Award-winning social entrepreneur, cultural commentator and author Dr. Sagashus Levingston has a new book, A Pot to P*ss In, that takes readers on a nine-month journey of heartbreak, resilience, and triumph as she details her struggle as a mother of six navigating housing insecurity and the barriers of unjust systems to buy her very first home.
But with her new book, Levingston says she doesn’t want to be your guru.
“I don’t want to show up and give this pitch that you can have a really perfect life like mine if you just pay me a million dollars, right? I didn’t want to be that person. And I m not,” Levingston tells Madison365. “This book is so messy. It’s real. In the first chapter, I’m talking about how I had, maybe, a 400 credit score and no money in the bank. And the only thing I had that was valuable was my story and how I used my story to build community around this goal and this dream.
“I was able to purchase my house, to start the home ownership process, by having nothing but the audacity to believe that I could own a home, and by having a story that got me into places that I probably wouldn’t have been if it depended upon the money that I had,” she adds of her homebuying process that took place in 2021 in the thick of the COVID-19 pandemic.
(Photo by David Dahmer)
Levingston is the founder and CEO of Infamous Mothers, an innovative organization that empowers ambitious mothers to break boundaries and achieve extraordinary success. More recently, she is the founder of The Without Apology Tour, a movement inspired by her new book, A Pot to P*ss In. On Thursday, July 31, 5:30-7:30 p.m., she will host an event as part of that tour at the Black Business Hub, where she will discuss her newly released memoir with Dr. Ruben Anthony, the Urban League of Greater Madison’s CEO and president.
“The Without Apology Tour” will make 20 stops across the city of Madison as it blends storytelling, strategy, and sisterhood inspired by Levingston’s new book, which she says is “about reclaiming her right to dream in a world that tells women like her to settle for less.” Each stop draws from a chapter in the book, which is published by Little Creek Press.
In the press release for A Pot to P*ss In, Levingston describes it as: “For the woman who’s been told she’s asking for too much. For the mother juggling dreams and diapers. For the entrepreneur building something from nothing. For the professional tired of proving she belongs. For every woman who knows she was meant for more — this book is for you.”
Levingston, who has six children — three boys and three girls, recalls the origin of the title of her new book.
“My mom was quite the colorful woman who uses a lot of colorful language. She was talking to my kids, who were destroying her house. This was back when I was just finishing grad school,” Levingston remembers. “She said, ‘Your momma don’t have a pot to piss in or a window to throw it out! And you are all over here destroying my house!’
“I was so mad at her,” Levingston adds, now smiling. “First of all, don’t be telling my kids things like that. Second of all, don’t be talking about me like that! So I started writing this book out of frustration and resentment. And I knew at that time that I needed to go through the process and figure out a way to buy a house.”
That particular old saying can produce a lot of shame, Levingston says.
“Not having a pot to piss in is really a saying that’s meant to shame people for not having the basic things that they need to exist in life,” she says. “Folks who say that don’t realize it’s meant to shame people for not having resources. It ultimately makes people feel less than for not having what they need.
“For me, it became about home ownership and not having a home and not having a place for my kids to be rooted in. So the book itself is about my nine-month journey to buy a house in Madison and how it intersected with the systems and the banking industry and other things.”
Levingston, who earned a bachelor’s in English Literature from the University of Illinois and both a master’s in Afro-American Studies and a Ph.D. in English literature from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, says she’s looking forward to having a sit-down conversation with Dr. Ruben Anthony on Thursday about her new book and the partnership they have formed.
Levingston says she approached Dr. Anthony as she was looking for people to partner with about the book.
“I had been intimidated by him, and I had never really had a conversation with him over all these years. But I overcame that fear because I really wanted to collaborate with Dr. Anthony,” she remembers. “We set up a meeting and I started telling him the premise behind the book, and he started to tell me some of his own stories about coming from New York to Milwaukee to ending up here. There was so much overlap in terms of our journeys. So I went from being intimidated by him to finding out that he is the most down-to-earth and understanding person because we have lived through some of the same things.”
Levingston says she told Anthony that she would love for the Urban League of Greater Madison to use her story as a case study for why it’s important for Black families – Black women, in particular – to have homes.
“I told him, ‘Hopefully, we can use my story as a case study to help you gain more capital to be able to do the work that you do with the Urban League to make sure that home ownership is more accessible for people,” Levingston says. “I think my story would be a perfect story for their funders to hear and the community to hear, so that they can extend the work that they do to make sure that more women, more moms — more Black moms — are all homeowners.”
Doors will open Thursday for a special fireside chat with Dr. Sagashus T. Levingston after 5 p.m., and the conversation will begin shortly after 5:30 p.m. Books will be available for purchase, and Levingston will stay after the program for a book signing and informal conversations. Light refreshments will be provided, and free parking is available on-site.
This event is free, but space is limited. To RSVP, click here.
