In this replay episode I talk about my personal mermaiding journey, the mermaid lore that inspires my mersona, and what my platform is all about.

Cover Art:

Photo by ⁠Natasha Gumbs Art⁠

My Mermaid Research:

⁠Link to All Publications⁠

Article that most addresses topics in this episode (African Indigenous Religions, Mami Wata): ⁠Crossing Merfolk Narratives of the Sacred⁠. The bibliography also has a lot of sources that you can check out!

Other Sources Referenced and Cited:

⁠Ytasha Womack, Afrofuturism, The World of Black Sci-Fi and Fantasy Culture⁠

⁠Lesley Braun, "Tales from the Congo River: Catching Mami Wata"⁠

Multiple Authors/Unknown, One Thousand and One Nights, or Arabian Nights

Christina Baccchilega & Marie Alohalani Brown, editors, The Penguin Book of Mermaids, "The Legend of Melusina"

Texts Mentioned:

Beyonce, Lemonade

Freeform, Siren

Nalo Hopkinson, The New Moon's Arms

Mermaid Shoutouts:

⁠April Kalen Campbell⁠ (My pole teacher who introduced me to mermaiding)

⁠Mermaid Che Monique⁠

⁠The Caribbean Pearl⁠

⁠Merman Maui⁠

⁠Carrie Wata⁠

⁠Indigo Siren⁠

Other Business Shoutouts:

⁠Conrad Cooper, Swim To Me⁠ (My swim teacher!)

She’s Back!!!

Greetings y’all, I missed you! In this first episode of Season Two I talk about some of what I have been doing these last months and why my season break was so long, share about my recent pubs and events, preview my plans for Season Two, and reflect upon the complexities of online activism against colonial violence.

My Website, Research, and Social Media

www.jalondradavis.com

https://jalondradavis.com/#scholar

Instagram and Threads: @mami_melusine

Instagram: @merwomanistpodcast

My Recent Events and Publications

UCR Spooks Series, Sweetheart with Jalondra A. Davis

Palm Desert Art Museum, “Mixed Feelings”

Jalondra A. Davis, “My Mermay and the Black Mermaid Renaissance” Our Mermaid Craze in ASAP-J

Jalondra A. Davis, Keynote Speech in the Butler Seminar of Religious and Global Affairs: African Diaspora Faith and Expressions: Black and Womanist as Expressed Through Mermaids and Priestesses

Across the Cline Podcast Featuring Jalondra A. Davis and Dani Nembhard, “Mermaid Justice”

Resources for Palestine and Congo

Parkin Lot Pimpin' Episode on Global Solidarity: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=swhAoM1dTv8

Resources on Palestine:

https://decolonizepalestine.com/

https://palestinianfeministcollective.org/?link_id=14&can_id=ceb24f777097b2ab203f1092629b7803&source=email-starting-now-teach-in-for-palestine&email_referrer=email_2098649&email_subject=teach-in-for-palestine-recording-resources

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nj0ZcSL-zGI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aEJP-Sksuwc

Resources on the Democratic Republic of the Congo

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/2/21/a-guide-to-the-decades-long-conflict-in-dr-congo

https://record.goshen.edu/opinion/silenced-black-voices-congo-needs-your-attention

https://friendsofthecongo.org/

Trigger Warning: Brief, non-graphic discussion of themes of grooming, sexual abuse, and intimate partner violence.

Summary:

Mami Melusine discusses Tananarive Due's short story and Joe West's film adaptation "The Lake," about a mysterious woman with a dark past who is drawn to a lake that something also dangerous dwells in and Christine Chen's Erzulie, a film about four friends' encounter with a Black mermaid goddess at a campsite where they find their lives to be in danger.

Notes:

• Though I warn in the beginning of the podcast that my reviews may not be spoiler-free, I did manage to discuss the story and both films without giving away the endings. Feel free to engage without watching the films beforehand.
• At one point I refer to visuals: for those without the video podcast I am referring to the illustrations of Mami Wata as light-skinned and monstrous from the graphic novel, Mami Wata: Beyond Time and Space, linked in citations below.

