Delivering Unto You<\/a>, a local\u00a0doula and parent-support education program founded by Black doula Janice Goodwin (formerly Denise Washington). That initial iteration was a live event, recorded and later submitted to PBS as proof of concept.\u00a0<\/p>\nArticle continues below this ad<\/p>\n
After birth, the work begins<\/p>\n
![\"Jonathan]()
<\/p>\n
Jonathan \u201cChaka\u201d Mahone and Ghislaine \u201cQi Dada\u201d Jean, the married couple behind Austin hip-hop duo Riders Against the Storm, pose for a portrait at Austin City Limits Music Festival.<\/p>\n
Dave Creaney for American-Statesman<\/p>\n
Jean traces the origins of the project to her own transformation into motherhood. She gave birth in 2022 to her son,\u00a0Embele, after what she describes as an exquisite pregnancy followed by a long, difficult labor. She was prepared \u2014 two doulas, a midwife, a student midwife, a husband and a community trained not only to witness but to protect. Still, the aftermath carried its own weight: exhaustion, shame, the quiet panic of not producing milk quickly enough, the pressure of keeping a new life alive while your own sense of self rearranges molecularly.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s this instant difficulty that can come,\u201d Jean says. \u201cAnd with it, this feeling of failure. Like you did everything right \u2014 and it still didn\u2019t go the way you imagined.\u201d<\/p>\n
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What struck her most was the absence of art that spoke to that reality. Not representation in the broad sense \u2014 faces on screens, bodies included \u2014 but something more elusive. \u201cI didn\u2019t feel respected in how I felt,\u201d she says. \u201cYou can meet a quota and still erase the interior.\u201d<\/p>\n
This, too, belongs<\/p>\n
![\"Keke]()
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Keke Wyatt performs during a taping of Black Divas, a performance and film project created by Austin artist Ghislaine Jean that centers Black womanhood and motherhood, airing on Austin PBS.<\/p>\n
Provided by Ghislaine Jean<\/p>\n
\u201cBlack Divas\u201d became her response to that void. Drawing on the same mechanics she has long used to convene community \u2014 music, ceremony, shared vulnerability \u2014 Jean centered the work on birth, postpartum experience and maternal health disparities affecting Black women in Texas. She collaborated with Black\u00a0doulas and mothers, listening to stories that rarely make it to public stages.<\/p>\n
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One moment in the PBS special lingers: a segment built around lullabies, where mothers were asked what song they first sang to their babies. One woman answered that she never sang at all \u2014 she was too deep in postpartum depression, too focused on survival. Rather than framing that as absence or failure, \u201cBlack Divas\u201d transforms it into choreography, into collective motion, into something held and witnessed.<\/p>\n
\u201cTo put that story on national television,\u201d Jean says, \u201cand to make it beautiful \u2014 not to sanitize it, but to honor it \u2014 that matters. It says you\u2019re not alone. It says this, too, belongs.\u201d<\/p>\n
The musical structure of Black Divas is equally intentional. The project moves through opera, gospel, R&B and classical traditions \u2014 genres often siloed, particularly within Austin\u2019s music ecosystem. Jean describes the choice as both personal and political. Within classical and other traditionally European musical traditions, Black women are even less visible. \u201cThe women that I know in those sectors are phenomenal,\u201d Jean says. \u201cThey\u2019ve committed themselves tremendously. And if they weren\u2019t going to be centralized and boosted and highlighted, then I was going to do that.\u201d<\/p>\n
The aesthetic choices reinforce that conviction. The show looks glamorous \u2014 custom design, lush staging, a format that nods to late-night talk shows rather than solemn panels. Jean insists this is reclamation. \u201cMotherhood doesn\u2019t mean you disappear,\u201d she says. \u201cBirth workers are glamorous. Care is glamorous. Repair is glamorous.\u201d<\/p>\n
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In Texas\u00a0that\u00a0reframing feels quietly radical. For Black women, the danger is real, Jean acknowledges. It is why preparation matters, why community matters, why singing has always mattered. Historically, when Black families faced separation, surveillance and loss, they gathered. They rocked. They hummed. They turned unbearable weight into something shareable.<\/p>\n
Not for export, but for return<\/p>\n
![\"Audience]()
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Audience members watch a taping of Black Divas, a performance and film project created by Austin artist Ghislaine Jean\u00a0that centers Black womanhood and motherhood, airing on Austin PBS.<\/p>\n
Provided by Ghislaine Jean<\/p>\n
\u201cBlack Divas\u201d operates as what Jean calls an echo chamber \u2014 not for export, but for return. Black women, she argues, have long been expected to give endlessly: culture, sound, leadership, resilience. This work insists on reverberation, on creativity circling back to replenish its source.<\/p>\n
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The word \u201cdiva,\u201d in this context, sheds its caricatures. Jean returns to its original meaning: divine. Opera singers were called divas because their voices opened something celestial. Birth, she notes, does the same. \u201cSix people in a room,\u201d she says, \u201cand then suddenly there are seven. If that\u2019s not magic, what is?\u201d<\/p>\n
Jean situates herself within that lineage deliberately. \u201cI see myself fully as a Renaissance woman here in Austin,\u201d she says. She speaks about the importance of record-keeping, of being specific about what has happened here. \u201cAs I matriculate in my work, and outside of Austin, it\u2019s good that the archive of what I\u2019ve done here historically is clear \u2014 my particular stance, and my well wishes for the community.\u201d<\/p>\n
As public media contracts and women\u2019s health remains politically fraught, \u201cBlack Divas\u201d persists \u2014 quietly subversive, deceptively joyful. It looks like a show. It feels like a party. Underneath, something else is happening: a gathering, a remembering, a refusal to let interior lives go unseen.<\/p>\n
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In Austin, on the eve of storms both literal and structural, Jean\u2019s work suggests another way forward. Not louder. Not harder. But deeper \u2014 into song, into care, into the divinity of staying alive together.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Keke Wyatt performs during a taping of Black Divas, a performance and film project created by Austin artist…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":150958,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[132,134,133,37385,1223,56124,40675,27],"class_list":["post-150957","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-austin","tag-austin","tag-austin-headlines","tag-austin-news","tag-austin-pbs","tag-austin-texas","tag-black-history-month","tag-pbs","tag-texas"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/150957","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=150957"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/150957\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/150958"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=150957"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=150957"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=150957"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}