MENTIONS
Jasmine Holmes, Mother to Son – https://www.ivpress.com/mother-to-son
Mildred D. Taylor, Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry – https://www.amazon.com/Roll-Thunder-Hear-My-Cry/dp/0142401129
Langston Hughes – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Langston_Hughes
Langston Hughes Poems – https://poets.org/poems/langston-hughes
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Half of a Yellow Sun – https://www.amazon.com/Half-Yellow-Chimamanda-Ngozi-Adichie/dp/1400095204
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Americanah – https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0307455920/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i0
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, We Should All Be Feminists – https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/110191176X/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i1
James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time – https://www.amazon.com/Fire-Next-Time-James-Baldwin/dp/067974472X/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2A51DDHD2GUPS&keywords=the+fire+next+time&qid=1584024204&sprefix=the+fire+ne%2Caps%2C161&sr=8-1
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TRANSCRIPT
Currey (Introduction) – What is going on? Everybody, welcome to a theology of hustle. I’m your host Currey Blandford and today I’m talking to Jasmine Holmes. So this book that Jasmine has written, it’s called Mother to Son. It comes out a week from today and it’s one that I’ve had on my list of like must reads since I saw it come out and you know, book list. It just looks like an amazing book. It’s letters, um, from uh, Jasmine written to her son, but in it she gets into such amazing, uh, territory in this book. It’s, it’s incredible to the places she travels in this book and the things she gets to talk about to her son. It really is a beautiful book. And in this episode we talk about her journey to becoming a mother. She is very passionate about motherhood and pregnancy and, and the female body and, and that sort of thing. And so we talk about that. I actually probably unveil my strangest job really ever in this episode. So look out for that here. We also talk about racism because Jasmine is really open about, you know, her tiny or beautiful baby son now is going to grow up and be a very large black man someday and how that affects her as a mother and how she thinks through it and even, you know, as he’s a toddler, how she navigates some of that stuff. So we have this really impactful discussion about racism and the racism that she has experienced. And I mean we just, we travel all over the place in this episode and there is such good stuff. I can’t wait for you to hear from Jasmine. She is, um, so well read and like talks about a lot of these authors that we should be reading. I have extensive notes in the, in the podcast episode and just her love of literature I think is sort of infectious in this episode. And so, uh, we talk about all those things and you’re going to love hearing from her. So I just want to encourage you before we get to this episode to make sure you’re following me on Instagram and Facebook at Theology of Hustle and on Twitter at Currey Blandford so you can stay up to date with what we got going on the podcast and yeah, I hope everybody’s staying safe out there and, uh, I can’t wait for you to hear from Jasmine,
Currey – Jasmine, I can’t say thanks enough for coming on the podcast and chatting with me. I’m excited.
Jasmine Holmes – Thank you for having me.
Currey Blandford – For sure. Uh, let’s jump off and just have you sort of introduce yourself to everyone.
Jasmine Holmes – Okay. Okay, cool. Um, my name is Jasmine Holmes and I live in Jackson, Mississippi with my husband Phillip and my two boys. Walter Winn is three and a half and Leysin just turned one. Um, I’m a writer, I’m an eighth grade teacher and I’m a pastor’s kid. I love it. That’s good. That’s nice work. That’s a very concise and all the high points that you, you, you nailed it. You nailed it. Um, okay. Let’s, uh, let’s walk through a little bit of your life then from sort of being a pastor’s kid. Cause I know you sort of grew up in, uh, Texas and, uh, have sort of gone all over the place.
Currey – So do you mind just walking through your story just a little bit? Speaker 2 03:24 Yeah, sure.
Jasmine Holmes – Um, I grew up in Houston, Texas and my dad was always a pastor. My entire childhood. We did a short stint in Oxford in the UK while he was, um, studying for his graduate degree, came back to Texas and um, lived there until I met my husband, Philip. We got married in Texas. We actually met at the conference. Um, but so he’s from Mississippi and was living in Mississippi when we met, we ended up living in Texas for the first eight, nine months. We moved to Minneapolis. My husband got a job there and then we moved back home to Mississippi. Okay. Yeah, many. And uh, I mean Minnesota is ruthless cold wise. I mean you’re, cause you’re from like Houston area, right? Yes. Yeah, it actually, so I was pregnant with my son, um, most of the time that we live in Minnesota. So I was hot like the entire winter and I was teaching upper school writings at 115 writing students from seventh grade up to seniors. And I made them shiver in the cold cause I would open my windows in the middle of Minnesota winter, but I was like, Hey, I’m just, I’m hot. Have one, I’ll shut up. Just put your jacket on.
Currey – I love it. I love it. That’s good. That’s good stuff. Um, so, uh, so vocationally then you’ve, you’re a teacher, like how did all, all that sort of yeah, go down.
Jasmine Holmes – Yes. So growing up I wanted to be a literature professor when I grew up. That’s like if you had asked me, um, dorky, 11 year old Jasmine was, she wanted to be, I would have been like, I’m going to teach English at university and I don’t have enough degrees to do that. But I do teach English and history to eighth graders and ended up being able to be a writer too, which is another, it’s cool. It’s the things that I wanted to do when I was a kid. I’m getting to do now. So that’s awesome.
Currey – I feel like history is even played in your personal life, right. A life. I mean from what you say in the book, your life sort of revolves around history and like history is sort of yeah. Changed the way you think.
Jasmine Holmes – And in the last, yeah. Yeah. That’s so true. It’s so funny. I, I’m eight, I was an English major in college. My dad told me that I should be a history major cause I’ve always loved history and I didn’t want him to tell me what to do. So I did English. Oh it’s so interesting because the more that I learned about history and the way that it impacts our ideas and our thought processes and just the structure of our society, the more I really appreciate it. I love history and I love, um, I love teaching and I love writing about it too.
Currey – Yeah. That’s awesome. So what is it about literature then? Cause yes. Well, I think we’ll get into history too as we move along. But what is it about literature, like what are the, the works that sort of like maybe sparked your, like literature, you know, does your desire to teach and like learn literature.
