Brooklyn, New York
Multimedia, Artistic Activism

Daughters of the Yam and the Mothers they Become centers a mother-daughter relationship, re-understanding and re-connecting their journey since birth together as the close of their time feels near. Mumby weaves parallel stories of Black maternity with journeys of Black women who serve as doulas to expectant Black mothers throughout Daughters of the Yam. The health complications and mortality rates of Black mothers during childbirth in the US are widely known. Daughters of the Yam is a portrait of the women who transmute trauma into healing—providing a counterbalance of health and vitality—told through long-form episodes of an audio-documentary. Journey alongside a daughter who’d rather revisit the beginning of their birth story with her mother who may be closer to the end of her time here.

Yasmene Mumby is driven to transform practices within systems of power that perpetuate anti-Black racism. She writes. She guides yoga. She creates audio-documentaries. Yasmene writes about inequity, culture, and wellbeing. She wrote the viral 5,089-word essay Amplify Black Voices: Yoga, you can do better. She created the NPR hosted audio-documentary, Higher Purpose, about an organization that supports people with legal system records to gain livable wage employment in Baltimore. Her latest sound art piece is Ahimsa, an audio memoir on yoga, wellness, and Black lives in 2020.