Vera Oyé Yaa-Anna (aka Auntie Oyé) - Founder and Executive Director
Welcome to Rise Urban Nation with host Taryell Simmons. In this episode, we are joined by Vera Oyé Yaa-Anna, known as Auntie Oyé, a Liberian-born master storyteller and the Founder and Executive Director of Oyé Palaver Hut. She and Taryell talk about honoring the ancestors, why she chose to work with children after moving to Washington, DC, and how storytelling, food and music help young people learn who they are.
Auntie Oyé shares that she is third-generation Liberian, with great-grandparents from Virginia and Georgia, and comes from the line of Harriet Tubman.
She explains that in Africa, children start telling stories at three years old to build confidence.
After performing for Bill Clinton's 1996 inauguration, she found a huge gulf between Africans and African Americans in Washington, DC.
"If you're waiting for people to validate you, validate yourself."
A group of children collected about ten dollars in coins so she could go home to visit her parents in Africa.
Kids once told her Africans hunt for their food, and that she must hunt in Rock Creek Park.
Remembering Your Ancestors: Why knowing your name, your lineage and the price your ancestors paid builds pride and purpose.
Debunking Myths About Africa: Using the story of Mansa Musa and simple flashcards to replace negative images of Africa.
Children as Mentors: How listening to children's curiosity and ideas shapes her programs in low-income communities.
Passion Over Money: Turning a calling into a West African dinner theater and doing work that never feels like work.
Food and Culture: Teaching children to cook healthy food, from couscous to fruit salad, and jazz appreciation for elementary students.
Tell your children where they were born, what their name means and who their grandparents are.
Listen to children and ask them what they want before you plan for them.
Follow what you love, and validate yourself instead of waiting for others to do it.
Be patient with the process and take quiet time each day to meditate, pray or reflect.
Honor your ancestors by learning about yourself, voting and being kind to one another.
Vera Oyé Yaa-Anna, known as Auntie Oyé, is a Liberian-born, acclaimed master storyteller who transports her audiences to West Africa through interactive storytelling. She is the Founder and Executive Director of Oyé Palaver Hut, a 25-year-old cultural arts organization that combines storytelling performances with the culinary arts to focus on physical and emotional wellness, and she tours nationally and internationally with African dance and djembe drums. She is a four-time recipient of the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities Fellowship. Learn more at https://www.oyepalaverhut.org.
Taryell Simmons: Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to another episode of Rise Urban Nation. I have a special guest in the building today, Auntie Oyé, and she's taking me back to the motherland. Before we started, she told me I need to go. Auntie, why?
Vera Oyé Yaa-Anna: You have to go back to thank the people that brought you here. You have a good life only because of the price they paid. You are standing on their shoulders, so go back, pour some libation and say thank you for all the hard work they did.
Taryell Simmons: I agree. Without the ancestors who paved the way, I would not be doing what I do today. So for those who don't know, who is Auntie Oyé?
Vera Oyé Yaa-Anna: I am from Liberia, West Africa, but my ancestors are also in the United States. My great-grandmother came from Richmond, Virginia, and my great-grandfather from Georgia, and I come from the line of the great lady Harriet Tubman. Most people look for their ancestry in Africa; I had to come to America to find mine. I am third-generation Liberian, and through my work I tell the stories of my ancestors.
Vera Oyé Yaa-Anna: Growing up in Liberia, Africans remind you of who you are every blessed day. Even your name tells it. My ethnic group comes from eastern Liberia, and they are warriors. Names are given with an exact meaning, and Oyé means "they say." Children here ask me why I came to America. I tell them my ancestors built a lot of structures here and nobody paid them, so they sent me to collect the money. Then I ask, do you think I have the money? They shake their heads, because I'm teaching them instead. My ancestors paved the way, so I don't have to be enslaved because they were.
Taryell Simmons: I was born Black American, but my stepdad was Nigerian, and the elders in the community later gave me an African name. Many Black Americans don't have that path back. What advice would you give them for connecting to who they are?
Vera Oyé Yaa-Anna: A lot of people now go online to find their family tree. What I do is storytelling. I teach children about people like Mansa Musa, and I hope the kids will teach their parents, because if the children don't know, it's because their parents don't know. Start simple: tell your children where they were born, the meaning of their name, who their grandparents are. When you keep telling that and make it interesting, you build confidence and help the child believe how important they are. You don't have to wear something to be important; the fact that you're alive and can think makes you important. That is how our ancestors shared their information with us, and that is the culture I teach.
