ItsPersonal III 86. Brittany K. Barnett shares grandma's influence, dinner time and a reading list!
8 Plays4 years ago
Brittany K. Barnett is an attorney, author, and entrepreneur. Her memoir, A Knock at Midnight, was published by The Crown Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House, on September 8, 2020 (via website: https://www.brittanykbarnett.com/about)
On ItsPersonalPodcast Brittany shares deep insights on her grandmother, and her influence on the family. She shares what family means, and grandma's legacy, who cooks what, and how recipes have been passed down.
With Brittany's work, she is busy working on the ground with people. She is consistently finding ways to save lives and make lives better for specific individuals. We spend time talking about the idea of "self-care" and what this looks like for her.
Lastly, Brittany shares what she is currently reading. Yes! Though Brittany is extremely busy, she finds time to read. You don't want to miss out on these awesome recommendations.
Website: https://www.brittanykbarnett.com/about
Twitter: https://twitter.com/msbkb
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/msbkb/
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Transcript
Introduction and Background
00:00:24
Speaker
Welcome back everyone to another episode of It's Personal.
00:00:30
Speaker
Yeah, so my name is Brittany K. Barnett. I am an attorney and entrepreneur and author from rural East Texas, born and raised in Texas, and have been doing a lot of work lately as it relates to just transforming our criminal legal system.
00:00:51
Speaker
Brittany, I'm so excited to have you here today. I think my first question is, and I talked about it very briefly, is just checking in. How are you doing all things, considering the way the world is right now?
Advocacy for Justice and Resilience
00:01:06
Speaker
You know, I'm hanging in there. I work with...
00:01:13
Speaker
incarcerated mothers and their daughters. I do work with people who have been unjustly sentenced as it relates to the war on drugs, people who are in federal prison serving life without parole. And so I just always keep them in mind. And that's an empowering source for me, just their survivorship, their resilience, and just the ability to persevere.
00:01:41
Speaker
Wow, and I guess my other question is based on family, how's family doing? I know that based on the books, the book that I've read and every event that relates to family and your love for your grandmother, et cetera, how are they doing?
00:02:03
Speaker
Everyone is doing well. You know, my grandmother was a source of inspiration for me. She ascended this earth a couple of years ago, and I know she's just always present. Our ancestors are always leading us and guiding us. And my mom and sister and dad, everyone's doing great. Awesome. Awesome. I want to go back to just
00:02:28
Speaker
of the piece on your grandmother, if that's okay. You talk about her so much in the book, and I'm pretty sure you dedicate the book to her, I believe so. What did it look like for Brittany in grandma's house when you were younger? What did that look
Family Legacy and Grandmother's Influence
00:02:44
Speaker
like for you? It was pure love for me. Love in every side of the word.
00:02:53
Speaker
And it was definitely, as I call it in the book, my soul, S-O-U-L and soul, S-O-L-E. You know, it's something about your grandmother's love and something for me, extremely special about your grandmother's love from the South. And as part of the,
00:03:20
Speaker
intention I had for the book was to really allow the South to shine in that way. I love that. And it's funny because for me, oftentimes when I do have, and I will say specifically, Black authors, creatives, professionals, there's something about Black grandmothers that sticks out. They often mention them being
00:03:51
Speaker
the rock, the soul, the love of a family. And I love hearing that me being from Canada, I also, I feel the same way about my grandmother. I'm lucky to still have her around, but she's definitely all of those things for me as well. What are some, could you tell me maybe a few lessons learned from her and how you continue to use those lessons through life now?
00:04:17
Speaker
Oh, that's a great question. I learned so many lessons from my grandmother. I think the ones that are sticking out the most to me today is how she had a true, genuine, unconditional love for everybody that she met. She was nonjudgmental.
00:04:38
Speaker
she was uplifting in her own gentle way. And she just had a way about her of being everyone's number one cheerleader, treating everyone would think they were her favorite in the world. She just had a way about her that was very gentle. I don't
00:05:06
Speaker
ever recall my grandmother yelling or being angry. You know, I think she just had a very soothing period about her that I do, I should remember and that I really need to tap into more. And so thank you for that question. That's awesome. With all the work that you do, um, and it's very evident through just like the world in general,
00:05:35
Speaker
I guess my other question for you that I'm really interested in is how do you balance time in regards to family, in regards to the commitment to the work? And what do you like to do for fun?
