Platica Y Poetics S4E9- Xelena Gonzalez

Nusaiba's Neighbors S1E3 TheeLanaiii

In honor of Juneteenth, Nusaiba interviews a local Black Artist in San Antonio named Lanai. She gives us an insight on her experiences as a black artist from Chicago now navigating her artistry and life in San Antonio. This episode contains important conversations and awareness towards racism and the reality of Black and African Americans till this day. Black culture is extremely important for the music industry and we honor the artists that pioneered the music industry. Lanai talks about what inspires her music and expresses her opinions along with her experiences with the community.

Nusaiba's Neighbors S1E2 Yasmeena Yaani

The 2nd episode of Nusaiba's Neighbors introduced a local San Antonio artist, Yasmeena Yaani, as she gives us an insight on being a Syrian R&B artist. She hold on to her Syrian identity as she uses her culture to express herself in her music with a twist. Yasmeena gives us an insight in her life as she allows the audience to get to know the deep and vulnerable parts about her and how music has saved her life. We share our common traditions and sing a few songs. She debuts her song "Inte Feene," which means "You are within Me."

Nusaiba's Neighbors S1E1 w/ Daniel "Ali" Jimenez

This is the first episode of Nusaiba's Neighbors where she starts off her show by having a vulnerable conversation with one of her closest friends, Daniel "Ali" Jimenez as he describes his new life as a Latino revert living in San Antonio. He tells us how his life has changed and the way he still holds on to his Mexican identity while embracing a new religion.

Platica Y Poetics- Una plática with Jerry Robledo Season 4, Episode 10

Una plática with Jerry Robledo Season 4, Episode 10 Some conversations ask you to bring your whole self with a side of vulnerability to the table. This was one of them. Sitting across from Jerry I knew within the first few minutes that this platica would be closer to a revealing, confession. On the menu, two writers, two parents, peeling back the language we use to protect, explain, and translate ourselves. We connected speaking of our children, and about unconditional love that terrifies you with its size. We realized that we both spoke a language from the depths of el ‘alma’, the soul's dialect. Where pain, grief, fear, and unknown speak to another. Jerry's forthcoming poetry collection moves through fatherhood not as a role performed, but as an act of witnessing. He writes of his daughter's becoming, and his admission that he expressed himself to mothering, having never quite known what a father does. We spoke about how parenting was never meant to be divided by gender at all, that the real work is ushering, exposing our children to the full range of what it means to be human. He spoke with such honesty about trying to unlearn in his lineage and what he is trying to preserve. We spoke to the Mexicano and American identity and the contradiction of that space. In the end I felt like I was at a barecito in Monterrey, cigarillo in hand, cold tequila talking to a primo about life’s honest truths. In the end arriving at the last course on the menu was inheritance, what he hopes his daughter will know about the man who raised her. A present, imperfect, with a bleeding heart in hand. A translator of poesía, el camino, love, and survival. This episode was not an interview. It was two parents, two poets, speaking the language of truth.

Platica Y Poetics S4E9- Xelena Gonzalez

A Conversation with Xelena González Creator of Lotería Remedios & Author  What began as a plática — the kind that feels less like an interview and more like a random conversation you didn't anticipate, unfolded into one of the most tender, genuine exchanges of this season. Sitting with Xelena González felt like sitting with easiness to wisdom. A grounded sensation. The kind that comes from a woman who has done inner work and is not afraid to pass on enlightenment through her ‘Remedios.’ We began at the core of her work — with the self. With remembering. Xelena's creative life has been shaped by a continuous returning, a reclamation of what the world has abandoned, awareness of natural word, and how listening to ancestral guides, is medicinal. Her artistic becoming, she shared, required to unlearn as much as it has required her to create — to strip away the goals, molds, the expectations, and find again what was whole before any of that arrived. As an artist, she’s tethered to herself not through perfection, but presence. Through small, sacred acts of returning. The theme of motherhood moved through our entire conversation like an undercurrent, not as a role, but our, fuerza, force. Xelena spoke about how becoming a mother transformed not just what she creates but why. She sees a deep correlation between mothering and storytelling, both acts of cariño. The stories she writes for children are not separate from the mother she is; they are of the same gesture, of care, and maternal instinct. And for those of us still becoming, or in need of guidance, turn inward, trust the season you are in, listen to the energy of the cosmos, pull a card or two from the Remedios deck and listen to its wisdom. Light a candle and open your corazón to the healing the universe offers through nature, ancestral wisdom, and presence.