Hello, everyone! I’ll start with the obvious—over a year has passed since my last update. Again, after Loitering at the Merylthon, I thought the cadence of updates would be more frequent. But of course, life calls. It’s been a busy year, and a challenging one at times. In the middle of that, though, there have been balms, and this interview is one of them.

Earlier this year, I was lucky to speak with the writer Carvell Wallace about his memoir, Another Word for Love, for the journal Alta. We sat on the grass at Lake Merritt in Oakland and had a wide-ranging conversation about love, writing, healing, etc. — some of which appeared on the Alta Q&A, much of which did not! I hope you’ll listen to it now. The interview also appears on Carvell’s Substack.

(the cover of Carvell’s memoir)

On my end, this summer I took on a new role with Uncuffed. In addition to teaching and editing at Solano State Prison and co-producing our podcast, I’m now strategizing media partnerships for Uncuffed—a.k.a., getting the word out about our amazing work! If you’re in the podcast and/or media world and want to feature Uncuffed stories, re-air an episode, or write about Uncuffed, please get at me.

Uncuffed recently won an award from the NorCal Society of Professional Journalists for a story about pickleball in prison (!) The awards ceremony was a rare opportunity for a lot of Uncuffed staff to be at the same place at the same time, so please enjoy this photo of us. :)

A story I reported for 99% Invisible also won an award that night (!) I mostly think awards in journalism are a scheme, but I admit it was nice to be honored. The story is one of my favorite pieces I’ve ever reported. It’s about the history and evolution of U.S. military simulations and the experiences of the role players who staff them. I started reporting on the story at the beginning of 2023, and by the time I started tracking it at the end of last year, the war in Gaza was well underway. Suffice it to say it made covering a piece like this an even more surreal experience. (The latest headlines have now placed the death toll at a staggering over 44,000 people, according to Palestinian authorities). And that’s just what the news reminds us of. It’s easy to forget ongoing conflicts in Ethiopia, Armenia-Azerbaijan, Sudan, Ukraine, etc., etc. Selective amnesia about war, politics, and so on is a trend. Let’s not forget how that’s also playing out in the U.S. these days.

But back to the story. Another reason I loved reporting that 99pi piece is that it brought me back to that feeling of discovery that happens when you’re out in the world, reporting outside your home or comfort zone and engaging all your senses. I miss that! Outside of Uncuffed, I’ve been working on another project, but it’s been mostly planning and less field reporting at this stage. That will change in time, although it often feels like it can’t happen soon enough.

Until then, something else has been creating a new experience of being in the world…

…Which brings me to other news—I got a puppy! If you’re reading this post, you probably already know that. His name is Yunoki. He’s a medium bernedoodle named after the local train stop where I lived in Japan. The name generates that natsukashii feeling, and he generates a lot of attention! Yunoki is a walking conversation starter. I’ve been enjoying my time with him and leaning into my identity as a dog person. :) And yes, he has an Instagram.

Here’s a photo of him from a few months ago. He’s bigger now!

And here’s a little portrait my friend Evan took of us this summer.

Again, I want to say I’ll be more frequent with these posts—it seems like everyone has a Substack these days and is doing just that—but I also do enjoy posting at this slower cadence. So let’s see. Wishing everyone a peaceful close to 2024. Maybe you’ll hear from me before it ends, maybe you won’t!

Until next time…

Peace,

Sonia

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Hello, everyone. Before I get into the topic of this interview…

Suffice it to say it’s been an incredibly long time since my last update… Over a year, in fact. I swore to myself at the end of last year that I’d be more consistent with updates for 2023 (starting with “Loitering in the Closet” — and yes, I still plan to do that episode). But scheduling hurdles for planned episodes got in the way, and then, with news of a bill to ban caste discrimination in California, my time and attention snapped onto covering that issue.

I had already wrapped up my production work on an audio documentary about caste in Silicon Valley for The Documentary podcast on the BBC when Seattle became the first city in the U.S. to ban caste discrimination. Cue me crouching in the closet to re-track that narration so we could include it in the BBC story. Then, California state Senator Aisha Wahab announced SB 403, a bill that would clarify existing California civil rights laws to explicitly ban caste discrimination as well. Cue more re-tracking.

By the time The hidden caste codes of Silicon Valley (as we finally called the BBC story) was finally released, there was a ton of attention on SB 403. And suddenly, here was this audio documentary with me interviewing Dalits and asking people somewhat uncomfortable questions about caste in front of an Indian grocery store. Suddenly, I found myself going on podcasts and news shows to talk about the issue and the significance of the bill, as well as actively reporting on the ground in Sacramento as meetings on the proposal drew intense crowds of supporters and protestors.

You may have heard that California Governor Newsom recently vetoed the bill after it was passed by a majority of the California State Legislature. However you feel about that news, it seems pretty certain this issue isn’t going away. If you’re interested, you can hear me wax on about my reporting on Here and Now, Our Body Politic, KQED’s The Bay, The Grand Tamasha, Forum on KQED, KALW and Vox’s Today, Explained. I also wrote and reported this story about the bill for Mother Jones. This was all before Newsom’s decision, by the way, so there’s definitely more to report and say.

That’s an update on what’s been preoccupying my energy recently, but that’s not necessarily the point of this post. I very well realize that as I write, a conflict is raging in Israel-Gaza that’s scary, heartbreaking and devastating on multiple levels. And that people are very afraid and hurting. It’s a grim time. And I say/write this as someone relatively distanced from the situation. I can only imagine how this is impacting Israelis, Jews, Palestinians and others for whom this hits closer to home. There is a lot to absorb about what’s been happening. I found this one of the more insightful pieces I’ve come across, as it doesn’t lose sight of the necessity of managing complexity in this moment.

Now, onto expanding upon the Loitering interview embedded in this post. It may seem frivolous in comparison to the previous discussion. But I actually find it quite beautiful and meaningful on top of being funny and silly. And that is the Merylthon.

The Merylthon is/was a “unique 3-day film marathon featuring Meryl Streep in 8 iconic film roles.” It was the brainchild of my good friend Evan Roberts, who orchestrated the event after it first started out as a fun pun back in 2006. The point of the actual Merylthon was not just to finally bring the concept to life, but to also fundraise for Queer Life Space, a Bay Area organization that offers evidence-based training and mental health services for the LGBTQIA+ community.

I went to the showing of The Devil Wears Prada at San Francisco’s Four Star Theater during the Merylthon only to find an original Guess Who game featuring Meryl…

… as well as a ton of original paraphernalia and promotional items (see the video).

Sadly, I missed the drag performances because it took so long to find parking (poor time management on my part). But I did encounter original “Meryl cocktails” and, as you heard in the interview, “she-devil” cake. Evan even created a promotional video featuring real-life Meryls!

All this to say, the Merylthon was inspiring. As another friend put it, it was a “beautiful, hilarious, whacky, wonderful, creative idea.” And as Rodrigo told me in our interview, our communities need more events like a Merylthon.

Congratulations to Evan and the rest of the Merylthon team!

Until next time…

Peace,

Sonia

P.S. If you’re curious to know more about She-Devil, here’s the original trailer.

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Hello, everyone… So it’s been quite some time since the last episode of Loitering. Some helpful information you should know to understand this current episode is that at the end of last year, I started teaching at Uncuffed, a podcast and audio journalism training program in California prisons. That work recently brought me and my colleagues (including several formerly incarcerated producers of Uncuffed) to Norway. More information about that when you listen to this episode! The person you’ll hear is Tommy Ross, who goes by Shakur, and it was recorded on June 16, 2022, in the lobby of Oslo’s Hotel Verdandi. Shakur wanted to send along some pictures for this episode, so here they are below. You’ll understand these moments when you listen. :)

Shakur and Ninna (who you’ll hear about during the episode) at the FedEx facility:

Shakur at the San Francisco International Airport:

Shakur running into Eli (who you’ll also hear about during this episode) in Amsterdam:

Some members of the Uncuffed team visiting Halden Prison in Norway:

Me, Ninna and Shakur at Oslo City Hall:

Shakur in Norway!

Shakur being interviewed by Angela (who you’ll also hear about during this episode) the morning after we recorded this interview:

If you’re looking to understand more about why Californians are interested in Norway’s prison system, have a listen/read to this piece from KQED (which features Isiah Daniels, who also has a cameo in this episode of Loitering)!

Some other updates from me: Earlier this year a piece I reported for the BBC World Service profiling the Ethiopian American writer Meron Hadero aired/published. You can have a listen to that here. And a piece I’d been working on for some time about caste in Silicon Valley came out in March and was featured in the April issue of WIRED magazine. You can read that here.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit loitering.substack.com

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Hello, everyone! It’s been a long year, to say the least. Hard to believe 2021 is about to close. Before it does, however, please check out this special episode of Loitering, featuring Albert Samaha, Johana Bhuiyan and Arvin Temkar. We discuss Albert’s new book, Concepcion, and dig into the process of excavating family history and identity. I like to think of it as the good thinking, good listening podcast we could use for our ears right now! Let me know what you think.

Peace,

Sonia

Sonia Paul 0:13

Okay, thank you both for agreeing to join me for this book club/book talk about Concepcion, by Albert Samaha. And so before we like get into the book discussion, could you each introduce yourselves so listeners know who are friends of Loitering right now? Sure.

Johana Bhuiyan 0:34

I am Johana Bhuiyan. I am a tech reporter and editor at The Guardian. I live in the Bay Area. I'm half Filipino, half Bangladeshi. That's pretty much the pertinent information.

Arvin Temkar 0:48

Oh, that's super cool. Yeah, we're all half. We're all mixed. That's really interesting. So my name is Arvin Temkar. I am a freelance photojournalist and writer in Atlanta. And I used to live in the Bay Area. So a lot of the book was really interesting to kind of learn about the history of San Francisco. And I met Sonia in the bay,

Sonia Paul 1:08

And to Arvin's point about all of us being mixed, I think that is interesting. All of us have a connection to Filipino culture. My mom's side of the family is born and raised in the Philippines. They're like mixed Indian-Filipino from the Philippines. So there's so much of that culture in my family as well.

