The Stoop · Hana Baba and Leila Day

PRIDE: Black, Queer, and Free

June 6, 2024·52 min·4 clips
An author reads from his memoir: Like so many Black boys who would grow up to love other boys, I would have died had I not found safety in my imagination.
Sometimes, being yourself is the whole fight. Hanat Baba and Leela Day place Pride and Juneteenth side by side, then move from cornrow jokes into the lived weight of Black queer experience. The episode starts warm and easy, then turns serious without getting stiff. A passage from Darnell Moore's book remembers a bath with his father, with vulnerability and power packed into the same room. That memory opens something raw. The hosts connect his story to church messages that made him feel he could not fully be who he was. Then Oakland offers another version. At City of Refuge United Church of Christ, Bishop Yvette Flunder leads a church where everyone is celebrated. Hanat describes chapel light, bright clothing, drag, high heels, blue wigs, and a room full of different genders. Leela wants that church, immediately. Their back-and-forth keeps the reporting grounded, because every big idea gets pulled back to a real reaction. Faith does not get dismissed. It gets complicated. Flunder carries the hurt of negative messages from childhood, while the service shows belief with room for celebration. Nobody gets turned into a tidy lesson. Hurt, humor, family pressure, and spiritual longing all stay in the room. By the end, the question is not whether change is clean. It is whether people can move with more care. After the thanks and Radiotopia signoff, what lingers is a proud, searching conversation about freedom made practical.

As heard by us

Black queer pride, church life, and memory meet in a warm, fast-moving conversation.

The episode leans into Pride Month without flattening the people at its center. It moves from Darnell Moore's reflections on safety in imagination to Bishop Yvette Flunder's welcome in an Oakland church, and that turn gives the conversation real shape.

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Why you'd press play

For when you want Pride talk that starts with hurt and ends in welcome.

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