In this episode, we explore Pretty by KB Brookins, a powerful, award-winning memoir that confronts identity at the intersections of race, gender, and perception. Drawing from personal experience and Black queer studies, Brookins reflects on what it means to navigate the world as a Black trans masculine person in a society that is quick to define others.

Pretty moves between tenderness and critique, examining both the beauty and the harm embedded within traditional ideas of Black masculinity. Through deeply personal storytelling, Brookins reveals the tension between how we see ourselves and how we are seen, and the emotional labor of resisting imposed identities.

Join us as we discuss themes of self-definition, belonging, and the ongoing process of unlearning. This episode highlights how Pretty is not only a memoir, but also a call for recognition, understanding, and change.

In this episode, we step into the winding, layered world of Poppy State: A Labyrinth of Plants and a Story of Beginnings by Myriam Gurba. Blending memoir, botany, and sharp cultural critique, Gurba invites us to reconsider California not just as a place, but as a living archive shaped by language, power, and ancestry.

Structured like a labyrinth, the book moves through stories of plants, personal history, and colonial legacies, revealing how landscapes carry memory and resistance. We explore how Gurba reclaims narrative authority, using ecology as a lens to examine identity, belonging, and survival.

Join us as we unpack how Poppy State challenges traditional storytelling and redefines what it means to root yourself in place. This isn’t just a story about plants, it’s a story about who gets to name them, who gets to belong, and how we find our way back.

In this powerful episode, Dr. Beronda Montgomery invites us to reimagine the relationship between science, history, and the living world. Drawing from her book When Trees Testify, she reveals how trees are not just part of the landscape, but witnesses to history—holding stories of resilience, survival, and resistance within Black communities.

Through a unique blend of plant biology, personal narrative, and historical reflection, this conversation traces the deep connections between Black botanical knowledge and the lived experiences of enslaved people and their descendants. From pecans to sycamores to oaks, these trees become archives of memory, revealing how plants were used for food, medicine, and liberation.

This episode challenges dominant narratives of science by centering Black ecological knowledge as both rigorous and transformative. It asks us to consider what it means to heal from land-based trauma, and how reconnecting with the natural world can be an act of remembrance and justice.

This is not just about plants—it is about history, survival, and the knowledge systems that have always sustained communities, even when they were erased.

Welcome to the Piña Soul Podcast with Dr. Jessica Hernandez.

Today’s episode features a powerful conversation with Dr. Kyle Mays, an Afro-Indigenous writer and scholar whose work explores U.S. history, urban studies, race relations, and contemporary popular culture.

Dr. Mays joins us to discuss themes from his forthcoming book, When We Are Kin: The History and Future of Afro‑Indigenous Solidarity, a timely and deeply needed examination of shared histories, resistance, and coalition-building across Afro‑Indigenous communities.

The book is set to release on May 26, and it is available for pre‑order now. This conversation invites us to rethink kinship, solidarity, and the futures we build together.

Let’s get into it.