So to that end, I'm curious because how this started is that I knew Arvin would be reading this book, and I was interested in reading this book. And then I was like, let's have a book club. I know who was probably reading this book as well. And that would be Johana. But also, like, let's pinpoint what was compelling each of us to read this book.

Johana Bhuiyan 1:47

I worked with Albert at BuzzFeed. So that was part of it, part a lot of it was just in support of. But I also I mean, I am really interested in my Filipino culture and learning more about the history of the Philippines. There was a lot of like, wanting to learn a little bit more about my Filipino ethnicity. My dad is the Bangladeshi one. I grew up largely culturally Bangladeshi. So I learned how to speak Bangla. Like, I really don't know a ton of the Tagalog. So honestly, any opportunity I get to learn a little bit more about Filipino culture and people who have Filipino backgrounds. And obviously, Albert, knowing him personally, I was really interested in, and he had done a couple of articles too about his mother. And I was actually hoping to read a little bit more about that as well.

Sonia Paul 2:30

Yeah, did you to have a chance to like, exchange information or experiences about being half Filipino?

Johana Bhuiyan 2:38

No, I honestly, like did not know that. He was half Filipino. I like did not know what ethnicity he was. Until he started writing about his Filipino mom. I'm like, Oh, this makes a lot of sense, based on his name. Like, I'm like, this all started to click for me. But yeah, I'd never put two and two together. We had like, talked about it after I stopped working on Buzzfeed. But it was never like a topic of conversation.

Sonia Paul 2:59

Hmm, interesting. How about you, Arvin.

Arvin Temkar 3:02

I also know Albert, we're friends. And we went to journalism school together. So obviously, I want to support him and his brilliant writing. But you know, I'm also just super interested in all of the topics that he writes about, particularly in this book, the question of whether his family or anybody's family is better off moving to the United States and kind of pursuing the American dream, as many of us have been raised to believe. I didn't mention this earlier, but my mom is Filipino, and my dad is Indian. But I relate mostly to my Filipino side. And I think that's because I learned my mom's language when I was little. I have a lot of cousins in the United States who are Filipino, my mom cooked food from her country. And I didn't really have that same experience on my dad's side. It was kind of interesting also to kind of read the book and learn a little bit about Albert's dad, but also kind of recognizing that he seems to really identify particularly with his Filipino side. I think I have a similar experience.

Sonia Paul 3:59

Yeah, I was also really intrigued to read this book because I feel like I haven't come across many books about Filipino identity and culture from like a second generation experience. Also super interested in that critique, as Arvin mentioned, of like, is it a good thing that people chose to immigrate to this country. And also the experience of coming from a half identity or like a bicultural experience? And then writing about that diaspora community or about that immigrant community? I just don't feel like we have a lot of that in literature at this moment. And so one of the things I was thinking about when reading this book is that considering that he's examining his own Filipino identity and acknowledges he grew up with that side of his family and really embraces that, how did that portrayal resonate with you?

Arvin Temkar 4:51

I thought it was really interesting that Albert describes kind of this black and white dichotomy in our culture, and kind of questions where other people fit in, particularly if you're Filipino. And the part that resonates with me in the book in regards to your question is, he kind of does this cultural analysis of this movie called The Debut, The Debut.

Sonia Paul 5:16

Yes!

Arvin Temkar 5:17

And where the main character kind of falls, how that relates to his experience. And I guess Albert relates a lot to Black culture, and the character in that movie seem to fall in with white culture. And he kind of compares and contrasts these experiences. And I really did that personally, because I've always felt like I have kind of related more to the white culture, but had noticed in my school that it felt like many of the Filipinos were relating more to Black culture. So it's always been like just a weird dynamic. And I think partly that might be because I moved around a lot when I was a kid. And I didn't have many other Filipino friends, until I got to like, MiddleSchool AND high school, where I was on an army base, and there were a lot of Filipinos,

Johana Bhuiyan 6:03

I mean, I was gonna ask you where you grew up, because I think that adds a lot of context, you know, whether you identify more with white or Black culture as a person of color. I mean, that was something similar, but I thought was interesting in the book. And it's something that I think about quite a lot. Because I do feel like speaking of the lack of representation, or a lack of any kind of narratives about what it's actually like to be Filipino, I think growing up without that, you basically are forced to choose between white and Black culture, because what is a second-generation Filipino culture? What does that look like? Or what is brown culture look like? You know, we just didn't have a very real concept of that. I mean, I grew up in Queens, New York. And so I definitely, I moved more toward Black culture. But I think I also felt more accepted by Black culture and much more comfortable. And so it is interesting to me that while Albert, he felt closer to Black culture than white culture, his family kind of took on and accepted a lot of sort of the white stereotypes, white expectations, kind of saw whiteness as — whether or not it was a net positive — accessing that whiteness, or that closeness to whiteness would be the thing that provided them a lot of opportunities. In order to progress in American society, they needed to accept whiteness, which I think is pretty true of a lot of my immigrant family. Right. Like, I think that that was sort of the same thoughts that they probably had. That the closer you get to the white standard, or the white way of living, the more successful you actually are. I think all of that kind of rang true for my experience as well.

Sonia Paul 7:36

Yeah, I mean, I thought it was really smart that you mentioned, it depends where you're growing up, what a culture would identify with black culture, or white culture, if those are the two dominant cultures, because reading this book, so much of it takes place in the Bay Area. So so much of it is familiar for me, because I am from the Bay Area. And in the Bay Area, like growing up kind of the same generation as Albert, it is kind of, in the areas that we grew up, we're growing up around a lot of other minorities, right. So I feel like in my elementary school days, there was maybe like, one white person. And then he actually left in like seventh grade. It was just like all these other kids. And so like, kind of hip hop culture was the dominant culture. Um, just the way we spoke and interacted with the culture. It never felt like whiteness was something we were trying to aspire to, per se. Because it was never sold to us as the thing that we needed to aspire to. Like, you know, we had multicultural days, and sort of like what you call like, crab beads, but we didn't always have crab, sometimes we'd have like Filipino food, because that was like the population that was around and was interested in that. So that was really striking to me.

But also, you know, this book is also examining colonialism and imperialism. And I'm curious how you thought of the way that book related those structures, concepts to this aspiration of whiteness, or this idea that being closer to white was like a good thing versus Black culture was more transgressive. If you have any thoughts about that.

Johana Bhuiyan 9:13

I loved the way that he drew it back to colonialism in the Philippines, because I think people don't really think about how it's impacted the way that Filipinos exist today and the culture and the things that we've just accepted. Like, I have recently been thinking a lot about it because my mom is a nurse, and my tita, my aunt, was a nurse who passed and COVID because she was working on the frontlines. And so I've been trying to like, understand their paths to nursing, and why they chose those paths, and just how like, the way that they started on their disparate paths impacted where they ended up. And a lot of it goes back to colonialism. Like, so much of it goes back to the fact that Americans, when they colonized the Philippines, created western hospitals, brought western medicine there in order to help their like, uncivilized brown brothers and sisters, I forgot what exactly it's called, like beneficent colonialism or something like that, like we're gonna save our fellow Catholic brown brothers and sisters, but they are so backwards that we have to like, read their entire health care system of whatever medicine that they were using, remedies and things like that, that they had. And they basically put into the system and put into the minds of Filipinos at that point forward, that Americans were superior, and the American healthcare system is superior. And then they started creating schools for Filipino nurses to learn about the American health care system. And then that's why all of the nurses come to America — not only that, there's a lot of other reasons, but they basically are only trained in western healthcare. And so they essentially created this pipeline. And that is years and years ago, and obviously, my mother was not alive then. And my aunt wasn't alive then. But it so impacts the way that they came to America. They were still taught years later that America was the land of opportunity, that they literally could not be successful or make as much money as they need to unless they went to America. It's just so deeply, deeply intertwined. And it has such a resounding impact for generations and generations. And I absolutely loved how he started with just the way that the Philippines even was created and formed. I'm like, all that matters so much. Like you said, I don't think there are a lot of books that delve into what it's like to be a second-generation Filipino. But I think even more, so there aren't books that tie that to the colonial context. Like there's generational trauma. There's also generational, you know, influences on the way that we think and the way that we operate globally.

Sonia Paul 9:35

Yeah. And also, it's quite interesting what you said about Filipino nurses because they also became the go-to population to help the United States when there was a nursing shortage here, like around World War Two. And it's because the United States did go into the Philippines and influence that system of education, the fact that it was an English speaking country. And even now, like there was a story I did earlier this year about this second-generation Filipino nurse reckoning with the idea becoming a cultural stereotype by going into nursing. So it's not even just sort of an immigrant tradition, because so many of the people are born and raised here. But to what extent has that history of immigration and colonialism sort of stayed within the family? Yeah, like, Arvin? I'm sorry, did you have anything that you wanted to add?

Arvin Temkar 12:30

Well, one of the details that stuck out to me was the story that Albert told, I think it was one of his family members, maybe, reciting the Gettysburg Address. And that just surprised me because although I'd known about the colonial history of the United States in the Philippines, I didn't know the details of the education system, and of what people were learning. And in my trips to the Philippines, although I've kind of witnessed western influence in western culture, as I've seen all around the world, I didn't really understand, I think, the depth of American influence, like rooted in how people are educated, what their values are from that education, and what kind of ideas are formed in people's minds about themselves and about the United States and about their governments.

Arvin Temkar 13:17

I have something else to say about the memoirs, I feel like Albert, as a journalist, you know, a journalistic technique, I guess, is you find a character, and you create a narrative and use that character to talk about larger issues. And in this book, it seems like Albert just reported himself and his family, really in-depth. You know, he makes himself the character. Which makes it a little bit different from a traditional memoir. I guess, you're still doing reporting in memoirs, you might read like more creative nonfiction memoirs, but you're also I think, taking a lot of creative liberties. Whereas in this book, it feels very straight. And you can kind of see where interviews happen, you can see where details come from, whether they come from things that his family members have written or his conversations with them. So I think in that sense, you know, it feels more like a reported book than a creative memoir.

Sonia Paul 14:12

Yeah, that's interesting, because that's actually a question that I have for Albert is like, how did you go about interviewing your family members and really putting this history together? Especially since I think excavating family history can be really contentious, depending on who you're talking to. And a lot of it is just invisible or forgotten too. And I'm curious, what are some questions you have for him either about his process of putting the book together or what the outcome has been or anything else that comes to mind?