Jasmine Holmes – So Mildred detailer, um, roll of thunder, hear my cry, which is the typical black girl answer, but that’s because it is just universally true. Um, and Langston Hughes poetry. Yeah. Yeah. I appreciate you.
Currey – That’s, I, I appreciate it. You’re talking about Langston Hughes a lot, cause obviously you have a Langston, right?
Jasmine Holmes – I mean I do, yes. Very formative.
Currey – So what is it about Langston Hughes that sort of like captures your imagination? Jasmine Holmes – Oh my goodness. I could go on and on and I kind of do in the book a little bit. One poem by Langston Hughes. Like what should I read? And I gave her like 10. Yeah. But I just remember, so when I was growing up, we had a big, like a Langston Hughes anthology in our library and it sat there forever like books do. We just had a house full of books in one day. I just kind of like stumbled upon it and I read that and I read the entire thing in a matter of days because there’s something about the rhythm of Langston Hughes poetry that just like seeps deep, deep, deep into your skin, into your soul. Like he captures so many huge and vast emotions in such a short amount of space in such a short amount of words. Um, I love goodness hard target, narrow down a favorite one. You can give me a few. I mean if like, yeah, yeah. So mother, mother to son obviously. Um, and that’s why my book is called mother design and then the Negro speaks of rivers. I love that one. And that goes back to history cause it’s talking all about, I mean really it’s black history. Put in a beautiful lyrical poem. Um, I like Harlem. I love the way he talks about black women and their beauty in that poem. Um, I choose thing America, again, the history element and I love that Langston is always a, I won’t say it’s always a silent protest, right? Cause it’s not always silent. But even when he’s talking about joy, it’s this protesting joy in the face of suffering. Like he is undaunted even though he stares suffering in the face. And I love that about him.
Currey – Hmm. That’s beautiful. I love that. Uh, I’m, Oh, okay. So I’ve just been reading a book about Arthur Briggs who was a, uh, jazz trumpeter, um, back at the, you know, the 20s and, and he actually like used to hang out with Langston Hughes and
Jasmine Holmes – yeah. Yeah. Speaker 1 08:44 It’s crazy how all those like big gears sort of like meshed together and uh, you know, ours or Briggs was like not going back to America basically because of the a rampant racism that found out there. It’s mind boggling. It’s a crazy time in history for sure. Yeah. Yeah. All those great minds altogether. Yeah. Right. And just like — — , yeah, they’re not like smoking pipes and sitting around and like having, right. We’re just chilling, just hanging out. Cause you think like, maybe it was like a conference that brought them all together, like an event, but like, no, they’re just like every day like, Oh, Zora Neale Hurston guys over there. Just just casual.
Currey – Yeah. Yeah. That’s amazing. That’s pretty cool. Okay, so let’s talk Mother to Son then. Oh, where did the why, why?
Jasmine Holmes – Um, so I have, like I said, I’ve been a writer for a long time. I wrote my first, um, I’m putting novel in air quotes when I was like nine years old. Um, I wonder if my mom still has it. It was like handwritten of course. And so depressing. Like literally everybody in the story died, like at the end of the novel and the narrator, and then I lay down in the snow and I die. Like, so from nine years old, I was like, I’m going to be, I’m going to be a novelist, I’m going to write fiction. It’s going to be amazing. The people that inspired me have always been fiction authors and SAS. Um, and so when I of course became an adult and writing fiction feels a little bit more vulnerable in your 20s, and it does as a child. So I usually write a lot of nonfiction publicly, but I still read a lot of fiction and was inspired and informed by a lot of fiction. So there was a season in my life where I was reading James Baldwin and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie like nonstop to Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. I read Americana, I read half of the yellow sun, I read, uh, we should all be feminist. Um, but the one that really stuck out to me was letters to , which is her letters to her god-daughter and it’s a feminist manifesto but it’s written in the form of letters to her goddaughter cause I read that. And then, um, super randomly I was teaching my class about the rights movement and I had read James Baldwin as a teenager. I read go tell it on the mountain, but I had never read the fire next time. So I read letters that you do relay and the fire next time back to back in the fire next time it is of course Bob, his letters to his nephew. So the idea of letters kind of had stuck in my brain. And um, when IVP approached me to see if I had any ideas for writing center writing a lot and talking a lot to editors, I thought I was going to write a book about womanhood. Mmm. But then when I got the email, I was like, I don’t know if I, if I’m ready to write a book about womanhood, I don’t know if I’m ready to get into that mass. Talking to my mentor, Karen Ellis, who is a phenomenal author and theologian in her own right, and she said, you should use her when inspiration. And that’s my son’s name. When Anna, she was like, what if you wrote letters to your son? It could be about anything. And when she said that, everything just kind of crystallized together. And literally in one day I rattled off an email and was like, this is what I want to do. I think that it would be really an amazing thing for me to write for myself, for my sons. And hopefully it would be something that’d be helpful to other people too. So it all came together really fast, but it had been building for years. Hmm.
Currey – Yeah. That’s awesome. I loved it. I, I didn’t, I’ll be honest, I didn’t know what I was sort of getting myself into when I got the book right. And like I didn’t, I didn’t realize the deep waters into which I was waiting. It was uh, it was surprising. I’ll, I’ll, I’ll say because you never think about this sort of wisdom that appearance shares with us child, you know. Um, yeah. and we live in such a we live in a culture sort of disconnected even from like ancient times, but also like, like the more modern times where especially uh, a part of specifically the African-American experience is passing down like information, you know, parents, a child and, and of course that’s true for lots of cultures, but, Oh yeah. You never realize how much like there is given from a, from a specifically for you, from a mother, like to assign. Yeah. It’s pretty cool.
Jasmine Holmes – Yeah, it’s, it’s been interesting cause I have a lot of people, they, you know, they’ll ask me like, can I read it if I’m not a mother or can I read it if I don’t have a son or can I read it if I’m not black? I read it if I’m not a woman. And I always tell people that, um, motherhood is the vehicle that I’m using to talk about these truths, but it’s not the destination. Yeah. Mmm. And I had that multiple for me so, well, and if ICI involvements work, because I don’t have a nephew, but James Baldwin’s the fire next time blew me away. And it was because him talking to his nephew his message, such a different, such a warmer more familiar she’ll, and it was disarming. And when I read it to my students who I don’t have any, I didn’t have any black students in my class at the time. Um, and we were learning about civil rights in Mississippi with their black teacher. Totally. It was just an interesting experience. It’s fun. Oh. But they read it and it impacted them. And I don’t think that it would’ve been impactful in the exact same way if it hadn’t been Baldwins letters. Somebody who he loved. Yeah, yeah, Speaker 1 14:36 yeah. Very much so.