Work-Life Balance and Self-Care
00:05:54
Speaker
I am still working to balance time. Definitely prioritize being more intentional about it. I think the work has become so ingrained in my life.
00:06:06
Speaker
that it's a practice to really have some sort of balance. I do try to work on self-care and self-care is a practice, right? And so there are times where I'm much stronger in it than others. Self-care though, as I talk about in the book,
00:06:31
Speaker
as it relates to its more radical roots and not the way the term has been co-opted today as a form of escapism. But self-care, as the poet Audre Lorde would say, you know, self-care is an act of self-preservation. It's not an act of self-indulgence. And it is a method when I am practicing it to remember that it's not a form of escapism. It's just, it's a way to rest
00:07:00
Speaker
so that you can more fully engage in the work. And so it's something that definitely has ebbs and flows throughout the work. And I think for myself and for many of the people that I work in the space with, it's definitely something we all should be prioritizing more.
00:07:24
Speaker
And I think that yeah, I think I might have phrased that question poorly. I think fun and I don't want to compare the two because obviously it's evident that the work that you do is something you're passionate about and that brings you joy as well based on what I've read and based on listening to you.
00:07:45
Speaker
Can we talk a little bit about, you do use, you talk in reference to a number of people within your book, specifically Nikki Giovanni, and I'm wondering if you can just talk about her influence on your work. Yes, you know, the older that I get, the more I realize
Book as a Tribute and Inspiration
00:08:10
Speaker
how poetry, especially poetry from Black women poets is, it's all love letters to us, to themselves. And I set out to write the book, I worked to set intentions, you know, on what do I want this book to accomplish? Who do I want this book to speak to? What does this book mean for me? And for me at its core,
00:08:42
Speaker
My book is a love letter. It's a love letter to my mama, to my sister, to my family and clients, and Nikki Giovanni's poems were just that, you know, and so I really
00:08:59
Speaker
set with a lot of her work. One of her poems I actually wrote in the book from her poem, Nikki Rosa, where she says, black love is black wealth. And they'll probably talk about my hard childhood and never understand that all the while I was quite happy. And I started the book with that quote because I wanted to set the intention throughout that as black people were not just as
00:09:28
Speaker
It's not just this monolithic story of struggle all the time. Black pain and Black joy can coexist. We are nuanced, complex people. And, you know, there's just a beautiful love there throughout it all.
00:09:45
Speaker
I don't want to, but I'm going to ask, and I know a lot of this based on reading your book. Can you share a little bit about what that looked like for you in regards to your childhood? Just growing up, possibly, in your household? Yeah, what sticks out to me the most as it relates to the Nikki Giovanni quote is, growing up surrounded by Black love.
00:10:12
Speaker
And having a happy childhood, even though there were a lot of challenges, and the main challenge was growing up with a mother who became addicted to a drug that at the time was more powerful than she was. And even with that, even with how devastating that was for my sister and I to be so close to devastation,
00:10:44
Speaker
especially so close to devastation within our mama, that was hard. But there was also this just unconditional love that we knew our mom had for us and that we knew we had for her. There was also this unconditional love from extended family to where if we were in need of anything, we didn't know it.
00:11:09
Speaker
And so I think with that, the happy times of from growing up in rural East Texas, to playing sports, to family dinners, to just Friday night movies with my mom, those were very, very happy times. And those all happened throughout her addiction. And so the pain from the addiction doesn't take away from the happiness and the joy that we had.
00:11:35
Speaker
during that time as well. And so it was just, you know, really showing that those two things, they really can and they do coexist for many of us. And I love that. Cause you also talk about how, just that like the power of community and how you had the ability to just almost knock on anyone's door or anyone was able to see you and just be able to know that they could
00:12:02
Speaker
take care of you. And again, this kind of goes to a lot of the podcasts that I talked to with specifically Black authors and creatives that they have this community around them that allows them to just feel loved by so many people. Though on the outside world, people see a lot of their journey as a struggle, but at the same time,
00:12:29
Speaker
they're still smothered with love from the wider community. So I love hearing that. Because again, though I am from Canada, our small black community has the exact same feeling on me as well. I really love hearing that. Brittany, you talk about dinnertime in your book, and I'm just curious of just like what maybe
00:12:59
Speaker
when you were younger and maybe now, and maybe it hasn't changed. What does Brittany's favorite dinnertime look
Cultural Heritage and Family Bonds
00:13:06
Speaker
like? My favorite dinnertime looks like being surrounded by people that I love and just hold close to my heart, in particular my family. My family is extremely close.
