So, this is a baking podcast? Seems straightforward enough.
Well, yes, but it’s so much more than that.
Hear me out.
Table of Contents
A little background on Self Rising Flower
When Corey Burkes, the creator, of Self Rising Flower reached out to us, it was from an email with desktopepics as the domain.
I read that as Desktop EPics. As in pictures. Pictures of flowers. The plants.
It’s a clever turn of phrase that sailed right past me. That should have been a good sign to pay attention.
I was thoroughly confused. I had made a few leaps and assumptions that had set me off on the wrong foot.
And so I checked out the website, and ah ha! It was a baking podcast.
See, the shows sponsors feature heavily on the website and it wasn’t easy to tell what was the podcast, who owned the baking trucks, and just what was going on.
Was this a show by the food truck bakers?
Ok I thought. I just have to throw it on.
I downloaded the first three episodes for my commute without looking closely at the show notes.
Mistake number two.
Ok… what’s going on.
I needed to start paying attention. I was clearly off balance here. And now I was in traffic.
Format and Story Overview
Alright, let me break down this podcast for you because I didn’t approach it right the first time.
Stuck in my bubble of nonfiction informational podcasting.
This is a treat. (Pun absolutely intended).
Self-Rising Flower is an immersive audio drama miniseries.
It’s a 6-part series (we’ll come back to that later), so you’re in for a compact but rich story.
The podcast follows Erika and her 12-year-old daughter as they build a dessert empire.
It’s set in the world of entrepreneurship and family dynamics.
The main characters are Erika, who feels stuck in life, and her brilliant daughter, who recognizes her mom’s baking talents and subsequently pushes boundaries.
This is a serialized story that spans over ten years of their lives.
In Self Rising Flower, you’ll experience their entrepreneurial struggles, family tensions, and fight to succeed against the odds.
Friends help, but the industry dismisses the business as not enough. It really runs the emotional gamut.
As such, it’s not just about baking – it’s about resilience, taking risks, and the complexities of family relationships.
When we meet our matriarch, life isn’t what she knows it might be.
The story arc takes you from Erika’s initial stuck state to their innovative rise in the dessert business.
It’s like listening to a movie, but it’s all in your ears – super immersive!
What I Liked
I liked a lot about this show. It’s easy to like.
What jumps out right away about Self Rising Flower is the story itself, which is the point of an audio drama in the first place.
If the story doesn’t hit, there won’t be much to hang around for.
Upon reflection (and we’ll get to this later) I like that it follows the journey of these characters for so long.
Entrepreneurship, like life, isn’t always a straight upward trajectory. There are little wins and significant losses, but as long as one foot finds itself in front of the other, it’s in the right direction.
Aside from the story, the acting is superb, especially for some of these actors who had little voice acting experience before joining this project.
When I spoke with Damian about the show, he said he’d never done anything like this. That’s impressive, as he plays every adult male role in the play.
The rest of the ensemble is a delight, but someone to watch out for is the young Izzy Miller, who plays Erika’s daughter, Aniyah.
This girl is a powerhouse and glues the story together at several points in the story. She’s often the strongest and most dynamic voice in the listener’s headphones.
As well-written as the character is, the performance is stronger. And that’s saying something.
Circling back to the story, the American South, and more specifically, Atlanta serve as almost another character. That’s the setting where the story begins, and, as a listener, I got the feeling that Erika might not have been able to start her dream if her family was anywhere else.
Maybe that’s the point of community.
The juxtaposition of Atlanta and the other settings of the series is played to great effect.
Most of this listening experience really works. That doesn’t mean there weren’t a couple things I thought could have been better.
What Could Have Been Better
I only have a few nitpicky things about this whole process, which don’t detract from the enjoyment of the podcast.
I think if you read this review first, you can avoid much of this as the listener.
The Marketing
The first issue is that I read the promotional website before I listened to the podcast. This is a bit of a double-edged sword.
There’s a good chance you’re not going to be served Self Rising Flower up through the algorithms just yet. I think that’s going to change, but with how polluted my library is for work, it took a bit of time to rearrange what I’ve got in there to get this to pop up.
Everyone’s mileage is going to vary on that one, which is the point of this website to begin with.
Back to my problem.
I read the promotional website first, which can be confusing.
It’s a six-part miniseries, but the site references it as six, eight, or ten in various places.
After speaking with Damian, Self Rising Flower was always meant to be a ten-part series, but money being what it is, some creative changes had to be made.
As a listener, you won’t notice the narrative surgery that had to be done.
So, I was confused. I didn’t know if I was missing something. I was looking for more episodes, but the story was tied up. But the website said there should be more.
Not a big deal.
If you’re reading this, you should donate to get the rest of the shows made.
The Early Pacing
The show and the direction start off pretty slow.
It made me have to pay more attention to the early episodes than I had planned to.
That’s alright, though, because by episode 3, this play is really cooking with gas. I assume Erika uses gas… it never comes up.
By that point, I hadn’t planned on listening to the entire mini-series, but I just let it play through.
I was in. I was hooked. I couldn’t just let it be.
By episode three, I’d gotten the hang of where everyone was in the story, and the relationship between Erika and her daughter had me. They’re titans.
That’s it. Those are the only two complaints. I also want this group to finish the series as envisioned or crank out more content set in this universe.
Donate. Do it now.
Conclusion
This show came across our radar the same way other entries in the Podcast Spotlight series do, so I approached it the same way.
That was my mistake.
It’s a different beast. The series stands as a series. It’s fictional but so interwoven with the show’s sponsor’s world that it can be hard to tell.
It has a meta quality in that sense. That means you must work a bit harder or know what you’re getting into.
That one is on me.
Sit down and listen to Self Rising Flower. Give it the attention it deserves.