Currey – And you and you experience that, I think reading your book as well. It is, you know, there is a lot and there’s a, there’s a beauty to it, like in the way that you express these, these emotions to your son and um, obviously get into so many huge, like it’s such a, such a small, small amount of time even, you know, and books are really easy read, but there’s, there’s, yeah, it covers, it covers a lot of very important sort of stuff. So yeah.
Jasmine Holmes – Yeah, it was so intimidating. My editor, um, we sat down for our first meeting after I had written the rough draft and she said, okay, these are the changes that I think we should make. This is the track that I think that we’re on. And she was like, just so you know, um, it is, this type of literature requires a very high level of writing talent and a very captivating level of crows. So bring your a game. Make nine year old Desmond proud. Well, I feel like as long as everybody doesn’t die, that’s at least like a next step for sure. I mean, it does it, you know, cause it kind of constantly needs to be bright bringing you back into it. Yeah, I can see that being very intimidating. Right. So yeah, there’s so many things I want to talk about with you. The first thing is the way you open the book and you introduce a concept that I think many people don’t even think about, which is, yeah, John 1 and Mary being the mother of Jesus. I mean there’s thousands of pages of theological literature written in that one little bit, so, Oh my goodness. Yes. Yeah. Can you talk just a little bit about just that? Yeah, just that, yeah. I am S U for Protestant. Oh, broadest. And so didn’t ever put a lot of thought into Mary being the mother of Jesus growing up because I was so used to kind of like reacting against Mary being the mother of God. Right. And so it’s just like, Hey, this is what the reformation is about. Let’s be careful. But when I was pregnant with my son, I read John again and I read John one and it just hit me like in the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was God. And it goes into all of this detail about how he was made in flesh having experienced miscarriage and loss. Um, in between the burst of my healthy sons realizing how small and vulnerable human life is at its conception. And the fact that God of the entire universe who breathed everything into existence became this tiny, vulnerable human being and went through. That’s so many people have gone through and struggled through and suffered through in order to be born. Like he elevates well womanhood and pregnancy and motherhood just by submitting himself to that process. And it blew me, Oh wait, I blew my Protestant itself away for sure.
Currey – Yeah. Cause we don’t think about that. We don’t talk about that as, as Protestants and Catholics have that sort of thing. And, and Jesus and Mary had a similar relationship to you and your son and me and my mother. And like what was his race?
Jasmine Holmes – Yeah. Yeah. Like when he gets lost, he’s like looking all over the place for him and she finds him and he just kinda like tells her that he’s about the father’s business and likes that stuff. That really strong gallery with her. Yeah. So as a mother you literally had an angel come and tell you that this precious little child who raising the best way you can is going to be the savior of the entire universe. So like, no pressure. Right. Speaker 2 18:56 It’s fine. It’s good. Yeah. It’s crazy. Yeah. Well cause even, I mean even in early church history, there was a debate between like a, I think I remember the words like a Theo tow cost versus like a Cristo tow cost. Like whether Marian was a Christ bearer or God bearer, you know? And that was like major issues. But like, Oh for sure the, the incarnation and God being born is like, yes, yes. Yeah. I love the format of the letter because it helps me to, I always say that I’m not a theologian. And then my husband’s like, everybody’s a theologian, but I wasn’t ready to delve into back to the depths that it could be delve into. And so it was so helpful for me to just think, you know, I’m just sharing an observation that blew me away the same way that I would share it with my son. And that took so much pressure. Awesome. And gave me so much freedom to invite people to kind of look at the same thing that I was looking at. Just marvel at it. I mean, we have to, we have to wrestle with those questions. It’s important theological questions. It’s so important. But I think we skipped the marbles sometimes.
Currey – Well, and you and you touch on such an important topic that like the gospel is like understandable, right? Like the gospel is very simple. Yup. Jesus being uh, Mary’s son is simple. Like, yeah, there is so much depth to it. You don’t have to go into all the depth in order to understand the simplicity and the beauty. At the same time. Right? Absolutely. Okay. Absolutely. That’s good. I just, yeah, even as I was reading again, the book, it was just, it strikes me, I mean how, yeah. Like you and your son or just like me and my mom just, we’re knit together like emotionally and we’re, we’re very close. Yeah. What Jesus was, you know?
Jasmine Holmes – Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, so I mean, he’s dying on the cross. He’s telling us this hypo, like take care of my mom. Yeah. Right. Which like, I mean, as a mom, Oh my gosh, like hits you in the gut. Yeah. You still, you know, he was the savior of the entire world is the savior of the entire world rather. And he’s still, he’s still alive.
Currey – Yeah. Yeah. It’s pretty beautiful. Um, okay, so since we’re on the topic of sort of motherhood, uh, like something you talk about in the book that’s very near and dear to your heart is sort of like health, like, you know, health in childhood and like the . Yeah. Just a little bit about some of that.
