Larisha Stone

Position
2022 Crossroads Arts Fellow
Bio/Description

Biography

Larisha J. Stone is an emerging filmmaker, independent researcher, viral content creator, birth doula, and Rootwork practitioner. She attended NC Central University where she majored in Mass Communication with a Concentration in Journalism in 2007. In 2014, a quest for Black womanist spirituality and a Google search for books by Black authors about Conjure led her to Dr. Katrina Hazzard Donald’s Mojo Workin’: The Old African American Hoodoo System. She read as many books as she could find to make sense of the spiritual experiences and urges she had been having for most of her life. In 2016, she developed a viral Youtube series called Conjure Culture that helped answer a lot of questions for people who, like her, had been searching for explanations and answers. In 2017, she started a podcast called The 9 Minds Radio Show where she interviewed Black women and femmes from all over the African Diaspora to connect people to the living traditions that they were remembering. She is based in North Carolina and currently travels documenting stories of people putting their ancestral practices to work to build community and healing spaces.

 


Crossroads Arts Fellow Project

Conjure: The Docuseries

Earth is the element that establishes physical and spiritual grounding on the planet. Air represents communication, such as “airwaves” in tv and radio. Water is the sacred conduit of spiritual pathways that link the living and the dead. Fire encourages all the other elements to change form, like a catalyst in a chemical reaction. Using the elements as a map, Conjure: The Documentary will reveal the ways that spiritual knowledge, memory, and ritual have helped heal intergenerational traumas, challenge state-sanctioned assaults and racial violence, and reconnect those attempting to reconcile their identities. Each segment will be twenty minutes long, with commentary by scholars, artists, and practitioners that provides in-depth context and analysis to explain how the new Hoodoos and Conjurers are applying the tradition in the now.