Sharon Bridgforth's dat Black Mermaid Man Lady is a divination package in two parts for contemporary seekers yearning for connection, communal wisdom, and self-determination

Sharon Bridgforth's dat Black Mermaid Man Lady is a divination package for contemporary seekers yearning for connection, communal wisdom, and self-determination. Queering African-American Southern traditions, dat Black Mermaid Man Lady contains, in a matching two-piece box: a performance novel, a thirty-six card full-color oracle deck, and a forty-card deck of Blessings.

This gorgeous collection is for readers seeking a personal divination practice infused with African American traditions in the spirit of Audre Lorde, bell hooks, and others.

dat Black Mermaid Man Lady is a special gift package for people to explore their Innermost Divine Connection with Infinite Love. The oracles speak to what’s under the surface of the question, the moment, the situation at hand for the seeker. And know that dem Mermaids believe: only Love is real.

About dat Black Mermaid Man Lady/the book: Performance Novel and Oracle Deck Guide:
The performance novel is set in Louisiana/between time-where the past/the present/the future/the living/the dead/the unborn co-exist. It is filled with piano playing/knife carrying she'roes and old people that fly, who all Work to elevate communal healing, prayers and dreams.

dat Black Mermaid Man Lady/the cards: Oracle Deck & dem Blessings Deck is sold separately.

About dat Black Mermaid Man Lady/the cards:
In the spirit of the tarot, dat Black Mermaid Man Lady: Oracle Deck & dem Blessings Deck were designed by a Black woman for Black women, Black men, and queer communities. The oracle deck features nine characters from the performance novel. Activated by Yasmín Hernández’s artwork, each oracle speaks text from the performance novel on four things, including one blank card, which if pulled means “you already know.”

The Blessings deck invites those that engage it to breathe into pathways that open healing, Love and Light.

dat Black Mermaid Man Lady/the book: Performance Novel & Oracle Deck Guide is sold separately.

About the Author
Sharon Bridgforth is an Associate Company Member at Pillsbury House + Theatre, a Doris Duke Performing Artist, recipient of Yale's Windham Campbell Prize in Drama, the Playwrights' Center Core Membership, McKnight National Fellowship and the USA Artist Fellowship. She was inducted in the Texas Institute of Letters, has received support from Creative Capital, MAP Fund and the National Performance Network, and is a New Dramatists Alum and MAP Fund Scaffolding for Practicing Artists Coach. She lives in Los Angeles, California. More about Sharon Bridgforth at sharonbrigforth.com

About the Illustrator
Yasmín Hernández is a Brooklyn-born and raised artist, writer and cultural organizer rooted in rematriation and liberation practices. Her pivotal project, Bieké: Tierra de Valientes, honoring activists who ended US Navy maneuvers on Vieques, introduced her to bioluminescence, transformed her aesthetics and inspired her 2014 move to Borikén, her parents’ birthplace. Her 2016 collaboration with Sharon Bridgforth offered light during a period of intense transition. Four months without electricity following Hurricane María, reconnected her to fireflies and cucubanos inspiring CucubaNación, her Mayagüez studio/community art space lifting archipelagic bioluminescence lessons to transcend the darkness of power outages, climate change and colonialism. Yasmín’s Rematriating Borikén project uses abyss aesthetics to document and paint folks on the rematriation journey. Her resulting Portraits from the Trench series received a 2023 NALAC grant. In 2025 Yasmín and CucubaNación were nominated and selected for the current cohort of the Maniobra Program of el Centro de Economía Creativa, supported by the Mellon Foundation. Yasmin holds a BFA from Cornell University. Based in Northwest Borikén for over a decade, she shares her work at yasminhernandez.art and rematriatingboriken.com.

Praise for dat Black Mermaid Man Lady:
“This is a writer with a style and sound entirely her own. The words that come from her characters’ mouths are musical, magical, poetic and pregnant with history. This is a play full of intertwined yarns, family folk tales that call into question the boundaries between past and present. Stories about epiphanies and transformations, communing with ancestors and establishing identities.”
— Rob Hubbard / TwinCities Pioneer Press Theater

“A bold and urgent narrative filled with fire, life and sudden flashes of humor... a tale that feels both weighted with mythology and freshly vivid.”
— The Minnesota Star Tribune

“One of the most stimulating—and therapeutic—pieces of theatre I have seen anywhere in the Twin Cities this year. More than a play, this ‘performance processional’ is a breathtaking, at times achingly beautiful celebration of life and memory and ancestral love.”
— Talking Broadway-Regional Reviews: Minneapolis/St. Paul

“In the end, the performers create a mental space where ‘the past, the present, the future/the living, the dead, the not yet born, co-exist’, a threshold where much of the action happens in the audience’s imagination instead of onstage. One’s mind grasps at how associations, connected themes, and assembled fragmentary scenes blends into a story . . . this kind of interactivity is the Holy Grail of abstract, collaborative theatre.”
— Twin Cities Arts Reader

“There are comic incidents and long journeys, gnomic utterances, and loaded guns, all seamlessly woven into a tapestry of song drawing on gospel, blues, and jazz... There's a profound sense of truths that are known but not spoken, wounds that are healed with quiet understanding.”
— City Pages

“We have to honor who we are, and we have to be honest and accountable for the things that we're doing to numb ourselves from dealing with the feelings of life," she said. "And I think that Sharon's piece really does that, but in a way that will really suck you in and make you gush with emotion.”
— PaviElle French, MPR News

Press Kit for dat Black Mermaid Man Lady.