Jasmine Holmes – Yes, I am. I don’t want to understate this, so I’m going to give you an example of myself. Okay. Every time any friends of mine get pregnant, they know that I have a stash of pregnancy tests at my big, like the $500. The 500 test kit is at my house. It’s just, I just have it just in case. You never know. Speaker 1 22:09 I didn’t know that was a big, like they come in bulk, the little strips, they can come over and take the tests and I can’t, I won’t, I will tell him, you know, it’s, it’s our little thing, but I just, I like to, you know, I bought them for myself and I keep them and everybody’s like, Oh, I don’t really like, Hey, I have a button. They can come over and Hey, come over. And it is positive. Then I have an entire section of my library that’s dedicated to, um, books on birth and pregnancy and all kinds of things. Um, I have friends who text me, they’ll be like, I saw this weird thing on my body isn’t normal. And I’m like, you should talk to your doctor. But also this is what it is, or I feel this kind of way. Is that normal? It can actually be this. Or like I’m very invested. I listened to a birth podcast, two episodes come out every week. I’d never miss an episode. Um, I’m very invested in, in birth. I wanted to say all that. Instead of saying like, Oh, I like bird. Yeah. Yeah. So I want, I would love to get a doula someday. Um, I want to wait until my boys a little bit older so that me being gone at night during like disrupt your life. Yeah. But I, um, I love birth and it gets, it started in, actually it started in college. Um, I, so growing up birth, I would always tell my mom, how come every time a group of women gets together, there are only two comments away from talking about childhood. Like, what is that? And my mom was like, it’s just something that we all go through that we talk about. And I’m like, it’s gross. I don’t want to hear about it. I don’t want to think about it if we can’t. And so in college, um, in my, um, during the course of my master’s degree, I did a class called ethics in unborn life. And my professor let us write any paper that we wanted on the topic of ethics and unborn lives. And I wanted to challenge myself. So I chose to do my paper on birth, which everybody around me was like, you hate birth. You think it’s so gross, you are so scared of it. I was like, I’m going to do it. I’m going to challenge myself. You gonna write about the history of midwifery in America and it could be a meme the way that I went from like a birth, whatever drug you up and just do it to like you. Your body is an amazing instrument made by God to bring forth life. And so the more that I learned about it, aye got married, had my son at a birth center, really enjoyed my birth experience and started to do a lot of research on why black women, um, in America, historically aren’t super wild about, um, birth and birth culture and doulas and midwives. And it led me down this rabbit hole of all of this research about medical disparities, um, in the black community. So black women are over 200 times more likely to die in childbirth and their white counterparts in. So much of that has to do with the history of the medical establishment. Um, and the lack of really personalized care and black birth workers and birth workers who are aware of these disparities, they bring those numbers down. Um, and it was really important for me to talk about that in the book because it’s something that’s really important to me as a black mother who gave birth to her second son, second born son in one a viewer States for black women to give birth in America. Um, it was really important to me to talk about, yeah, no, and I find it, I found it very helpful. I mean, it is part of that experience and you know, there is like such a, like that disparity is just mind boggling. Yeah, it’s crazy. And I’ve had people, you know, and I don’t think people are malicious at all that they want to make sense of it, but you know, people will ask me like, Oh, is it just because, um, a lot of black women live in poverty and they don’t have access to healthcare and no, it doesn’t matter. Your socioeconomic status does not affect those numbers. And they’re like, Oh, is it B? Is it, uh, yeah, it’s, it’s cause they’re black. I mean that’s, that’s, that’s the commonality that can be found. Right. And people don’t want to believe that out of what that believe that I don’t want to, you know, especially when I’m getting ready to do, to have a baby of my own. I don’t want to believe that. Oh, okay. Knowing that maybe make some really specific decisions about, um, my health care provider when I was pregnant with my second one.
Currey – Yeah. So do you mind sharing a little bit about that? Like what that meant?
Jasmine Holmes – Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So I actually, when I moved back, I kind of was trying to see who I was going to go to and I was in a coffee shop and I don’t remember if I talked about this in the book, but there were three women sitting at the table of them are black women. One of them was a white woman and they were all talking about bringing breastfeeding into hospitals in Mississippi. And the rates for black moms who breastfeed are like actually rising rapidly. And that’s amazing. It’s rising. Has women like these are having conversations about like how to make it rise. So they’re talking about it and I’m eavesdropping and I am such an introvert. Like this vexing that happened is so counter to everything that I believe in and stand for. But I got up and I went over and I was like, Hey, I’m a black mom. We breastfeed so they’re, you know, a little bit about me. So that’s cool. And they were so sweet. They gave me their cards and one of them was my doctor and she was this amazing black woman who like my birth was super crazy. Long story short, she like ended up doing a baseball side under me and catching up the last minute cause she was like doing C-section down the hall. It was nuts. And so she just like, I couldn’t not have had the birth that I had without her, but it helps so much to be able to trust her as a woman, not just because she’s black, but because she’s aware of these disparities working consistently in our community to write the disparities and because she’s part of the solution. I like I said, having black workers and doctors, um, it brings those numbers down. Yeah. Yeah.
Currey – That’s, yeah. I just want to tell you a quick story about me so that you kind of understand where I’m at. Yeah. After we had our first baby, my wife’s a social worker, she decided to say goodbye to social work for a little. Wow. She’s, so she started managing a cloth diaper store. Right. And those are like some hippy dippy trippy sort of stuff going on there, you know what I mean? So, so she had our second a child or our middle son, and uh, she needed to take time off, but they didn’t have anybody to work. So I actually started picking up shifts at the cloth diaper store for her. Wow. It was, uh, it was pretty wild to be honest with you. Uh, I knew more things about, you know, like things just like breastfeeding in front of me just became very like normal. This is how we feel, especially with a cloth diaper cloth covers in that world, which is how dare you, it’s a baby eating. I know. I know. Anyway, so all that to say like even I think we got so far into that world because our birth experience was so bad and like the medical establishment just wants to push you into a C-section, you know, like everything is just like turn and burn, you know? And it’s like, yeah, yeah.
Jasmine Holmes – Born like it’s sad. It’s really sad to be honest with you. And what’s sad is that we’ve come such a long way from where we were, which is like my grandmother just don’t remember her birth. She birth, which phrase? Yes. So I know. How did you transition from all that to say good job with all the birth stuff? I don’t know. I think it’s just such an important thing, you know? I think, yeah, I think young people personally, I think young people aren’t educated enough when they get into this sort of thing. Like Mmm. I even, yeah, I wish we could educate people better about . Yeah, for sure. I mean, it matters. It matters because it’s your body and your body’s going through something huge and it’s actually really empowering. Understand. And that’s not to say like, Oh, I don’t think you should get an epidural or Oh, I don’t think you should. No way you do what you need to do. This is a huge life changing circumstance. You would do what you are comfortable with, but know your options and it’s powerful to know it totally is and totally is. And to be educated, you know, by more than just like what the status quo is, I guess. Totally.