Johana Bhuiyan 14:42

That was actually one of my questions too, like one. How did you approach your family about potentially writing about them and interviewing them and putting this out in the open. I can tell you right now, my family would disown me if I put any of their dirty laundry out there like that. It would not be okay. It would definitely not fly, and he was so honest about his perception of like, so many things that his family members did and their positions and all of that, and I just love my family to death. I could never be that honest, like ever. And so that was a huge question of mine.

Johana Bhuiyan 15:12

And then I'm really interested in the interviewing process, when there's a reason why journalists typically don't interview people that they're close with, right? It's difficult to one, get maybe, sometimes getting them to take you seriously is hard, but also two, how do you cut through your own personal dynamic with them in order to get like the truth of the matter? I think all of that is so so fascinating. And you know, he's telling these stories about his uncles in this band, and like sitting around the table drinking, I'm like, what was that reporting process like? And, and — I assume all of its true, but it has to be difficult to like, stick just to the truth when you're trying to put a family history like that together. How do you like separate fact from fiction when it's like, oh, these are my family's tales. You know, this is the narrative they tell about their life and so like, what's true and what's not? And how do you figure that out as a journalist?

Sonia Paul 15:59

Yeah, I think that's a smart question to like, so many families have their own mythologies about who they are and how they came to be. Yeah. What about you, Arvin?

Arvin Temkar 16:08

I'm really curious about — maybe this is in the end, which I didn't see. But whether his mom has read the book, and how she feels about it, because the descriptions of her come off as like so loving and tender and caring, but also concerned, and feeling like there's this huge gap between the realities that mother and son see. And all of the reporting and even the kind of political analysis and cultural analysis that Albert makes, seem to be conclusions that his mom and the sources his mom gets information from would not agree with. And I'm just really curious as to how she read that, if she read that, and how that affected the relationship.

Sonia Paul 16:53

Yeah, I mean, as we wrap up, is there anything else that comes to mind that you think would be relevant for this discussion? Or you think the listeners ought to know about your thoughts on this. I'll just go first of all, I feel like I made a mistake when I talked about my childhood experience, because there were a couple of white kids in my elementary school class. But it is — there's very vivid memory of a male classmate who was really like, a very sweet classmate. And our teacher talked about how sad it was that he left our class. And he was like, one of few white kids. So I'll add that. Anything else?

Arvin Temkar 17:27

Yeah, to your point, I'm curious about other people's experiences growing up, if people have this experience, as it seems like all of us do, of being in schools that are incredibly diverse. I guess, in my early childhood, that was not the case, because I was in rural Illinois. But then I moved to this army base in Japan, which was made up of just all kinds of different people. And my high school was so diverse, and it felt like being in the Bay Area or Queens or something. So that aspect of Albert's book is super relatable, but I don't know if other listeners or readers will have that experience.

Sonia Paul 18:02

Yeah, I think also just the influence of class in that experience to have growing up or not growing up around a lot of minorities.

Johana Bhuiyan 18:11

Yeah, I initially grew up in Queens, but eventually moved to Long Island. And I feel like the story that's always told us like, I brought my smelly, you know, ethnic food to the lunchroom and people didn't like it. Like, it's so funny. Like, I consistently hear from people who grew up in the Bay Area that it just like, was not the case. Like, all my friends brought in chicken adobo. So nobody, like had an issue with it.

Johana Bhuiyan 18:31

But yeah, I think that, like all immigrant stories, like class and race are really important. And it is interesting —like reading his book, it just does not read to me the same way that like other biracial or multiethnic half Filipino stories I've read in the past. It just reads like, like, Albert is telling the story of his life as a Filipino. You know, like, it doesn't read to me like this sort of mixed kid's story, which I think is like, you know, probably true to his experience, right? Like he and more identifies with that side of his family. So I thought that was super interesting. And I wonder if there's like any, like effort on his end, or any desire to learn more about the other side of his culture as well and what he's doing to do that?

Sonia Paul 19:12

Cool, yeah, I'll ask him! So thank you both so much for this book/talk book discussion, and I'll let you know how the conversation with Albert goes.

Johana Bhuiyan 19:23

Tell Albert we say hi.

Sonia Paul 19:25

Okay, I will! Thank you. Bye.

Sonia Paul

Do you often work on the weekend?

Albert Samaha 19:35

Yeah. Always.

Sonia Paul 19:37

Like for your day job or for like book projects?

Albert Samaha 19:39

Both, especially now that I'm an editor. There's a lot more weekend work because as a reporter, you kind of crash on a story, and then take some time off. But as an editor, there's always another story coming down the pipe. And you want to treat every story like it's the most important story in the world. So that means if the reporter is working on the weekend, I'll be working on the weekend, and I never want my reporters to feel like they're like oh, on island on their own, and they want to like, lead by example and make sure that they see how hard I'm working so that they know that like, excellence has the cost and the cost is putting in the hours.

Sonia Paul 20:11

Damn. Okay, so that's like so American of you to say.

Albert Samaha 20:15

Yeah. Well, or you could say it's very immigrant of me to say. Immigrant to America, capitalistic. Yeah, very immigrant of the capitalist age thing to say. Immigrant coming to the capitalist empire of me to say.

Sonia Paul 20:28

Yeah. man, I can't wait to talk to you more about these topics. But before I launch into like formal questioning, first of all, can you just introduce yourself?

Albert Samaha 20:36

Yeah, I'm Albert Samaha. I'm an author and inequality editor at BuzzFeed News. We're at Fly Bar in San Francisco's Fillmore district on Divisadero Street.

Sonia Paul 20:47

Is this bar special to you?

Albert Samaha 20:49

It's my go-to bar, whenever I'm in San Francisco. It's the closest bar to my mom's place. I guess, now, there's a couple bars that are closer, but those are new. But when I lived here, this was the closest bar. It was just dependable. It's also the only bar open before five around here. So it's very convenient for day drinking, which I love to do. I mean, I spent a lot of time in San Francisco. And I'm a big remote worker. I like to structure my life in such a way that I can be just as productive, whether I'm home in New York, or anywhere, because that just gives me freedom to be where I want to be.

That was one of the cool things about moving to New York, is I grew up in California, you sort of live your life year-round. But in New York, a place with four seasons, your life is much more structured around kind of the natural turns of the earth.

Sonia Paul 21:33

Oh, wow, that is so true.

Albert Samaha 21:35

When I first moved to New York for grad school was when I was like, okay, what are you doing Thursday, and people pull up the phone, see, like, well, let's see what the weather's gonna be like, on Thursday. I'm like, oh, s**t, we got to do that. Versus here, just like, um, what? What are you doing Thursday? You know?

Sonia Paul 21:47

Yeah.

Albert Samaha 21:48

Let's do it. But I kind of like that, you know, I think my memories are often tied to particular seasons. And it also forces you to sort of readjust your routines. And I believe there's like a season for everything. Nothing's permanent, and the sort of cycles of seasons. So it creates this balance and order that I think my life might not otherwise have, if it weren't for the seasons.

Sonia Paul 22:10

But your book. It's like not in New York, for the most part. It's in California.

Albert Samaha 22:15

It is a California book, for sure.

Sonia Paul 22:18

Also, sorry for our Loitering audience, but we're outside. And so some cars are driving by, just let them do their thing.

So you mentioned right as I arrived, that you were reading this book that you wanted to read as you were writing the book, but you were Philippine'd out. So what does it mean to be Philippine'd out?

Albert Samaha 22:38

There are so many books written by Filipino authors, which is great. And it allows you to not have to worry about representing the entire diaspora, and just telling your own story. But I read like 50 plus books, in research for my book. And I guess like, when you're so deep in that rabbit hole of like a particular subject, you start to hear echoes from one book to the next, of kind of the same ideas. So this is an amazing book, Insurrecto. And it deals with the Spanish American War, and how we remember it. But also, I read like, three books about the Spanish American War. It feels like oh, man, I don't know if I can fully appreciate a novel about the Spanish American War. After reading like 1000 pages about the Spanish American War, I felt like I needed a little bit of time to like, decompress and process. Also, it's just a time issue. Like, I still have a dozen books I'd like to read that obviously won't go into the book I've already published, but will add to my general edification of the subject of colonialism in the Philippines. So it's kind of like playing catch up.

Sonia Paul 23:41

Yeah. Okay. So I really want to talk about these ideas, like colonialism, empire, imperialism. Like all these ideas, were they in your mind when you set out to write this book that was in many ways, a memoir, but not like a full-on memoir? Because there's so much history? Or did those ideas come to mind as you start reading more?

Albert Samaha 24:03

I think the seeds of them had already been planted. I had been thinking about colonialism and empire even before I began the process of writing the book. But I don't think I fully appreciated it at the time, how central those would be to the themes of the book. I knew it'd be a book about family, I knew it'd be a book about immigration, and it would be a book about America, and its relationship with the Philippines. But colonialism and empire were still very much abstract topics to me. Like now when I speak of colonialism and empire, I speak of it with a lot of confidence. And what I like to think of like, the depth of knowledge, and I sort of can, you know, tell you like six degrees of colonialism. Like mention something, an act or an event and I'll tell you the colonial impact of it, right. But I didn't know enough about the history of those words, those ideas, to be able to say what they would mean for the book, or or how they would manifest in the book, or even that they would sort of be the defining buzzwords of the book.

Sonia Paul 25:08

So if you didn't know what they would mean for the book, what in that abstract way did those words mean for you?

Albert Samaha 25:15

They meant an abyss of history. They meant a history that I didn't think enough about. They represented the abstractions of a history that I hadn't yet considered was intentionally erased by colonizers. But just the history that wasn't present in my mind. I mean, like, the term like colonial mentality is one that I have been using since like high school, you know? Yeah,

Sonia Paul 25:39

Like, what's your first memory of using the phrase colonial mentality?

Albert Samaha 25:43

I would like, say to my mom, whenever she would say anything that I found, like, elevated whiteness, or denigrated Blackness, or like not wanting to teach me Tagalog, or those sorts of things. I would be like, oh, that's just colonial mentality. You know, I'd say when my friends, I would cite it often. So to me, what it meant, what colonialism meant, was purely the act of elevating whiteness over our native heritage. So it was purely this act of replacement and erasure. But what that meant and how that actually played out, I didn't really think about and I didn't have the tools to be able to unpack. It was purely a buzzword. I don't even know where I heard it. I couldn't tell you I first heard the term colonial mentality.