00:13:19
Speaker
And it looks like just us coming together with the shared experiences that we've all had, whether it be the good or the bad, and just really enjoying the present and being fully present.
00:13:35
Speaker
I love that. And I'm also curious, like, what's on the table? And one of those dinners, favorite dinners would totally be soul food. Southern soul food from candy yams to homemade mac and cheese, the kind you bake in the oven, not the box kind. Meatloaf, my grandmother's beef chips and rice and sweet tea. Gotta have the sweet tea.
00:14:02
Speaker
And has your grandma been able to pass down those recipes? And who's the cook in the family? Who's the person that you know? Yeah, I think my grandmother just raised a good breed of cooks. And so I think from my dad to my uncle to my Aunt Felicia, each one of us has our own recipe of hers that we
00:14:29
Speaker
that stuck with us. Like my Aunt Felicia, we still have like handwritten recipes from her. One with her sweet potato pie. So my Aunt Felicia makes that. I definitely
00:14:42
Speaker
make the candy yams. And yeah, I think it's just different. She left a different piece of herself within all of us. And I guess my other question is how, how are you and the rest of the family using her legacy to pass down to, I guess, the younger children in the family who may not have had the full experience?
00:15:03
Speaker
Using her legacy truly through action, family was extremely important to my grandmother. We would meet at her house every Sunday for huge dinners. I mean, her food was medicinal in and of itself. You know, it was full of love. And so we
00:15:21
Speaker
work as hard as we can to keep that tradition up, although it doesn't look like it used to in the form of every Sunday. But we do work to get together often with the younger generation, you know, they're in presence so they can understand that, how important family is. Family was everything to my grandmother.
00:15:45
Speaker
Brittany, I just have a few more questions for you. What are you, and I know this may be, this may be hard for you because of the work that you're doing, but I'm wondering what you're reading right now, and even if it has to do with work, some of the listeners may be interested, and I'm also just curious, based on the work that you do and based on knowing, I guess, enough about you listening to other interviews and podcasts, what are you reading
Current Reads and Feminism Discussion
00:16:12
Speaker
with them?
00:16:12
Speaker
Yeah, so right now I'm reading Hood Feminism. I just started it actually a couple of days ago. It's by Mickey Kendall. And so it's talking about the women that the movement, the feminist movement forgot. And that's been really interesting for me. I
00:16:33
Speaker
recently finished reading a book by Britt Bennett and this book is fiction and I hadn't read a lot of fiction in a while and so reading it was just incredible. It's called The Vanishing Half.
00:16:48
Speaker
I just finished that book as well. It's so good, right? It is. It's like literally one of the first fiction books I've read in years. And it's incredible. Without giving it away, it's definitely one of my favorite books that I've read so far this year. Brittany, can I, I'm going to ask you one more question. And I want to again, thank you so much for, for hanging out with me today.
00:17:13
Speaker
Where can people find you online in regards to your different social media outlets?
Nonprofit Initiatives and Social Media
00:17:21
Speaker
Yeah, so I am on Instagram and Twitter at MissBKB, MSBKB. I'm on Facebook.
00:17:31
Speaker
And they can also follow some of the work that I do through Girls Embracing Mothers, which is a nonprofit that focuses on empowering women and girls directly impacted by incarceration. Girls Embracing Mothers is on Instagram under the same name. And then the Buried Alive Project is an organization that I co-founded that works to provide legal representation for people who are
00:18:00
Speaker
serving draconian sentences under outdated federal drug laws. And they can follow our work from the Buried Alive Project on Instagram under the same name. Amazing. And Brittany, do you have time for writing right now? I guess I'm curious just because I enjoyed the first one. I'm wondering, do you have time for writing or writing in the future for you?
00:18:27
Speaker
Once I finished the book, it took me two years to complete it. I would have said absolutely not. I'm not doing this again. But now, you know, I'm pretty sure I'll write the book. I think, yeah, I'm selfishly, I would love to. I definitely appreciate you reading it for sure. But again, I know that time and the work that you're doing with like,
00:18:53
Speaker
real humans on the ground is so important. And so I appreciate that so much. Bernay, I want to thank you so much for hanging out today. Again, super inspiring.