Currey – So I appreciate you talking about that. That’s, that’s one of the things that you can talk about in a format like this that you can’t really talk about in other places, you know, brings together a lot of things I think. Mmm. Yeah.
Jasmine Holmes – Yeah. I was just really able to talk about all the things that mattered to me because I was talking as though I’d be talking to my son.
Currey – Yeah. Yeah. Um, good stuff. Good stuff. Yeah, I really enjoyed that part of it. Um, also just the, the way, the gentle way in which you talked to him. It just like reminded me of like, it just made me think about my kids a lot and it was just like, you know, there’s like something beautiful about that, the relationship between a parent and a child and all of that, you know? So for sure, for sure. Um, one thing you bring up a lot in the book though. I mean, your son right now is a, is a beautiful, a little, a black boy, a young black boy, but someday he’s going to be a probably very tall black man.
Jasmine Holmes – Yeah. Me and my hot, my husband is six, six and I’m about five, eight. So yeah. So there’s going to be some height there. Yeah. It’s amazing how quickly little beautiful black boys turn into menacing. Right. So let’s talk, let’s, let’s talk about . Yeah, yeah. Um, I’ll give you an example the other day. So I teach at a very predominantly white school in the suburbs in Mississippi. Um, that is by design. I do that on purpose. Uh, I think that those kids are going to have so few black authority figures in their life. And because I was instance suburbia, um, there’s a language that, that we kind of have in common sometimes. My husband, um, he’s from rural Mississippi and he called me Hilary banks and I just let him do it. Speaker 2 32:40 What can you do? What can you do? I know, like I used to be like, was like, whatever, I don’t care. Just do a hair flip and walk away or something. I know. I’m like, it’s fine. It’s fine. I can’t help her. I’m from. Um, so because of that there, even though like as a black woman, I, there’s a lot of differences. There’s a lot of like, there’s a lot of similarities. I was homeschooled, I was just raised in that little subculture and, sure. Um, so me and my students, we get along great. Um, even when we talk about hard things and it’s, it’s wonderful. So my son actually, there’s a daycare on campus and so they come with me, um, and they are in two separate ruins. My toddlers in the toddler room being in the baby room. And so the other day I think that my toddler, um, from, from the daycare, which is like literally down the hall from where I teach and his little teacher was like, um, Hey, just so you know, when he hit one of us today, when he got upset and I was mortified as you meet, mother would be mortified. And I went to the office and I asked my supervisor, everybody that I work with is a mom. And I asked my supervisor, I was like, Hey, what would you do if your kid hit a teacher? She’s like, well, I would talk to him and you know, it’s a developmental thing yet again, yada yada, and she’s just looking and she’s like, what’s the matter? And I said, I really don’t want to put this pressure on my son, but I also, he can’t be a little black boy who hits white women. That scares me. And she was like, I don’t think anybody’s thinking of it like that. I don’t think that it, and I was like, let’s say we’ll like, I just, it just was such a horrifying moment for me because while the teacher’s side of my brain is like, it is developmental, he’s not the first kid to hit it, hit a teacher in daycare, he will not be. The last kid on the other side of me was like, but he’s the only black kid and he was the biggest kid in his class and he’s, he’s this, he’s that. And I don’t want my son to be seen as this is volatile emotional black boy. Same thing happened a couple of years ago in daycare. He was the first kid to start biting. And I was like, great, you’ll look like a kid in class and all the white kids, no big deal. Two weeks later, all the kids were writing because it’s developmental. That’s what kids do. But I of course am like the extra. And so I told him, my supervisor, I was like, it’s so hard because when I was raised, it was just point blank told me, look, you can’t do the things that they do, those other kids because you’re not seeing the same way as they are. So you have to be extra. You have to be like a step above how they’re behaving. Um, and I understood why my parents did that and I respect that so much. That’s not what I want for my son. I want him to be able to be a kid and it’s so hard to balance those two things and I want him to be safe. I don’t want him to be thought well of. Um, but I also want him to be able to be a child and make a mistake and not react even more than a white parent would react because I’m afraid for his, but I am so it’s such a hard balancing act. Um, and I don’t do it well all the time. And part of the reason I’m so grateful for the format of this book is because it’s not a parenting book. It’s not a how to, uh, I would be very ridiculous to write a few words when it’s more of just my hopes as I start out this journey and things that I hope that I can keep on the forefront of my mind as I navigate all of those different emotions and circumstances.
Currey – Yeah. Well I mean you mentioned in the book several times, but you live not too far from where Emmett till was killed, right?
Jasmine Holmes – Yeah, yeah. Two hours away. And that’s not that. But like pretend like that’s ancient history. It’s not so close to, yeah, it is. I um, I taught this is right. Eighth or ninth year teaching. It’s always hard to count. Cause I took a year off after my little boy was born and I have taught it more than once after my son was born. I cried so hard. Hmm. And it’s one of those things where you don’t have to experience in order to be compassionate. That’s one of the whole tenants in the book because I want all kinds of people to pick it up and be compassionate. But there is something about looking into that. Beautiful. I mean he’s beautiful. You see his pictures and he was this gorgeous, shiny I little boy. And I didn’t realize how young he was or how fragile he was or how beautiful he was until I had my own son. And it hit differently when I had my own son and I taught it again.
Currey – Yeah. Do you mind just refreshing, cause I’m sure there’s people like off the top of their head, like maybe don’t know this history that well. Can you just talk about, I’d love to hear.