Sonia Paul 26:29

Well, yeah, I've definitely heard colonial mentality from a lot of like, diaspora communities of colonized countries, but you know, people ranting on Twitter, you know, right, right. I think someone has written some texts about colonial mentality and Filipino identity in relation to like, their psychology?

Albert Samaha 26:48

Yeah, I think E.J. David, yeah, wrote a book about that. Yeah. Right. (But then) Brown Skin, White Minds.

Sonia Paul 26:53

Yes. You know, this whole, like, coconut situation that comes across in many cultures. But I'm curious, just to go back when you were like thinking of first writing this book, what crystallized for you that Yes, I'm gonna write a book. And it's gonna encompass these ideas about colonial mentality, empire and my family? Like, was there some sort of experience in your life or tipping for you? Or was it something that had been growing and growing? And finally, you knew you wanted to do it, or you had the resources to do it?

Albert Samaha 27:25

I think the tipping point was around like 2016-17, I think was when it sort of dawned on me that my elders were roiled in financial struggles that were not temporary, but were just sort of reality. And I think that is what sparked the triggering questions for the project, which was like, wait a minute, if they're just going to struggle here, like, why did they come? What was what's the point of coming? Why? They've clearly sacrificed, right? It's cliche in the immigrant experience that the elder generation sacrifices for the benefit of the second generation. They just sort of take that for granted. But to see what that actually means, to see that the lives that they were living in the years when many of my friends' parents were retiring, and were in their nest eggs and moving the Florida and beach houses, my elders were still working, and still in debts and still struggling. It made me wonder, like, why did they have to sacrifice? What would it take to make the sacrifice worth it? And like, answering those questions is sort of like, you start looking back at each domino. And eventually you realize there's more and more dominoes that trace back and back and back and back. Until eventually, it becomes clear that the reason we are here, is because of colonialism. It's because we came from America, because America is the country that colonized the Philippines, and taught us English, and offered us visas, and is the most powerful country in the world, richest country in the world. The promised land that we aspire to and were taught was exceptional, and welcomes you with open arms and offers you endless opportunities to elevate yourself and more importantly, provide a means for upward mobility for the next generation. This entire mythology was spun over the course of that colonization effort. And I think there were a lot of things I took for granted and thought about is inevitable. That no longer seems so inevitable to me like wait, why America? Why did America become the empire? America isn't the first empire. Won't be the last empire.

Albert Samaha 29:37

So thinking about this moment of like, is America in decline, right. Post-recession, and this was around the time of like, the ascent of Trump. I think our generation, one of our earliest memories as kids was like 9/11, and then Katrina, and then the economic recession. Like, the first election that I could, like, vividly remember, was one with a guy with more votes didn't win, you know, like, we were have raised in this epoch of American decline in many ways. Like, born into an America that was very overtly not living up to the promises that we were taught. And it forced me to think about the long arc of history. Like, my elders were born into the age of American predominance. And that's how we came here. So the next question is, well, how did America rise? How did America build its power? How did America make it so that it became the country that all of us wanted to come here? And why is it not living up to the promises?

So it very much was a process of coming to the sudden realization that all of these expectations, all of these assumptions I had, didn't hold up. And the things I assumed were inevitable, were rooted in decisions, events, very tangible history. And it's sort of that moment when I realized how little I knew. And I think that was the joy of this book, is I sort of came into it with a pretty good oh, here's what the books about. And within months of embarking on the project, I knew that actually, I don't know enough to know what it's about.

Sonia Paul 31:11

Yeah. So when did you start to know enough to know what it was about? Like, how much recording, interviewing did you do before you got to that point?

Albert Samaha 31:24

It's a good question. When did it come together in my head? Lemme think about that... I think it was, like early 2019. I was reading this history book by Luis Francia, who's this historian. He wrote a history of the Philippines from the perspective of Filipinos. And it's a survey. And I knew my family's history, and then to sort of project my family's history onto this broader survey, and seeing oh, that's what the world was like when my great-great grandmother converted to Catholicism, or my great grandmother moved to Manila. And so I had all the interviews, I had all the family stuff early on. So once I saw the broad history, and I had the family history, it clicked into place. Where all of these decisions and outcomes in my family suddenly made a lot of sense.

Sonia Paul 32:23

Okay, so one of the questions I had was about how you actually approached your family, for interviews for this book, because if I were to just make a guess, if you knew that this book would be about interrogating concepts that are just truth to them, that yes, America is a land of opportunity. Yes, we come for a better life. Like, would they have maybe been more guarded? Or what are your thoughts on that?

Albert Samaha 32:54

Well, I didn't come to them with any big-picture ideas.

Sonia Paul 32:57

Okay. Yeah. So how exactly did you come?

Albert Samaha 32:59

I said, I just wanted to write a story about our family's history, and how we came here, how we ended up in America, and what our landing in America was like. And our family has a lot of pride in our family. And we know we have a lot of characters. So it was the easiest part of the project, you know, (really). Yeah, I mean, there was some like, aunties and uncles who like, were supportive, but didn't want to, like, put their thoughts out there. But the majority of folks I wanted to talk to, were more than happy.

Albert Samaha 33:22

I mean, I'm used to sources being, you know — I'm used to having to persuade sources, you know, in like day to day investigative journalism. So this was like the easiest sourcing experience I've ever had, because they love me, and they're proud of our story. And they wanted to share that story. So I got as much access as I wanted, I can call them whatever I want. I think it drew a lot of us closer together, because I probably should have been calling them more to begin with, and just gave me an excuse to talk to them much more regularly.

So I didn't come to them with any preconceived notions, or I didn't ask them big picture questions about well, how do you feel about the American empire? I asked him granular questions about like, what do you remember about your first day here? What did you eat? What are you wearing? Because I knew at the core, while I obviously wanted to have big picture thoughts and ideas about America and the world, I knew at the core of the book would live and die on to strengthen the family narrative, and that it was important that I fleshed out those characters, those stories as vividly as possible. That whatever conclusions I came to, I didn't know yet. But I did know that there would be a strong, tightly wound narrative around these characters.

Sonia Paul 34:25

Yeah. And so was it more telling them that you were going to write this book or asking them if it's okay for you to write the book.

Albert Samaha 34:32

I kind of just told them. I mean, I've written about family stuff before. I mean, I also felt like, well, it's also my story to tell, like, I didn't feel I needed to ask permission, maybe to tell their individual slices of it. But to the degree that it's a memoir, I cannot tell my personal story, without the stories of the people who influenced me most, which are like my family. And it was never really a question. I never got any pushback. I never got any doubt or skepticism about why I was doing this project, everyone sort of saw the merit in it, and was happy to help. Which I know is not the case for a lot of people writing about their families.

Sonia Paul 35:07

Yeah, you know. So before I came here to talk with you about the book, I actually talked with two other people. We had a kind of like book club discussion about your book. And there are people who know you have questions for you too.

Albert Samaha 35:19

Cool.

Sonia Paul 35:20

Arvin Temkar

Albert Samaha 35:21

My guy.

Sonia Paul 35:22

And Johana Bhuiyan.

Albert Samaha 35:23

Ah, my other — my gal, my gal. Two of my favorite Filipinos.

Sonia Paul 35:27

Yes! We were talking about your book in relation to family and identity, and also kind of being from a bicultural experience too at that, even if Filipino identity is very central to that. But one of the questions Johana specifically had was like, your family is so familiar with you. Right? So how do you cut through that familiarity to actually get to the truth in an interview and separate fact from fiction? Because did you ever get the feeling that maybe, you know, they were just telling you mythologies of the family, or just family tales that have been massaged over the years to become true, but not like, truth with a capital T as in fact, this really happened?

Albert Samaha 36:15

Yeah, I mean, I think my journalism background is helpful for that, because I just inherently come into a project or reporting process, skeptical to begin with, right? And so anytime anyone tells me anything, my instinct is, well, how can I verify this? Is there another person who was there I can talk to, did they say the same story. And so I kind of took that into account when I was interviewing people, I would ask them about other stories I heard from other people. So to the degree that I could, I verified everything with multiple sources, every anecdote, every detail. And when I couldn't, I would make that clear in the book. And on occasions where there was conflicting facts, then just lean into it. Like one of the most prominent cases in the book was when my auntie told me that my grandmother had come on a tourist visa, overstayed it, and was here on this very street. She was living on a house that my mom lives in now that my great grand-aunt used to live in, in like the 70s. And my grandmother's green card had expired, when she'd gone back to the Philippines in like the late 60s. When she came back to the US, story goes, she came on a tourist visa. She expires, she's undocumented, or out of status, I guess is the term, and not really sure what to do. And then she's here — the Fillmore was like a very different place back at the time, it was like high crime, broken streetlights, a lot of desperate people around. And one day her and my grand-aunt were walking from the bus stop back home after work. And they get mugged by a guy with a gun, steals her purses, and leaves. Police come and police are like, oh, what was in the purse. And my grandma was like, my green card. And well, but she didn't have a green card. So a few weeks later in the mail, she gets a replacement green card. And suddenly she's valid again. And like, so the story goes, right? And I love this irony of America pushes us into this neglected corner of its empire only for that very neglects to lead to our legitimacy.

Albert Samaha 38:16

But then I brought up my mom, she's like, I don't think that's true. It's an entirely different, like, grandma would never not follow the rules. And like, I never heard that story from grandma, I think she was legitimate the whole time. So like, I did a public records request for my grandmother's immigration file, I got it, read through it, it could neither confirm nor deny the fable. There was like clues in there that suggested it could be true. But there was nothing confirming that it could be true. And so I lay that out in the book, just as I would do in any investigative story, which is that here's what one side says. Here's someone disputing it. And here's the evidence that we have. But at the end of the day, we don't know. So my approach was to apply the same journalistic rigor to my family story that I would have with anyone else's story. And I sort of reported this with the same process that I would anything else except this time, the sources were my family.

