Interview 029 with Kay Bell
Listen to Kay Bell – born in Barbados, raised in New York City, now living in The South Bronx, New York – talk about working two jobs from home as a professor and an academic counselor while helping her two sons – ages 7 and 14 – go to school online during the pandemic. She shares about going to therapy during the pandemic to talk about the stress of living and working from home in 2020. In the fall of 2021 she began teaching hybrid in-person and online and her sons returned to school in-person. She trusted her husband to cut her hair when barbershops closed. She teaches her college students about writing for the social sciences and about how Zora Neale Hurston immersed herself in her work when interviewing. Before the pandemic Kay Bell worked in Harlem, which has now become gentrified. She noticed the difference between living in the South Bronx, which is predominantly people of color and low income and the abundance of litter and trash there, as opposed to living in Harlem which has become gentrified and there is an abundance of trash cans. Kay Bell’s mom contracted Covid-19 in November of 2019. She was hospitalized for a few months and experienced organ failure. Thankfully she made a full recovery. Her husband also contracted Covid-19, recovered, and experienced Long Covid symptoms. You can find Kay Bell’s poetry book – Cry. Sweat. Bleed. Write. – in The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture Harlem Writers Guild Book Shop.
Embed this episode
No transcript yet.