Black Olympic champion Allyson Felix, global entertainment phenom Beyoncé, and tennis legend Serena Williams are just a few of the Black women who have spoken out in recent years about the alarming rates of mortality Black women experience in pregnancy and childbirth in America. Williams, who gave birth to her first child in 2017, wrote in a 2018 essay for CNN, “According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Black women in the United States are over three times more likely to die from pregnancy or childbirth-related causes” as white women. Williams recounted how she had to repeatedly beg her healthcare team to administer tests to uncover a condition that could have ended her life.
The 18th season of “AfroPop: A Cultural Exchange,” debuts on the PBS app, and PBS.org June 15, with “Listen To Me,” one of the three films featured this season, which shines a light on women who experienced ordeals very similar to Williams’s. Directed by maternal health experts Kanika Harris and Stephanie Etienne, “Listen to Me” sounds the alarm on an issue that was ignored for too long.
In a statement to the AmNews, they explained how they came up with the title for the film. As they reviewed interviews with participants, a major theme kept surfacing. Etienne explained, “Black women expressing how their cries, requests, and needs were not heard, and that their providers should have listened to them. Once we heard this recurrent outcry, ‘Listen to Me’ was the only title for this film.”
It was not at all guaranteed that the storied annual film showcase would return to our screens for another season. In 2025, Congress rescinded about $1.1 billion in previously approved funding after pressure from the Trump administration. The federal government rescinded $1.8 million dollars in funding to Harlem-based Black Public Media, producers of AfroPop — just over half of its organizational budget, and the largest funding cut compared to other organizations. This was funding that was to come through the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), the congressionally created nonprofit that distributed federal funding to public broadcasting entities, including PBS, NPR, and more than 1,500 local public radio and television stations, which were defined and dissolved by the Trump administration.
AfroPop received $200,000 from the CPB, stated Leslie Fields-Cruz, executive director at Black Public Media, in an email to Amsterdam News, “to cover content acquisition and packaging.” She explained how much was at stake with the loss of that funding. “We almost had to scrap season 18. Luckily, we had films in the pipeline, which had previously been funded or acquired with CPB monies that were nearing completion, which allowed us to move forward with a three-episode season 18.”
Using interviews with women who experienced challenging pregnancies, as well as with their family members and friends, “Listen to Me” draws a thruline between the systemic inequities experienced by Black women from childhood and into adulthood that result in negative impacts. Too often, that means death from pregnancy or childbirth. Harris explains, “This exposure, coupled with racism and mistreatment within healthcare institutions, is the true root cause of higher Black maternal morbidity and mortality rates.”
BPM was an early funder of the film, which won its PitchBLACK Forum in 2021. PitchBLACK is the nation’s largest pitching competition for Black film and immersive stories. “Listen to Me” will also air June 23, 24, and 27 on WORLD Channel.
The second film in this year’s lineup is “This World Is Not My Own,” a poignant documentary about folk artist Nellie Mae Rowe, a woman who embodies the term “it’s never too late.” Airing July 2, it’s an intriguing combination of animation, voice, movement, and traditional documentary elements. Directed by Opendox (Petter Ringbom and Marquise Stillwell), “This World Is Not My Own” features Emmy-winner Uzo Aduba (“In Treatment,” “The Residence”) and Broadway veteran Amy Warren as Rowe and her friend, gallery owner, and arts patron Judith Alexander.
Born at the turn of the 20th century, Rowe used art as a mode of self-expression even as she was forced to be a domestic worker most of her life. A free spirit, the self-taught Rowe defined herself on her own terms. Her unfettered enthusiasm and staunch optimism show clearly in her drawings, dolls, and sculptural works that dotted her home and the area around it which she came to nickname her “Playhouse.” Her work is a reclamation of girlhood denied by the harsh realities of early 20th-century Georgia, and drew heavily on personal memories, symbolism, spirituality, and rural life.
The last film, which will run in November, will be announced later this year.