Sonia Paul 39:13

You know, Arvin had commented that this book is not a traditional memoir, because in a lot of memoirs, people may take creative license to — to create truth that is true to them. Right? But this didn't go in that territory. And was that by intention, or did that just come out of the way you are approaching the book, by accident?

Albert Samaha 39:39

Both both. And when I say both, I mean that it's like, intentional in the way instincts are intentional. I didn't sit down and think which path am I gonna take? It was more like, this is how I know how to work. And I feel deeply uncomfortable writing anything that I don't know to be true. So to me, especially in this time of like, media mistrust, I just feel very uncomfortable, not being transparent with the reader or deceiving the reader. You know, I want to earn their trust, I wanna earn their credibility, and I prefer to over attribute. I think 20 year old me used to think that disrupted the flow. But to me now, it's like I'd much prefer to just be upfront with the reader and not try to hide anything from the reader.

Sonia Paul 40:20

You know, Arvin, and Johana and I were talking about, like, you know, Filipino experiences, multiracial experiences. And this book is really like, a Filipino experience. And your father, and that side of your identity kind of figures very sparingly. And I'm wondering, now that you've written so much about Filipino culture and identity, how does that make you think of this other aspect of who you are?

Albert Samaha 40:46

Maybe that'll be the next book? I think it's made me more curious, right? Like this exploration of my mom's side has made me all the more curious about my dad's side, right. But I went into this exploration of my mom's side already knowing a lot of this. I knew the characters, I knew the story. I researched and learned more details about them. But I knew the arc. So it was not so much this journey of discovery, so much as an exploration of a landscape that I had taken for granted, right? Yeah, kinda like when I first moved to San Francisco as an adult, this place I'd spent so much time and as a kid, but now I can drink and smoke weed. And the city took on a whole other tint for me. Versus I think the difference with the story of my dad's side is this black box. And it would be a journey of discovery, as opposed to an exploration of things that took for granted. So it'd be a totally different thing. But it definitely made me much more thirsty to know about that side. And I've already started asking questions, like I'm very curious about and I really want to learn about it. And it's fascinating history. And it's fascinating from a different side, because my dad's side is the story of a family that has maintained wealth over the course of generations and withstood the tides of history. In very prominent standing. Whereas my mom's side is one of constantly adapting to the new colonizers and withstanding setbacks at every stage of colonization, and gradually assimilating into the empires. It's a very interesting and useful and fascinating contrast for me.

Albert Samaha 41:08

So have your family members read the book?

A couple of them.

Sonia Paul 42:18

A couple?

Albert Samaha 42:18

Yeah, my mom has, my cousin has, one of my younger cousins has. My cousins are like more on it than the elders. They lived it, you know?

Sonia Paul 42:27

Yeah. So what is your mom think of the book, and how has interviewing her, having her read what you wrote about her, how has that affected your relationship?

Albert Samaha 42:38

Um, she liked the book, you know, she didn't love the way I characterized Trump. She likes to call them racist and sexist. It's definitely brought us closer. I think it helped me understand her more. It was kind of like me asking her about things that she had told me about over the course of our lives, and just sort of getting more details about them. So it didn't feel unnatural. It didn't feel different than conversations we had before. It just meant that we were talking more frequently, which I think is good for any relationship. I mean, I think it, it allowed us to reflect on things that we wouldn't have really reflected on if I didn't do this project.

Sonia Paul 43:16

She didn't like the way you characterize Trump. How did she feel about the way you characterized her?

Albert Samaha 43:22

I mean, she fact-checked it. She considered it accurate, right? I think there were definitely some things that she was like, well, we we have to we have to say this? Or can we frame this differently, right, the parts about like her financial struggles, no one wants their most traumatic moments to be like, plastered on a page. Fortunately, I've had a lot of experience navigating that with sources. Like most of the work I've done over the course of my career is plastering people's most dramatic moments on the page. And so it's a conversation I've had with many sources of making sure they feel in control of their own story, and not feeling like I'm imposing my own interpretation of their life without their inputs. So I wanted to make sure she always had inputs, and that if anything she wanted to change. I was open to that, right.

Albert Samaha 44:09

Whenever I write about anything, right, it was a victim of a hate crime, a victim of a sexual assault. I'll before publication, I'll run through all the details, especially the details that are sensitive. And I make sure that I presented in a way where they don't feel that I've taken their story out of their hands. And that it's a partnership. It's our story, not my story. And I applied the same tactics with my mom, and there was nothing where she was like, cut that and I was like, no, we have to keep it. Like, there were things that we compromised on. I thought her edits were useful and added useful context. But she was very supportive. You know, she's my mom.

Sonia Paul 44:45

Yeah. Now this book is done and out in the world. I mean, like, how are you feeling about it? Like now that it's finished, like was it we thought it would be, the final product?Did it receive the reception you wanted to? Like, what were your expectations, exactly? And how were they met or not met or exceeded, if at all?

Albert Samaha 45:09

They're definitely exceeded. I learned from my first book that expectations are unhealthy. Because for the first book, I had every expectation under the sun. And that first book, like it did well, like won awards.

Sonia Paul 45:22

Can you talk about your first book?

Albert Samaha 45:23

Yeah, it's Never Ran, Never Will. I followed for like, five years, this group of middle schoolers in Brownsville, Brooklyn, who play on this youth football team. Embedded in the community, and wrote this very, like very verite book about that community, and football and the role football plays in America as a mechanism for upward mobility, for those that have no options but to bash their heads together and risk permanent brain damage. Because in America, you get scholarships for football, but not for engineering, you know. And the unhealthy aspect of that release was I realized months later, looking back, like when you have every expectation, number one New York Times bestseller, Pulitzer Prize everything, right? I found myself, I was more focused on the things I wasn't getting the things I was getting. And like I would spend five minutes celebrating the wins, and five days dwelling on the defeats, and for three months, I was just kind of in that spiral. And eventually, I was like, wait a minute, this worked out great. You know, I have a book that I'm proud of, and people like, and they want to make a Netflix show about it. And like, (yeah, that's a big ass deal!) Yeah, I know, right? I know. But I was I was like, well, it didn't make a number one year, it was the number one New York Times bestseller. It didn't win a Pulitzer. And I was like, this isn't healthy. You know, these are things out of my control. And yet, I'm allowing him to dictate how I feel about something I should be very proud of, and that I put my heart and soul into.

So this time around, I had no expectation. I knew from the moment I filed it, this is f*g good. The best thing I've ever done. And if it's the best thing I ever do, I'm happy with that. And I know it's good. No matter how many people buy it, no matter what review, say, no matter if it doesn't want to single award. I know it's fg good. And I sort of had that piece. And so I remember, after we had like the final copy done. My editor was like, hey, you know, congratulations, I hope you're really proud. This is really good. My editor is Becky Saletan, and she's really wise and a genius. And I was like, oh, thank you, thank you. I'm already nervous about the reviews bla bla. And she was like, like, stop. Like, there's just peaceful moments between finishing the book, and the release, where you have no sales numbers, no reviews, no anything, no expectations, and you can just simmer in the accomplishments. And that really resonated with me, and really changed the way I approached the release. I was like, you know what, yeah, f*k that, you know, I'm proud of it. And nothing was gonna change that no matter what. And so I got like, two New York Times rave reviews. It was like, Oh, my God, it was like, it was coming in. And so every, like, I got a lot of good st, right, I got way more attention and raves than I imagined. It was everything I wanted for the first book. And I was much more able to appreciate it. Now, if that all happened with the first book, I'd be a f*g ae today. You know, like, you know, like, because if it had happened with the first book, I would have been like, well, of course, I'm the man. Of course, anything I write, will get this reception. But what I learned from the first book is that it's out of your hands. And not the things you want don't always come. So when they do come, like savor that s*t. And I've been savoring it the last three months, you know, so it exceeded my expectations, because I had no expectations. But it would have been an expectation you would have exceeded anyway. But it's all the more rewarding that I sort of just was proud of the art of it without being too worried about the sort of commercialization of it. And so when the commercialization st was positive, I was able to appreciate that a lot more. So that's my relationship with it now, is that I am like, incredibly overjoyed and happy with it. There's definitely great, particularly the reception amongst the Filipino diaspora. That's, that's the thing I'm really happy about because those are the people that would call me on my b**t because they know my story better than anybody else would. That was the audience I was most intimidated by. That was the audience I most wanted to impress. That was the audience I cared most about liking the book. And the reception both from Filipino people I knew, Filipino people I'd never met. Filipino people I only know from the internet. It was just so much support. That made me feel really proud to be Filipino and to be a Filipino with a platform who can use their voice to like, represent our community for younger Filipino writers. You know?

Albert Samaha 49:59

I once met Viet Thanh Nguyen.

Sonia Paul 50:01

And who is this person for listeners who may not know?

Albert Samaha 50:04

Viet Thanh Nguyen is a Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Sympathizer, amongst other novels and works. He's Vietnamese American. And he was a professor of a really good friend of mine, Anna Roth, former restaurant critic at SF weekly. So she knew him cuz he taught her at USC. And so she took me to a panel he was on. After the panel, I got to meet him, get a drink with him. It was like amazing. Love to meet my heroes and not make a fool of myself. Except I ended up making a fool of myself, because he told a story about how when he had like, first I think it was like Joy Luck Club, he mentioned when he first read it, he felt so proud to see members of Asian diasporas represented in books and literature. And after this, like drinks event, I go up to him and we're leaving. And I say, hey, you know, your book was like that, for me. Seeing you know, Southeast Asian culture and history represented on the page did that for me. And he called my ass out. He was like, well, there's a lot of Filipino writers out there. I don't remember the word for word, but. What he meant, what he intended to say, basically, the message was, if my book was that for you, as a Filipino, you're not reading enough Filipinos.

Sonia Paul

Yeah, ok, so who are the other Filipino writers that people ought to be reading because just talking with Arvin and Johana, too, we're just like, yeah, there's a few books that we felt that we had come across that talks about the second generation experience. Yeah, yeah. So maybe we just have these like, awful blind spots. Maybe we're ignorant.