Jasmine Holmes – So Greenwood Mississippi is the cotton Capitol of the world. One of my very good friend lives there. I would tell him I’d drive there, I see the sign and I’m like, it’s in the Delta and it still has the fine cotton Capitol of the world. And I’m like, woo. Every year they have the cotton ball were all these wealthy white people get together and have a ball about. Um, so yeah, so next, like right next door to Greenwood is a town called money Mississippi. And um, in the 1950s, a young boy named Emmett till who’s 14 years old, um, was visiting from Chicago visiting his family in Mississippi, which happens all the time. Just this summer we had my, um, my husband Philip, his young cousin from Indianapolis came and stayed with us for the summer and all of our white friends were like, dude, that’s rough. Like you have a teenager staying with you for the summer. Like wow, that’s charity. And it’s like, notice this is what black people do. It’s like, yeah, it’s like he’s coming like his dad is not at home. My husband wanted to like mentor him over. Like it’s totally normal. And in this normal exchange of things that happens in the black community a lot, and particularly during this period, because black families would migrate up North, their parents would not want the children to forget life and culture down South. And so they’d send their kids down South for the summer. So Emmett was down for the summer and he was just talking like 14 year old boys talk and doing this little 14 year old thing in a grocery store. And it’s hard to say what happened because later on, um, the white woman admitted that she was not honest about what happened. Mmm. But what she said happened is that he whistled at her and said, Hey baby, which even if that did happen, so what? But her husband and two of his friends came, got him in the middle of the night, beat him, tied him up and threw him in the river in money, Mississippi. Um, they just erected a, like a marker for the place where it happened. And, um, it’s Bulletproof because people do not want it there and have already tried to deface it. Right. But I mean, it really was the touchstone of be a touchstone in the civil rights movement. Uh, his mother an open casket funeral for him so that people could see what was done to him.
Currey – Hmm. Yeah. And the woman later recanted everything she said, and she said it didn’t happen.
Jasmine Holmes – Yeah. She said it didn’t happen. I think she’s dead now. I think she died, but right before she died, she said, you know what, it didn’t really happen like that the way that I said that it did. Um, which is horrible in and of itself. Yeah. And also, even if it had happened, yeah. Was not worth the loss of this young boy’s life. Yeah. It’s a life. Yeah. This is, this is life. Yeah. It’s alive if he’s 14. And even if he did do something stupid, which history tells us that maybe he didn’t even write, it’s, it’s not worth what happened to him. Yeah. Yeah. When we get into a big sanctity of life issue there, I mean, absolutely.
Currey – I mean, uh, African-Americans at that time and in some people’s minds today are not considered, uh, equal in, in life. Their lives are not as valuable as as whites and um,
Jasmine Holmes – yeah, because it’s always like he brought it on himself, whether it’s the prison industrial complex or the war on drugs, or we, they brought it on themselves. So it’s a very like pull yourself up by your bootstraps mentality, which is unfortunate. Speaker 2 41:06 But I always think about like if the story were different and that had happened to a little white boy over whistling and we hang out a woman. Right. And that syncs differently for a lot of people. And then my question is why does it seem differently for you now? Yeah, I mean, it’s contrary to everything that the Bible is about right from the very beginning. It is people are created in God’s image. There’s just no, there’s no two ways about it, right? Yes, yes. And justice should always be, it should be restorative as much as humanly possible. And that’s not the world that we’re living in, right? Very much so.
Currey – I keep running into people my parents’ age and my parents included who, um, who went to school when it was segregated. Like they were literally in high school. In segregated schools. Yeah. And then we want to talk about how like all this stuff is ancient history. I’m like, I’m not sure. Like where you’re getting all of that crazy.
Jasmine Holmes – My mom grew up in Dallas and she told a story when I was a kid of a friend of her older brothers who they, he had a motorcycle, he felt too fancy in it. And so a group of white kids poured gasoline on him and lit them on fire on his motorcycle when she told us a story. Like it just seemed like such a long time ago. But that was in the 70s yeah. That’s not that long ago. No, not at all. You always like, you think of like, Oh, and then everything was fine. No, we’re still roading over change. Just like slavery did in the 1860s and then everything was not fine. There’s a, I dunno, a learning curve and I think that we’re still, we’re still learning. Yeah. So how do we go about having healthy conversations? Cause you mentioned in the book like that is not your natural predisposition, right? To like you said, silent for a long time and didn’t have these conversations. Let’s to have the conversation then. Like why? Yeah, now and how I guess, yeah. Oh I am one of the most non-confrontational people ever, which my husband thinks it’s hilarious cause not, not, not confrontational with him, but it’s because I feel super safe with him and lesbian. So I feel like Mmm. But growing up as a pastor’s kid and living in a glass house and having a lot of trust issues, people who should, it felt safe to me, didn’t feel safe. And so it was always a matter of walking on eggshells that I wouldn’t have been somebody. And also just what looks like badly on my dad. I cannot tell you the passengers get how many times things that I did were used against my dad. Silly things. Yeah. And so I just was very like, I don’t want to make the one rock the boat, want to keep my dad safe, want to keep our family safe. And so I guess I know that that was a huge part of it growing up. And it wasn’t until I got married to my husband and we moved to Mississippi and something happens and a friend of mine was like, Oh we know Jasmine and Phillip, they just have crazy black monkey sex. And a friend of mine, like a really close friend of, and I didn’t say anything. And it was like that was like the one, the straw that broke the camel’s back where I was like, Hey, let’s talk about the hypersexualization of black bodies for a second. Cause that’s, it’s a real thing. Yes. It was one of my first times I ever saying something and I think because it went so well, my friend was like super receptive and very like, Hmm, you know, homeschoolers and homeschoolers trying to be edgy. You know, we’re not practiced in it. No, maybe what is you doing? So we had like a whole, like a whole conversation and it went really well. And I think that was like a pivotal point where I was like, you know what, I can speak up for myself and the people who actually are safe in love with the love of Christ. Mmm. And are mature enough to walk in that I can continue to have relationship and continue to have hard conversations. And so it kind of started a journey for me of learning how to have difficult conversations and learning how to stick up for myself and realizing that I was going to have to stick up for my son. Mmm. Because people saying something to me is one thing. People looking at my son a certain way is another. And so the mama bear was born and as well as well as she should be. Right? I mean, that’s, yeah, yeah, yeah. And as he was born, just watching him grow up, like something just broke inside of me and I was like, you know, the damn really? And I was like, you know, I just can’t, I can’t, we can’t do this and I don’t have to do this. This is not what I’m called to as a Christian. Like I am called to have difficult conversations with people that offend me. I’m not called to like right. I on people that cancel people every five minutes. But that’s not what having a different conversation.
