Yvonne Chireau- Hoodoo: Healing & Harm

What if the dead are not gone at all, but woven into the fabric of everyday life?

Historian, scholar of religion and Black studies, and Sinners consultant Yvonne Chireau joins Joanna Ebenstein for a rich conversation about African American conjure, hoodoo, ancestry, and the many ways we misunderstand the relationship between the living and the dead.

Drawing on decades of research into Black religious traditions, Yvonne challenges familiar ideas about magic, spirituality and the supernatural. Rather than seeing hoodoo as something sinister or sensational, she invites us to understand it as a living cultural tradition rooted in healing, memory, resilience, and the enduring presence of ancestors.

The conversation moves from childhood experiences of the sacred to the artistic power of ritual objects, asking why Western culture so often frames encounters with mystery through horror rather than wonder. Together, Joanna and Yvonne explore whether ancestors and ghosts are really the same thing, how material objects can become vessels of remembrance, and why keeping the dead close can be a profound act of survival.

Yvonne also shares the extraordinary story of becoming the historical hoodoo consultant on Ryan Coogler's acclaimed film Sinners, revealing how one unforgettable scene captures past, present and future collapsing into a single moment of ancestral presence.

"The charge is in remembering those who came before." — Yvonne Chireau

Finally, Yvonne reflects movingly on witnessing her father's death, how that experience transformed her understanding of mortality, and why her own spiritual practice has dissolved much of the fear she once carried.

This is an episode about memory as resistance, beauty as a spiritual language, and the possibility that death is far richer, stranger and more alive than many of us have been taught to believe.

📢Listeners! You are invited to share your own offerings: voice notes on death, dying, ritual and the beauty of finitude. Include your first name and location if you want them shared- you might be featured in an upcoming episode. Send your offering via WhatsApp to +44 2921 690468

🖤 Enjoying Memento Morbid? Explore our collection of apparel and accessories in the Memento Morbid shop: mementomorbidmerch.dashery.com   

💀 Memento Morbid is produced by Overcoat Media in partnership with Morbid Anatomy.

Host: Joanna Ebenstein
Series Producer: Jess Gunasekara
Studio Engineer: Fernando Velazco Vargas
Additional Production & Sound Design: Katie Hill
Production Coordinator: Janice Jardine
Executive Producer: Steven Rajam
Artwork: Lauren Seeley 

substack.com/@mementomorbid