Albert Samaha 51:29

Well, there are fewer second-generation experiences, right. I think the predominant second-generation one for me is Elaine Castillo's America is Not the Heart. The protagonist there is not second generation, the protagonist is first generation. But the protagonist comes to America and lives amongst second-generation Filipinos in a similar way to like Americana, where a Nigerian woman moves to the states for college and like, reflects on race in America from that perspective. It was kind of like that. But it was the first time that I had seen second-generation like, Bay Area folks represented, people I knew, people my cousins represented, on the page. But it is few second-generation perspectives.

Albert Samaha 52:06

But there are a lot of first-generation perspectives. And there's a lot of Filipino perspectives. So there's Mia Alvar's In Our Country, short story collection. There's Cinelle Barnes’ Monsoon Mansion, there's F. Sionil José Dusk series, which is kind of an epic series covering Philippine history, Gina Apostol's Insurrecto, which is the book I mentioned that I'm reading now. But these are all recent, these are all within the last decade. But I later learned from my friend Anna, that in Viet's class at USC, Jessica Hagedorn's Dogeaters was on a syllabus. And I think that is, in some ways, the godmother of contemporary Filipino literature.

Sonia Paul 52:50

Really, why?

Albert Samaha 52:51

It's from '95. So it's before this new wave of Filipino literature of all these kinds of contemporaries of mine, right kind of a generation prior. And it captured the Filipino ethos, in like a really original literary way. Where it kind of captured that moment of like post World War Two Philippines, the rise of dictatorship, the sort of clash between corruption, and this simmering colonial mentality of like reverential feelings for America, juxtaposed with the class divides, and all that. Really wonderful novel, very funny, and Filipinos are funny, and Filipinos love humor, and approaching traumatic incidents with light-hearted headspace. So that book is an example of like, I'd never read that book. And when I said that to Viet, I had not read any of the books that I'd mentioned at that point in my life. These are all existing in the ether, beyond my realm of knowledge. So part of the reason that I'm so proud to be able to tell a story of the Filipino community, Filipino diaspora is because I never want a young writer to go up to their hero and make a fool of themselves the way I did with Viet. Where it's like, there were voices out there that represented me that I just didn't know about.

Sonia Paul 54:10

Yeah, your book cites so many other authors and their exploration.

So this is great. Thank you. First of all.

Albert Samaha 54:19

This is really fun.

Sonia Paul 54:19

Yeah, this has been wonderful. To wrap up, can you tell me a little bit about the playlist?

T H E P L A Y L I S T

Albert Samaha 54:26

Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, I'm so proud of that. Since I first became a writer, I would always love to play whatever music captured sort of the atmosphere of the setting I was writing in. So I take a reporting trip to New Orleans and I listen to like, some brass band music. Second-line stuff, you know, I take a reporting trip to San Francisco and I'd play some like 60s hippie s**t, you know, do some reporting on New York and I'd listening to like Wu Tang and NAS and I was always about immersing myself in the world of my characters. So I did that with this book, and especially music is such a trigger for memory.

Sonia Paul 55:02

Yeah, totally. Like you have VST songs in there.

Albert Samaha 55:05

Oh, yeah. Well, yeah, I mean, that's that was the obvious one, right? When one of the characters makes music, you got to add it to the playlist. But a lot of the other songs were songs that were sort of definitive songs of both my childhood and just my narrative arc in the book, where there are songs that either were prominently placed in the book, or songs that in my head, I imagined as the backdrop. So those were the songs that I listened to, to trigger my memories, while writing the book.

Sonia Paul 55:32

Wow. So what's the song that's most appropriate now, for the completion of the book?

Albert Samaha 55:37

"Welcome to the party," by Bambu, which is the lead song on that Spotify playlist.

Sonia Paul 55:41

Yeah, so I thought that was meant to be the beginning song of the book. But that's the final song?

Albert Samaha 55:47

Yeah, well, it's the kind of the being of the end, right, because the book starts in 2018, loops into history, and then ends in 2020. So I would say Bambu is sort of the artist whose ethos captures the now. I mean, he is very much of the same, like aesthetic as the book, right, where he grew up very much influenced by Black culture in California, hip hop, but he shouts out Filipino history, more than any rapper that I've, like, listened to, obviously, I guess, and his way of sort of shouting out history without sort of fetishizing it, without sort of making it corny, or like an ode to the past, where it's like traditional hip hop, that sounds like some West Coast s**t, you know. And he sort of ties the knot between past and present in ways that I aspired for the book to do as well. And I think I ended up with some VST songs, just because that's sort of like this idea of embracing the past, respecting the past. And Spanky still plays those songs. I still see him performing all around the country.

Sonia Paul 56:54

What advice do you have for others who are curious to pursue delving into family history in the manner that you did? When it's not just that they want to find out family history, but they want to make a statement about their family history?

Albert Samaha 57:13

Well, that's the key, right is that like, I truly believe everyone's family story speaks to a greater truth. The challenge is finding out what that truth is, and what's fresh and interesting about it. That's the editor in me talking right, that you don't want to write something derivative, redundant, stale. So, the only advice I can give is, you don't have to come into it, knowing where it's going. And this is just general wider advice I get for people working on books, is that I like to spend like a year on a project before I even write a proposal. I mean, this the same thing, even to a smaller scale with like magazine stories I work on, which is that I kind of like to have somewhat of a sense of what the story is, what the shape is, before I pitch it. The thing with a family history. I mean, I encourage everyone, even people who aren't writers to just interrogate and investigate their own family history just for their own knowledge and edification, because someone has to do it. You know, every family should have someone chronicling their existence. We don't want stories to be erased, you know.

Albert Samaha 58:19

So I would say just like, start asking questions and talking to people. We don't know what the shape is, until we talk to the sources on the ground. So I'd say just do it. Don't overthink. And I think the only way to know what the story is is like not to come in with any preconceived notions of where to take your story. But just sort of see where does my family fit into the long arc of human history? What does our story say about the world? So I think that's the fundamental piece of advice. And I think the other part of it is like -- and this is just like a wider journalism piece of advice, is like, one of the challenges is like, figure out what to cut out. Because when you have access to so much of the information, instead of it being like, trying to find the pieces of the puzzle, it's like you have all the pieces of the puzzle, or 99% of it, and what are you going to omit? It's hard with families who feel close to it. And so it really is important to try to apply a detached lens. Not the whole time. You still want that intimacy to come across. But when you're writing about yourself, when you're writing about your family, it becomes a lot harder to figure out what is actually important and what is just something that feels important. Because one thing I found about mining my own memories, is that there were so many scenes memories that were very vivid in my mind. But then once I started trying to say like, well, what is like this vivid scene in my memory, which is very important to me. What did it actually mean for the character? That actually meant nothing? That actually didn't influence the characters’ decisions at all?

Sonia Paul 59:46

Yeah, but like, how do you then distinguish between what feels important versus what is actually important?

Albert Samaha 59:51

Narrative. Thinking about narrative. And thinking about like, if I were to write this character, what role did this scene have in this carry? Do I just want to write the scene because I remember it so vividly? But then there would be other scenes that I barely remember, or that I sort of chalked up as just like meaningless moments. But once I interrogated them, realize, oh, this was a critical moment. It was a turning point in ways I didn't appreciate until I thought about it. So distinguishing the meaningless but vivid memories from the sort of somewhat forgotten, but critical memories, I think, was one of the most difficult challenges in shaping the book.

Sonia Paul 1:00:30

Wow. Okay, is there anything else you want to say?

Albert Samaha 1:00:35

I think a lot and a little, you know, a lot and nothing, you know, like, I can talk about this all night. It's a relief to be done. I'm glad it's out there. And I think the thing I'm most proud of is like, I wanted to nail it. Like, this is obviously a very special story for me. And I didn't want to not do the optimal version of the story. Because you can only get one chance to tell your family story for the first time. And I think that was the most satisfying part. Because I felt they did right by this story that I had had in my head for so long.

Sonia Paul 1:01:05

Cool. Thank you so much for talking! (Yeah). Wait, one more question. What's your favorite VST song?

Albert Samaha 1:01:13

Rock Baby Rock?

Sonia Paul 1:01:14

Why?

Albert Samaha 1:01:16

Ah, it just f*g makes me bounce.

Sonia Paul 1:01:21

Well, okay, I have a little shpeal I'll say now then. (Yeah). So thank you for listening to Loitering, the occasional but lovable traveling minipod we are currently testing in newsletter format. Thank you for listening and have a great day. Goodbye!

Books mentioned in this episode:

Concepcion: An Immigrant Family’s Fortunes, by Albert Samaha

Brown Skin, White Minds, by E.J. David

Never Ran, Never Will, by Albert Samaha

America is Not the Heart, by Elaine Castillo

In the Country, by Mia Alvar

Monsoon Mansion, by Cinelle Barnes

Dusk series, by F. Sionil José

Insurrecto, by Gina Apostol

Dogeaters, by Jessica Hagedorn

Also, please check out this recent piece I collaborated on with photographer Wesaam Al-Badry: “Strangers no More.”

Subscribe at loitering.substack.com

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Hello! This episode of Loitering is a brief one, so no transcript. Hope you enjoy!

Here is a picture of the trees discussed in the episode. According to the app PlantSnap, they are Ceiba speciosa, otherwise known as silk floss trees.

From front to back: Breezy Treezy, Cheesy Treezy, and Weezy Treezy.

Here is a portrait of Latif with Breezy Treezy.

Listen to Radiolab here.

Listen to Latif’s award-winning podcast, “The Other Latif,” about a detainee at Guantanamo Bay who shares his name, and what 9/11 and the War on Terror have brought us 20 years later.

Check out Latif on the Netflix show “Connected” here.

Read this affecting piece by Niha Masih about covering India’s devastating surge of coronavirus while the pandemic also infected everyone in her entire family.

And check out “Dreamland: The Burning of Black Wall Street,” directed and produced by Salima Koroma, with Adam Perez serving as director of photography (and a host of other talented team members supporting the production, as is the case with most other podcasts and documentaries you consume)! Here’s some info on how to watch from the CNN Press Room: “Beginning Tuesday, June 1, the film will be available on demand via cable/satellite systems, CNNgo platforms, and CNN mobile apps. DREAMLAND will encore Saturday, June 5 at 9:00pm Eastern. HBO Max will offer the film for subscribers at a later date.”