Taryell Simmons: Why Mansa Musa, and what transformation do you see when people hear his story for the first time?
Vera Oyé Yaa-Anna: When I tell them he was richer than Bill Gates and Bezos, they can't believe it. They think the only rich people are movie stars, but long before them we had our own celebrities. In Africa we start teaching storytelling at three years old, because you are a thinker, and through stories you develop a sense of your own importance.
Vera Oyé Yaa-Anna: Many people have negative images of Africa from television. They think all we have is flies and poverty. I never saw a homeless person in Africa until I came to America; everybody has a place to stay, even if it's behind somebody's house. My job is to debunk that, so the children asked me to make flashcards with basic things: how many countries are in Africa, what Africans eat, what the fast food is. The answer is fresh fruit. We have amazing, brilliant children. Just take time to listen to them.
Taryell Simmons: If it weren't for people like you, these stories would get lost. Tell me about the journey that got you here.
Vera Oyé Yaa-Anna: The journey is still on. We had a civil war in Liberia, and I had to leave, because the first people they go after are the ones who have something going for them. I came to Los Angeles, and people kept asking me about Africa. In 1993 I started featuring one African country at a time: its food, its fashion, its people and its stories. It caught on and was very popular. In 1996 I was invited to Washington, DC to perform for Bill Clinton's inauguration. Everybody in LA asked me not to go, but I came, and it was extremely challenging. DC had a majority Black population, but I didn't realize Africans and African Americans were so far apart. There was a huge gulf.
Taryell Simmons: Two different worlds. Growing up, if I wore my Nigerian outfits, Black Americans would shame me, and if I didn't, Nigerians would think I was American and not give me the same respect.
Vera Oyé Yaa-Anna: Then you understand. I was naive. The parents were jaded, but the children always wanted me to take them to Africa, to the safari and the animals. So I decided there was no need to fight the adults. Let me hang with the children. They have a curiosity a lot of adults don't have, and that's the curiosity I have. I get along with them because I think like them.
Taryell Simmons: At what age is a child's curiosity at its peak, and how do we keep that openness?
Vera Oyé Yaa-Anna: Africans believe that at three years old you can tell your story. You start with "once upon a time," and if you forget, I tell them to just say "the end," and everybody cheers. That's how you build confidence. Many kids can barely speak at first, but after three times they own everything. When children speak, they just want somebody to listen, because in many households the parents are busy and tell them to keep quiet.
Vera Oyé Yaa-Anna: The children are my mentors. When I came here I couldn't find adults to mentor me, so I asked the children. When I plan a new program, I ask them what they want. They have a hundred ideas, and I've never had a kid say something is too difficult. My mother was a storyteller in Liberia, and she told us that if you get lost in a village, ask a child and they will take you where you want to go. With kids you never get old and you never get bored.
Taryell Simmons: What steps did you take to build the storytelling business, the flashcards and your relationships with the kids?
Vera Oyé Yaa-Anna: My passion. When it's your passion, you don't think about money. I can't tell you how many times I forgot people had to pay me. When it's your hobby, it doesn't become work. I used to work with prisoners in the DC jail, and one man told me his hobby was stealing. I told him stealing is not a hobby. If you're waiting for people to validate you, validate yourself. Whatever you enjoy doing, do it.
Taryell Simmons: I tell kids: do what you love and love what you do. Don't chase the money; let the money chase you. When you follow your passion and purpose, the universe will provide.
Vera Oyé Yaa-Anna: We all come to the universe as a complete package, and God gives each of us a gift. When this work was revealed to me, I didn't want to do it, but it became a West African dinner theater, by invitation only. You sent the money in advance and showed up, and reporters and guests had never experienced anything like it. I don't eat fast food. Everything I cook is fresh, and I teach children and adults how to eat healthy.
Taryell Simmons: You're teaching health and wealth along with history. What is one good lesson life has taught you?
Vera Oyé Yaa-Anna: Be flexible, honest and loving, and first love yourself. Everybody you meet is a friend, not a stranger. Never mind if it looks challenging. Keep trying and don't give up. It may not be today, but it will be tomorrow, and eventually you'll get there.
Taryell Simmons: What would you tell someone in a dead-end job who feels called to something but thinks they don't have the time?
