Today on Ujima: The Deep, Interculture & Trans Women in Sport

That was my final Women’s Outlook show for 2019. This is what we talked about.

First up I re-ran my interview with Rivers Solomon from last year. We talked mainly about The Deep, and it is published in the UK tomrrow. I’m sure there are a lot of listeners who might buy it but who have forgotten about the interview by now. If anyone wants to see my review of the book, you can find it here.

My first studio guest was Lisa Whitehouse from Interculture. She’s currently crowdfunding for money to run three series of courses that are aimed at bringing various cultural groups in Bristol together so that they can get to understand each other better. Lisa and I spent quite a bit of time talking about whiteness and how we, as white people who work a lot with BME communities, can avoid making everything all about us.

Next in the studio was Sammy Walker, a young trans woman who has been a key part of this year’s Rainbow Laces campaign. She’s a very good soccer player, but is currently playing for Bristol Panthers, an inclusive LGBT team with mainly male players, because she doesn’t want to have to deal with all the politics around trans women in sport. The conversation expanded from football to trans women in sport in general.

I had a really bad coughing fit at the start of the interview with Sammy. I’ve just listed back to it and it isn’t too bad, but my apologies again to everyone for that, and thanks to Ben the engineer for his bottle of water.

The conversation with Sammy went on for about 45 minutes and I filled the rest of the time with a bit of Christmas music because it is that time of year. Here’s the full playlist:

  • The Deep – clipping
  • Americans – Janelle Monáe
  • Money – Jackie Shane
  • Unstoppable – Lianne la Havas
  • We Are Family – Sister Sledge
  • My Feet Keep Dancing – Chic
  • Run, Rudolph, Run – Chuck Berry
  • All I Want for Christmas is You – Maria Carey
  • God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen & Sleigh Ride – The Ramsey Lewis Trio

You can listen to the whole show here.