Subscribe at loitering.substack.com

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Heylo!!! It’s been quite a while since the last episode… and now, 2021 is certainly upon us. There’s much to update on, but first, here’s an episode of Loitering recorded about a month ago… that stems from this article by Ruchika Tulshyan and Jodi-Ann Burey I read a couple of months before that, about a phenomenon that might ring a bell to many listeners — 🔥 imposter syndrome🔥.

As you’ll hear, there are burning flames around this term for a reason. Enjoy! Also, please scroll ahead to the links below the transcript for some updates from me. :)

Sonia Paul 00:11

Hello, everyone, welcome to Loitering, the occasional but lovable traveling mini pod I am currently testing in newsletter format. And today I am loitering with two very special guests. Can you please introduce yourself?

Ruchika Tulshyan 00:27

Sure, I'm Ruchika Tulshyan, I'm a former journalist. And currently, I write about gender diversity and racial equity in the workplace for Harvard Business Review. I also run an inclusion strategy practice called Candour.

Jodi-Ann Burey 00:43

Hi, and I am Jodi-Ann Burey. I'm a speaker, writer, I call myself a disrupter because we have to do things differently if we want to achieve social change. I speak and write at the intersections of race, culture, and health equity. I also created and host the podcast Black Cancer, which is about the lives of people of color told through their cancer journeys. Also have a TED talk titled “The myth of bringing your full, authentic self to work,” where I really try to disrupt what we think of how racism shows up in the workplace.

Sonia Paul 01:16

Cool, thank you both so much for making the time to talk. And the two of you both co-authored an article recently for the Harvard Business Review, titled “Stop Telling Women They Have Imposter Syndrome.” And I was just wondering, you know, first of all, can we just define what do we mean when we say imposter syndrome? Because I also feel like it has become a catch-all term for a lot of different things that maybe have the same source, and how are you defining it?

Jodi-Ann Burey 01:47

So imposter syndrome is defined as not having an internal sense of success, despite probably having what other people might call success, right. So whether it's the degrees that you've had, the accolades that you've had, you know, whatever area in your professional life where you are, quote, unquote, high achieving, that sense of achievement isn't felt internally. So the short for that is having this feeling like you're a fraud, or a high level of self-doubt in your, you know, whatever your work environment is, or whatever the context is.

Ruchika Tulshyan 02:25

And while feelings of self-doubt, and largely, you know, this, this diagnosis of imposter syndrome can really impact anyone where they may be doubting their self-worth, or their abilities or their successes, it definitely is much more prevalent in women, in terms of the way the research has been done. And it is also sort of a syndrome that's really, you know, placed upon women. And so often women get diagnosed with imposter syndrome, we're invited to a lot of events, women's events, conferences, where women are essentially being taught how to overcome their imposter syndrome. So even though feelings of self-doubt and feeling like, you know, maybe you question whether you belong in a place, or whether you really are a fraud, those feelings might be fairly universal by gender and race, there is a very gendered aspect to how it shows up in our society.

Sonia Paul 03:23

Yeah, and, you know, something that I was just like, very curious about is just this notion of being a fraud, and how essential that is to the definition of imposter syndrome, because I think — I personally think, for example, that there is a lot of maybe the influence of humility in fueling imposter syndrome, just, you know, women who wouldn't boast about themselves, who do acknowledge that they are successful, but maybe not to the extent that they should, and others don't validate them. And so I'm just wondering if that is part of our definition of imposter syndrome, or if that's something else, and if the two of you reflected upon that?

Jodi-Ann Burey 04:13

Yeah, I think what's interesting here is even as Ruchika was speaking before, with the sense of diagnosing and syndrome and all these medical terms, all of this is done and people can't see this because it's a podcast, but "in quotations," right, diagnosing them with this quote, unquote, syndrome. You know, and so I think what we are trying to speak to in the article is around the structural environment within which women and folks of color and other people who experience marginalization or underrepresentation, what that environment is doing to create these feelings or heightened feelings of self-doubt, because, you know, Ruchika and I talk about this, having a healthy level of self-doubt is normal, but to the degree that gets talked about and is explained within this concept of imposter syndrome, or of what you're saying where women, people of color, folks have other identities are also socialized to try to downplay their work and their worth and their value in some way. And, you know, we can all give examples of men-identifying people in our lives who do not do that, who take up as much physical space as possible, who take as much energy as possible, to boast about the work that we're doing. And we value that. And so I think what you're speaking to of this downplaying, and this concept of imposter syndrome is linked, in that the racism and sexism that exists in our culture is what creates — I think they're both byproducts of what bias looks like, in these, you know, micro-moments of our lives, and also in the decision making in our workplaces.

Sonia Paul 05:57

Right. And what led the two of you to do this research together? Was there like a tipping point in our cultural conversation? Or was there some sort of emerging research that came out that really pushed you to go in this direction?

Ruchika Tulshyan 06:12

Yeah, I think that's a great question. And I actually wish there was research that we could cite, because for a few people who might have felt, you know, like, this article was, you know, did not speak to them, or it did not speak to their experience. We did hear from, you know, we heard from some white women, we heard from some men who said, you know, I experienced imposter syndrome to when it's really unfair, or like this doesn't apply, you're talking about just women or women of color. But that's not been my experience as a non-woman or a non-person of color. And sometimes I wish there was research to, to say that, you know, there's a direct link between this very specific phenomenon of feeling imposter syndrome, and how that relates to experiencing sexism and racism in the workplace. The reality is, the link exists. And I think for any of us, or anyone we've spoken to about this topic, even some of the experts that we interviewed, there is definitely a link that I think the academic research needs to catch up to, in all honesty.

But I think the tipping point, if I really think about it, is indeed, Jodi-Ann and I often would talk about how we're invited to these events, or how we were expected to sort of address — both of us are professional speakers too — and often we would be asked to address this topic of, how do you overcome self-doubt? How do you overcome imposter syndrome? Or on the converse, how do you be more confident as a woman? And it was really grating against us, because I think both of us connected over the fact that we don't really identify with this term. And yet, we're supposed to keep addressing it in the various audiences, among the various especially female-identifying audiences we were supposed to talk to, or that conferences we were supposed to attend. And it was really grating at us, because what was a common experience that we both had, was experiencing sexism and racism in the workplace as women of color. And we really talked about how many of our feelings of not belonging or questioning ourselves were far more linked to those experiences of facing exclusion and bias, rather than this innate feeling that we were lacking, or that we were frauds or there was something in us that prevented us from reaching our full potential in the workplace.

Sonia Paul 08:32

Right. I mean, I also very much feel like that, too. I mean, that was one of the things that spoke to me about this article is that I think sometimes I ask people for advice, and I hear "imposter syndrome." And it seems like it's the right thing to describe, but maybe not, actually, like… And so uh. Well first of all, before we get into further questioning, can we like preface the study that first cultivated the use of this term? And actually how it was described as a phenomenon before syndrome? What was that study? When did it come out? And what should we know about the context to help us understand maybe some of the nuances behind what they were describing as this imposter phenomenon among women?

Jodi-Ann Burey 09:23

Yeah, I think that distinction between imposter phenomenon and imposter syndrome is really important, because we have the original study, and I want people to know that it is readily available online, you can read it just a couple pages long. And really understand kind of how this concept was birthed — it's one thing to have a study, and then how it's popularized and transformed at some point in our culture into a syndrome. I think that's the thing that we like to do to women, which is create medical diagnoses for the things that are happening in our lives.

What I'll say about the original study of what struck me about the study when I first read it, you know, a couple of years ago was it just felt so outside of how I heard people actually talking about it. So the way people understood the term and what was being described felt a bit distant.

Sonia Paul 10:14

So what was being described in the study, actually?

Jodi-Ann Burey 10:18

So, what struck me about the study is that it's a very small sample. I think it's maybe 200 participants. The greater majority of them are white, the greater majority of them were of upper middle class, upper-class echelons of our society, a lot of them were sourced from the university, as a lot of studies are. But what was also striking about that, too, is that because the authors are psychologists, a third of the participants, I think, were already in therapy sessions with them, or some type of group work with them. And so once I saw the sample, and how what they're experiencing were being described in this article — our culture has kind of generalized data that isn't generalizable. The sample is too small, it's too narrow. And the omission of women of color, the omission of other ways to understand "high achieving," right. So I think people understand high achieving as greater access to white and male spaces. And so if I'm in an environment that is more male and more white, I am successful. But people who have professions that are in female-dominated environments, and so I don't think there were any nurses, for example, that were a part of the study. They are also high-achieving in their industry or, you know, professions that are dominated by folks of color, right. Other communities were not part of that study. And so I think that resonated for me as to why the concept of imposter syndrome didn't make sense in my life.

Sonia Paul 12:00

Yeah. And I think also, one thing that I've been trying to figure out is that imposter syndrome as we discuss it today is often in white-collar professions. Can imposter syndrome exists for people who work like working-class jobs? Because they can be high achieving, too. And how should we think about that?

Ruchika Tulshyan 12:20

That's a great question, and I do really have to say that even the shifts come, you know, within me. I grew up outside the United States, that was a very clear sort of division between people who would have working-class jobs, and many of my family, and especially, you know, my ancestors did. And then there was this sort of belief that, hey, if you could cross that line, and if you can get access to, you know, a job or a profession where there are more white people and more men, that's actually the definition of success for you. Now, one of the challenges to that is, firstly, that's just, it's unfair, and it's untrue. Because at the end of the day, if you are a person of color, and if you are, for example, a woman like me, who grew up not, you know, seeing women like me in the workplace. You know, largely women in my family, and even in my friend circle growing up, were stay at home mothers, for example. So for someone like me when I entered the workplace with this, you know, sort of belief that oh, wow, I've you know, I've transcended sort of the opportunities I saw, I blazed a new path, I blazed a new trail, and then coming into the workforce and seeing and facing, you know, again, erasure of sexism, racism, you know, bias — really did remind me that actually, those feelings of not belonging and us focusing too heavily on, you know, white-collar workplaces, you know, and that as the definition of success, rather than, where can we create places and careers and opportunities where everyone feels welcome and where they thrive. Shouldn't that be our definition of a successful workplace? That really came to bear the more work I started to do around workplace inclusion and equity.