Currey – Yeah. Yeah. I mean cause we live in cancelled culture. Right. And you mentioned Twitter in your book and like literally I can’t get my head wrapped around Twitter because it feels like that all the time. I try to try to, I tried to,
Jasmine Holmes – I’ve had so many people, my friends who are writers and Jasmine, you gotta tweet more, you gotta teach more. And I’m like, Oh my gosh, am I going to get in trouble over this? I don’t know. I know. I’m like, what are all the ways that this can blow up in my face and why am I an expert on everything? I think just because I have a Twitter account, I don’t know what be you’re on in every aspect of the world. Again and trying to be nuanced on a platform that specifically does not allow for nuance. You know, it’s supposed to be reactionary. Like everything’s firing at you all the time and it’s just, I, it’s so funny. I, my friend is really into the Enneagram, like super into the Enneagram and she was like your book. It was like bye. Trying her best to speak very slowly and very softly. So it’s not to be misunderstood. Yeah, that’s interesting. And that’s kind of like the fear of my tweeting is like I want to speak very slowly. Yeah. Softly. So is that to be misunderstood and people are still going to understand you. You can’t control that. But as much as I can control it, I really do try. Right. because I mean we live, we, we follow a relational God at the same time who calls us to relationship with him but like also relationships with others. Oh yeah. I think relationships can’t be formed in 140 characters necessarily. Right. Like a relationship needs back and forth and it needs, you know, it needs a willing to step into sort of the heart, the hard things, you know? Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And I think that’s what hard to do on Twitter. Well, it’s, I mean, any social media really, right? Yeah.
Currey – I mean, I just like Instagram. I post beautiful pictures, amazing kids and like just talk about how awesome they are. Right. It’s like Instagram, you know, I can get down with that. It’s fine.
Jasmine Holmes – I love that. Post pictures of my kids, pictures of my plants. It’s more than that. Right. If you want to have a conversation with me, then call me or you know. Well, yeah, no, it it’s difficult and I think it’s difficult to, yeah, and something you highlight in this book is like a mother, a black mother talking to her son about like living in this culture that is so against him already. Like from the outset. Yeah. Yeah. It’s good. Ah, obviously I enjoyed the book. Uh, it’s B, it’s really, it really is a beautiful, beautifully written book. I much, I mean that I do. Yeah. I think it’s, and it’s inspiring in a lot of ways.
Currey – I, and I know, I know writing is a, uh, it’s a discovery process, right? Like what did you discover sort of as you, you know, wrote this.
Jasmine Holmes – Okay. Can I tell you the hardest chapter to write? Yeah, sure. Was the one on politics. I am such an emotional writer when something is not working, I delete it. I don’t like work with it and like mold it. I’m just like, I deleted that chapter. All of the words in the chapter, no less than three times. I would get to the end of it and I’d be like, okay, that’s all right. Yeah. Right. Pieces are no good. Yeah. We can’t piece it together. It has to be like a letter, which is like written from beginning work. Yeah. Mmm. The reason I think why that chapter was so hard is because there were so many things wanted to say and so many things that I wanted to get into that were not the main, the point that I was trying to get across. And so I think what the book did was it distilled the things that I am most passionate about and it just stilled the truth that I am most passionate about communicating what I’m most proud of. Is that so much of what it is still does gospel praise God. Yeah. Praise God. Well, there’s other pieces that it is still to like my love of lengths and zoos and my love of birth and my love of my boys and my love of my husband. So it’s, it’s a really intimate, which again is hilarious because I’m an introvert, so I have all these people who live in Jackson, Dal, they’re like, come over to my house and they’re like, can I read your book? I’m like, don’t talk to me.
Currey – I read this book, this over this past week and it’s like I spent all of this time with you. You know what I mean? Like it’s a very intimate, you know, there’s a, there’s a knowledge of you that you put out in this vulnerable yeah.
Jasmine Holmes – Which is, it’s such a, what’s interesting about it is that it’s all just stuff that I wish that people knew about everybody so that we could like love each other better. Do you know what I mean? Like all of this stuff that makes up all of my — — background and all of this stuff that makes up all of my baggage, you call it this stuff that makes up all the good things about me and all going up so that it thinks about me is put into perspective in the book. And that is the perspective that I wish that we could all have on each other. Like just the knowledge and understanding of each other. Cushions the blow of hard conversation. Yeah. Right. Very much so. And that’s what the pot, I mean, that’s what this podcast is. It’s story, right? And like, yeah, yeah. There’s value to all of our stories and we all come at things from our perspective.
Currey – Absolutely. That’s all we have. Absolutely. Oh, that brings up one important point. Did I let you finish the previous thought? I don’t know. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. I just get know. Uh, I got so excited cause I wanted to, it’s something you brought out in the book that I’ve never heard anyone ever talk about, uh, is ignorance. Mmm Hmm. Cause you handle it like a really nuanced way because no ignorance is said with such vitriol in our culture and it’s not like, it’s not anything. I mean that’s not what it’s about. So do you mind just talking a little bit about that?
