371: Destination Diaspora: Connecting African Cultural Roots Across the Caribbean, Brazil, Ghana and Beyond with Melissa Noel

Learn about African diasporic identity, migration, cultural memory, and building a global Black storytelling project.

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ON THIS EPISODE

Award-winning journalist and media entrepreneur Melissa Noel starts by sharing her first impressions of Brazil and attending the Black Travel Summit in Rio, where she won the BET+ Passport to Storytelling pitch competition for her Destination Diaspora docuseries. She reflects on growing up in a Guyanese immigrant household in New Jersey, her parents’ migration experience, and how attending Howard University deepened her understanding of global Black identity and Pan-Africanism, including the lasting influence of Guyanese scholar Walter Rodney. The episode also explores her life-changing visit to Ghana during the Year of Return and her years living and reporting across the Caribbean. Melissa shares stories from hiking Caribbean volcanoes, explains why St. Vincent and the Grenadines holds such a special place in her heart, describes what it’s like to walk through Montserrat’s buried city of Plymouth, and unpacks the intertwined African and Irish history commemorated during Montserrat’s St. Patrick’s Festival.

→ Full show notes with direct links to everything discussed are available here.

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