Vera Oyé Yaa-Anna: Everything is a process, and nothing happens overnight, so have patience with yourself. The universe will respond to you as you respond to it. I'm a meditator and a yogi, and I pray a lot. When you're confused, find quiet solitude every day, say a few affirmations, close your eyes for five minutes and ask the divine to come. Sometimes I fought it. When things didn't go my way, I was angry with the universe and my ancestors, but people around me said, you're on the right path, people here need you. I used to work in Virginia, and people asked me to come to Washington, DC because the children here were in need. Since then I have worked exclusively in low-income communities, because they need me most.
Taryell Simmons: Things that are worthwhile take longer, and those are the things we are most grateful for.
Vera Oyé Yaa-Anna: So show gratitude every day. Look at what's happening in Ukraine. Leaving your home is the saddest thing, and I experienced it. You leave everything behind because you're running for your life, and you gain more empathy. I say hello to everybody, including the people on the street, because everybody is your neighbor and everybody is your friend. That's the African way.
Vera Oyé Yaa-Anna: We're always feeding people. The children in our programs bring their younger siblings, and some ask to take a plate home to their mom. You don't turn anybody down. When somebody is hungry and you feed them, they never forget it. I teach the kids to prepare the food, so they understand the process and know the ingredients.
Taryell Simmons: What does the future hold for these programs, and for bridging the gap between Black Americans and Africans across the diaspora?
Vera Oyé Yaa-Anna: The future is bright. My hope is for attentive parents, because without an adult role model it can be challenging. Kids have even gotten me jobs. A three-year-old named Brianna told her aunt to hire me for her after-school program, and her aunt asked all over Capitol Hill until she found me. Kids are always paying attention. When I retell a story, one will whisper, "You forgot to cry." They are the wisest people I have met.
Vera Oyé Yaa-Anna: We have a new jazz appreciation program for elementary school kids. First and second graders at Eagle Academy are having a Mardi Gras celebration, and we're teaching them about Duke Ellington, a Washington, DC native, Louis Armstrong and Scott Joplin. Jazz is America's indigenous music. Saxophonist Herb Scott is coming, so they will see real people play these instruments.
Taryell Simmons: Give me one of your favorite stories of a young kid you've worked with.
Vera Oyé Yaa-Anna: I had shown some kids how to make a presentation, because Africans are always making big speeches. They came up and gave me an envelope and said, you talk about Africa all the time, so we know you miss your parents and we want you to go home and visit them. Pennies, dimes and some dollars rolled out, about ten dollars. One asked, is it not enough to go to Africa? They thought I came from Africa in the morning and went home at night, so I brought a globe to show them. I cried like a baby. I have never forgotten that.
Vera Oyé Yaa-Anna: I used to cook only for adults, until kids at a workshop told me Africans hunt for their food. I said, I live on Capitol Hill, so where do I hunt? They said, Rock Creek Park. Then they asked for an African food workshop, and from that day I decided I'm the chef for children. Even if they can't pay me, they have hugs. Their favorites are couscous, spinach with cilantro, a recipe a kid gave me, and fruit salad with a strawberry yogurt dressing. The children are the chefs.
Taryell Simmons: What are you working on now, and where can people find and support you?
Vera Oyé Yaa-Anna: The major thing is the jazz appreciation program, with an artist coming every week. We're also teaching children to eat healthy, and we have the cards about Africa, where kids draw the map and do imagination storytelling, like the griots who tell the story of Mansa Musa. You can reach me at www.oyepalaverhut.org.
Taryell Simmons: For those of you driving, I'll put everything in the show notes. Auntie Oyé, what last thing would you like to tell people about how they should view Africa?
Vera Oyé Yaa-Anna: Learn as much as you can about yourself. When you learn about yourself, you'll learn about Africa. You owe a lot to your ancestors, so remember the work they did. We're still fighting for voting rights, so go out and vote for them. Honor and revere your ancestors. Be kind to each other, because we're in this together. If I have something, you will have something. Mr. Taryell Simmons, thank you for inviting me. I want to do it again sometime.
Taryell Simmons: I'm going to hold you to that. This has been another episode of Rise Urban Nation. Be kind to one another, love one another and make your ancestors proud. We are all who our ancestors dreamed, hoped and prayed for. Let's keep their legacies alive. Thank you for tuning in.
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