Jasmine Holmes – Yes. I um, wow. I’ve had so many conversations with people where it’s like, you know, the hard thing about talking cross culturally with black people is that so many times they treat us like we’re ignorant of their culture. And I’m like, well you are okay. Yeah. I make Noreen have a lot of cultures. Right. It’s okay. Like I up growing up, I had friends who’s grandparents were from Mexico, so their parents had grown up in like entirely Spanish speaking households. And so when I would go over to their house, there would be like Spanish flying everywhere. And I would be like, I don’t know. I dunno. Or they would talk about like they talk about food, they talk about it. All of these things that I would say, I dunno, that’s not a reflection on on me. I’m not Mexican. That’s okay. Yeah, not okay. It’s really walk into their house and make judgements about their culture and the way that they do family life without understanding who they are, how they operate, what’s not okay is for me to go into their house and act like the authority on their culture in their house. But what is okay? It’s for me to just, you can’t know what you don’t know and that’s an opportunity to learn. It doesn’t necessarily have to be epithet to hear that you may be ignorant of someone’s culture and that somebody else might have something to teach you. Right. I have, Oh goodness. Yes. I’ve learned that so many times just as the teacher. Okay. Eighth graders, my students, they are ignorant, but nobody expects to make fade or not to be right. And I think that if we had that same expectation sometimes of adults and conversations would go a lot because it’s okay to be ignorant. It’s not okay to stay in that ignorance, right? Like exactly. It’s like, Oh, okay, well teach me. I didn’t know that with teaching here. You know people, I’ve had friends ask me things, I have, I have my hair has a name, it’s name is wild mic, it is has its own personality. It is on top of my head but I’m not in charge of it just does what he’s gonna do and I just let it do. It’s going to do. And I’ve had friends be like, so like when you say he has his own personality, like what do you mean? Like what products do you use or like how often do you wash it or how often do you last question Oh, sort of fit me. As long as it’s not a stranger off the street, you know, it’s a person who loves me and just wants to understand something about me. They are ignorant of my hair. It’s okay. There’s an aspects of their here that I’m very ignorant of as well. What is it? What is a serum? Why are you blow-drying every day? Right. She gets a lot like just help me. Like I feel like there’s not that give and take of you’re, you’re allowed not to know something about somebody else’s culture. Well you’re not allowed to do it. Assume that you do know and act like you’re an authority on it.
Currey – Right. Cause there’s a humility to admitting ignorance. Right? Yeah. Yeah. And one thing we do not enough of in our, in our world is just like straight up humility. Right.
Jasmine Holmes – And so, yeah. Yeah. Just not knowing. There’s so many times like my students have asked me, I don’t remember what they asked me about. They asked me questions al — — l the time. Cause I think that I know everything. Speaker 2 56:13 I teach my people history. Uh, medieval history. I teach legal history. I teach at a classical school. So this year has been medieval history. Last year was ancient history and with evil history. Mmm. So they’ll ask me something about Charlotte means sun hello there, or his grandson lost. They’re like, what’s up with him? Why did he have a different mother and me? And I’m just like, I don’t know. I’ll tomorrow, I’ll tell you tomorrow. Let me go home and I will, I go home and I’ll do some research. I’ll come back and I’ll be like, here’s a, here’s a deadline. And so they see like even though I’m an adult and even though I’m their teacher, Oh no. Everything there is no about French blood lines but I can find it out. Yeah. Right.
Currey – Yeah. That’s good. I appreciate you jumping into that. Okay. Uh huh. This interview. Ooh by, um, so many other questions I could ask you, but I think we probably should jump into the final two questions if that’s okay with you. Of course. Yes. So my first question is what is the strangest job that you have ever had
Jasmine Holmes – I had a lot of jobs. Let’s see. Oh, I tell you a strange job story. Okay. I love it. I worked for my dad, Oh, he writes books and during the age before MP3s were all that in the bag of ham sandwiches. He sold CDs. So I would like package them up and South of them. And I would work customer service, which is hilarious because as previously discussed, very introverted pick up the phone one time and it’s got another and went, Oh my gosh. And I was like, yeah. And he goes, Oh my gosh, I think about you all the time. And I was like, uh, yay. That year he came to our churches conference and was like to murder me from the phone. I still think about you. You all the time tell me you got is ever like weirdest interaction ever. So not the job itself, but like that definitely did happen. That’s, that’s real talk right there. That my dad wrote books about biblical manhood and womanhood and um, there were, there were a lot of pastors who would write him be like, Hey, I know that you care about, but man, I hear you. You have a daughter and would be like, I do. No. Yes, yes. In real life. It’s fun stories. It’s fun time. Wow. Okay.
Currey – Well there you go. The pastor’s kid, you never really know. You never know what you’re going to arrange. Marriage, who knows? Let’s see. Yeah. Okay, well good. Oh, that’s a good one. Uh, so, so then my final question is what is one piece of advice you would give to somebody looking to bring God’s kingdom more into their work?
Jasmine Holmes – Mm, okay. That’s a good realizing that their work is not the end. Their work is a means to an end, which is to bring glory to God. And I say this as a woman who, you know, I, I’m, I’m a writer part time and I am a teacher actually part time, but I spend a lot of time at home and I spend a lot of time like you could see behind the camera right now I have like a pot like laundry, just like all the towels and baskets of clothes over there. Not the kitchen before I got on. And all of those little aspects cause it seems so mundane, but the way that I’m bringing God’s kingdom into my work is realizing that a part of his team then is the work that I do is good and it’s for his glory and it’s for the advancement of his name. In my case, it’s for my home and it’s for my children and it’s for my husband and in someone else’s case, whatever they’re doing. Um, to bring good in the world into bring, um, just good to other people. Speaker 1 00:23 Hmm. Speaker 2 00:23 Can be the work of God. Yeah. Hmm.
Currey – That’s good stuff. Jasmine. Thanks for taking time for me. And now you can get back to, you know, that other stuff that you’re, that you’re doing. That’s right. Thanks again.
Jasmine Holmes – Thank you.
Currey (Conclusion) – Well thanks y’all for chicken out the episode. Uh, I’m glad you, I hope you enjoyed hearing from uh, Jasmine and I just think the topics we covered in this were so, um, hope filled and at the same time there was like a lot of depth to it and her book is very much that way. I encourage you to check it out. It’s a really easy read, but one that I think you will have to digest quite a bit at the same time. It has both of those aspects to it. So, uh, yeah. And uh, encourage you to check it out. You can find that, uh, on the IVP website or wherever you buy your books. And, uh, yeah. Um, I would just appreciate you sharing this episode with your friends. Uh, I think that hope is, is good for us all and everybody needs a little bit of laughter and I think you find that in this episode. So you can also scroll down to the bottom of your iTunes app right now. You can rate and review the episode there. That’s always very helpful for getting the word out about a theology of hustle. I hope. Um, your corn teen is, is going well and, uh, yeah, I hope, uh, you’re finding amazing things to do, uh, amazing time with friends and family, uh, during this time. So, uh, until next week, get out there and hustle or maybe rather more appropriately, stay in and hustle, however you need to hustle. Uh, these next weeks, uh, do that. So we’ll see you next time.
[…] of the Week: Currey Blandford interviews Jasmine Holmes about her new book, Mother To […]