Texts Cited/Mentioned:

Tananarive Due, "The Lake" also in Tananarive Due, Ghost Summer

Joe West, Tananarive Due, and Stephen Barnes, "The Lake," in Horror Noire

Christine Chen, Erzulie

Omise'eke Natasha Tinsley, Ezili's Mirrors: Imagining Black Queer Genders

Rollin Ravel Essango, African Tales, Myths, and Legends: Mami Wata Beyond Time and Space

Gabrielle Tesfaye, The Water Will Carry us Home

Jalondra A. Davis, "Crossing Merfolk Narratives of the Sacred: Nalo Hopkinson's The New Moon's Arms and Gabrielle Tesfaye's The Water Will Carry Us Home," and other mermaid research

I debated on whether to cite and link the Vlad Interviews that I referred to in my discussion of sexual abuse in "The Lake." I don't like him and don't want to send people to his platform and the stories themselves are also very disturbing and traumatic. If you would like to verify what I was referring to, the comedians I was referring to who I have seen tell stories of childhood sexual abuse are D.L. Hughley and DeRay Davis and the clips can probably be found on Youtube.

Trigger Warnings:

Gun Violence, Violence against women, depression, anxiety, suicidal ideation

Summary:

A reaction to Megan Thee Stallion's new video, Cobra. Discusses the Mami Wata aspects of the imagery as well as my thoughts about Black female performance and the song's themes.

Mentions/Citations:

Megan Thee Stallion, "Cobra"

Trigger warning: some brief mentions of horror scenarios: violent death, body horror, child death, and gore

Summary: In this bonus episode, I review my very busy month of October, talk about some more Black horror films I watched, and describe my trip to DC for another very Black mermaidy art exhibit!

My Mermaid Research:

https://jalondradavis.com/#scholar

Citations and Mentions:

University of California, Santa Cruz, Festival of Monsters

California State University, Los Angeles, Eagle Con

University of California, Riverside and UCR Arts, Spooks: A Black Horror Film Series

Bomani J. Story, Angry Black Girl and Her Monster

J.D. Dillard, Sweetheart

Shannon Scott, “Dark Faeries in Horror Literature and Film” (The presentation about changelings that I was referring to)

Kelly Marcel & Melina Matsoukas, The Changeling

Khadijah Mbowe, "get in loser, we're entering our villain era,"

Ayana V. Jackson, From The Deep: In the Wake of Drexciya @ Smithsonian National Museum of African Art in Washington, D.C.

Afrofuturism Exhibit @ Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture

Mermaid Che Monique 

Tananarive Due, Ghost Summer

Other Episodes Mentioned:

"Talking Black Horror with Nicole Sconiers," Merwomanist Podcast

Summary:

Welcome back to the Merwomanist Podcast! We just finished a grief series so I am keeping it light. This episode I will be talking about the mermaid aspects of Beyonce's incredible Renaissance Tour which I finally saw in LA. (Inglewood, really!)

This starts a bit abruptly because it was a part of another episode that I decided to split into two after filming.

Scholarship Cited:

Both of these sources are chapters in Scaled for Success: The Internationalisation of the Mermaid, edited by Philip Hayward.

Malam Shalaby, “The Middle Eastern Mermaid: Between Myth and Religion”

Nettrice Gaskins, “Mami Wata Remixed: The Mermaid in African American Culture”

My Mermaid Research:

https://jalondradavis.com/ (Scholar Page)

Other Mentions:

Beyoncé, Renaissance World Tour

Sandro Boticelli, “The Birth of Venus”

Harmonia Rosales, “The Birth of Oshun”

Star Trek,The Borg Queen

Recommended:

https://www.brooksmuseum.org/exhibitions/harmonia-rosales-master-narrative

Merwomanist Podcast, Beyonce is a Mermaid

Merwomanist Podcast, Beyonce is a Mermaid Part II