Sonia Paul 14:08

Right. And one thing that I want to also bring up as we get more into these nuances is just even the term “women of color.” I mean, I noticed in the article that there are a couple of places where you also talk about how it's a flattening term, maybe the same way we say POC, person of color. There's a reason why another term, BIPOC, has emerged. And you know, there's the influence of class within all of that. And I'm just wondering, to what extent is women of color an appropriate term to talk about all the various experiences that could be classified for the different experiences that women of various backgrounds could have? And I wonder how much negotiation went into that even as you were writing this article, too, since we're unpacking that here, but, you know, I know personally as a journalist, sometimes, for example, there's only so much I could say about some of these nuances within an article.

Ruchika Tulshyan 15:08

I can't wait for your response Jodi-Ann, because I feel like, have you and I even really talked about this in detail? Probably not. So this is, I don't know, I feel like this is a great time.

Jodi-Ann Burey 15:19

Yeah, no, this will be, this will be good. I think one thing I'll say is, in our email exchanges, as the article was being edited, we had some conversations about this. And so one of my major pet peeves when we talk about, you know, issues that are quote-unquote, women-focused, what we see is that when we talk about women of color, our experiences — when you talk about flattening, it only can exist as a parenthetical mention. So, you know, such and such and such women, comma, especially women of color, period, right. Or, you know, such and such, and such women, parentheses, even more for women of color, close parentheses. And what was really important to me, and I think we got into this when we were doing our edits on it, is that I did not want that. I wanted to center women of color. We think about imposter syndrome as a women's issue. And often in our culture, because of the legacy of the feminist movement, we have erased women of color in that, and women become synonymous with white women. And then comma, women of color. And so with this article, I thought it was a really great opportunity to write about a women's issue that actually centers women of color, and then white women, or what have you can extract what they can from it. We're also still talking about white women, we're talking about these, but we're centering women of color in that.

When I think about the terminology women of color, people of color, I think we need to expand the possibilities for "both and." And so as a Black woman, as a Black, Jamaican immigrant woman in the United States, I have a very unique experience. And that's also a very small community. We're all part of small communities. When I think about myself, when I get to declare myself as a woman of color, a person of color, that magnifies my people power. That means I have Ruchika with me, I have Sonia with me, I had whoever with me in that. And so I think that as a political designation, it's really critical to gather our people, to understand that we have a linked fate of racial marginalization and bias. And there are ways that we need to unite under that in order to get the things that we need and to create racial equity. And also, Black women, you know, Jamaican women, Indigenous women, South Asian women, you know, Latinx women, whatever, right. Then we can start teasing out our own experiences as smaller communities for the things that we need. And we need to understand that, you know, as Ruchika talks about her experience growing up outside of the United States, I can give space for that difference. And I can get excited about the differences in our experiences. And also, when it comes time, she and I are on the same page as women of color, who are advocating for the space that we need to seek, you know, racial equity within our life experiences.

Ruchika Tulshyan 18:32

So well said, I'm like, how do I add to that? I think everything you said is absolutely spot on. I get very worried about any movements trying to remove the terminology, women of color. It is deeply, deeply resonant with my experience. And I think I worry the most when I hear Asian women, especially Indian women, especially, you know, high socioeconomic and highly-educated Asian women saying things like, oh well, I don't identify with this term. And you know, I'm just a woman. And yeah, I've had, you know, experiences that other women and really what they mean in that moment is white women have in the workplace, but my race has not impacted my experience. And I get really worried when I hear that, right, because that's really living in the cloud, under the cloud of white supremacy that's giving in to anti-Blackness and actually perpetuating it. And so I think our liberation is uniquely tied in each of us recognizing the experiences that non-white women which is a term I don't use very often, but if you are a non-white woman, you are going to have specific experiences related to the intersection of your race and gender. I mean, when Dr. Kimberly Crenshaw in 1989 talked about intersectionality, she was centering Black women, but it always pains me when non-Black women of color talk about how their race does not impact their workplace experience. Because I think that's just disingenuous. And it actually further marginalizes especially Black women.

Sonia Paul 20:10

Yeah, can I ask that like, how often are you hearing that kind of pushback or feedback that people who would identify as women of color actually don't attach themselves to this term that is a political term for collective liberation?

Jodi-Ann Burey 20:27

If you want to see it, you can find it. The internet is a vast place, you can tailor your community, right. And so in my community of my social networks, in my in real-life networks, I don't see a lot of that. Every once in a while, as my internet footprint increases, I'm starting to see a little bit more pushback against BIPOC, pushback against people of color, women of color, because of what's been happening in the racial reckoning in the wake of George Floyd's murder, is that there has been an insistent push on the experiences that Black people are facing in the United States. And with you know, COVID-19, and the anti-Asian racism that's been coming up and the increased violence against Asian people, particularly Asian elders, then there's been another conversation about the experiences that Asian folks are having in the United States. And that gets teased down to different communities as well. And so I think that people are finding space to talk about the unique experiences that they're facing. And when they see concepts, when they see terminology, people of color, women of color, they experience an erasure in that. And I think we need to have that conversation. And I think that goes back to the "both-and" conversation of how do we use these terms strategically. As a political designation, it gets used sometimes, right? I identify myself as a Black person sometimes. And in some spaces, I increase, you know, the importance and the salience of my Jamaican-ness, right. They're all still a part of me. But I can leverage my identities in different spaces for different goals. And so I think that seeing that as a political designation is important. And also finding space to talk about the uniqueness of your own experiences. I think our culture is having a very public conversation about that right now. And sometimes those like, big public conversation is like a in-community conversation that we need to discuss, right. So that can make it a little bit challenging.

Sonia Paul 22:37

Yeah, I definitely hear you about all of this. One of the things that I was curious about, though, is when your article came out, it both seemed obvious, and kind of like, "it's about time," but also, like, from your social media profiles, I also gathered that people weren't necessarily responding the way you hoped. And I was just wondering if you could just discuss what it was like for the two of you when this article came out, and whether it met your expectations.

Ruchika Tulshyan 23:12

I mean, I would say that it far, far superseded my expectations. I mean, firstly, I'm a former journalist, and then I've been writing for Harvard Business Review for a better part of two years, nearly three years, by the time this article came out. And this is the first time I had that level of response, which — you know, when I was talking about it with my partner, he said, this is proof that if you want to go fast, walk alone, if you want to go far, you know, walk together. So, you know, he loved the article as well. And I think that collaboration just, just absolutely blew it out of the water. And just the feedback we got was just phenomenal. And actually, maybe the little bit of, you know, what you caught, Sonia, on, online might have been, you know, those off days where we're like, oh, I can't believe this happened or like, can't believe you know, troll got to us today, or like some silly person said whatever.

But by and large, the level of feedback was actually incredible. You know, so many women and even men, but especially women of color, wrote to us and said this changed their lives, it changed their relationship to this framing. It liberated them. I mean, some of the feedback we got was just, I mean, I think it'll stay with me for the rest of my life. So, for me, I'd say that it was life-changing for me as well. It was life-changing to collaborate with someone, you know, as brilliant as Jodi-Ann, and learn from Jodi-Ann's framing and work as well. And I'm honestly honored that we got to be part of this conversation and lead it. And now it has led to so many other micro conversations happening. I think Jodi-Ann and I will text each other like, "Hey, did you see this person is going to be talking about imposter syndrome. They're going to use our article as their framing, and they're going to have it in their own community." And that just, that's incredibly flattering and exciting, I would say.

Jodi-Ann Burey 25:05

Absolutely. I think this article has been both transformative for people, and also generative and be able to create things that maybe wouldn't exist before, right. Articles, conversations. You know, there's a group of — an alumni network, where folks were sharing that article around and talking about ways that they're going to advocate for pay equity, and looking at the structures of their workplaces differently because of the nudge from this article. And so, again, to collaborate with Ruchika on this and kind of mash our perspectives on this and create this thing has just been an absolute honor and a really, really transformative and overwhelming experience. Absolutely. I think it's hard to express that in like a tweet or on Instagram, because the depth of feedback that we've received from people has been, you know, very personal and deep. And it's those types of special moments that we get to have with our readers that don't necessarily get reposted or re-shared on Instagram.

Sonia Paul 26:10

Yeah, I guess also, another thing I was curious by was whether, or how would you weigh the response from, like individual women versus actual institutions? Like is the change seeming to come from the individual worker level, or from the institutional level when the source is the institution and the systems around that?

Ruchika Tulshyan 26:36

I want to go really quickly, but Jodi-Ann, I'd love your thoughts on this.

Overwhelmingly, the feedback we've gotten and the invitation to expand our views and to talk about how this article came about, and what is our advice on moving forward, has overwhelmingly come from women of color. And I think that's important, because the feedback and the, you know, "Oh, this article is amazing. Have you read it, let me share it, let me link to it in my newsletter, let me refer to it in my meeting," has come from people of all genders and all races, and a lot of white women too. But the invitation to take it beyond the page and to really discuss it in a meaningful way, in a way to apply our work. Certainly, you know, as both of us as professional speakers, those who have come up and said, we'll absolutely pay your speaker fee for you to share your knowledge with us. That level of support, empowerment, and uplifting has single-handedly come from women of color. And I think that's something that I want to highlight, because I don't think that gets said nearly enough in the work we do.

Jodi-Ann Burey 27:47

Absolutely. I don't know if I have anything to add, really. What I will say is that when we talk about hearing from institutions — institutions are run by people, right. And so the folks who have, as Ruchika said, invited us to expand beyond the page are individuals from, you know, pretty large global companies, who are creating spaces within that environment to have more nuanced conversations and to try to shift the culture in some way. You know, have we heard from CEOs of these spaces, right, like white men who want to expand on this idea within their companies? No. And I think the question is there of what do leaders, what do white men gain from having women doubt themselves every day? And in our culture, and in many cultures around the world, ideas have gotten people killed, right. Like, ideas are dangerous, ideas are transformative. And when you spread ideas, if that can mean that you have to give something up in some way, that can feel really difficult to invite in. And so, you know, I just want folks to reflect on — if you gain in any way from someone else doubting their own success or their own abilities, that's something you need to sit with, and really think about what it is that you gain, and if that aligns with your values. If it doesn't, then you have to do something about it. And if it does align with your values, then brace yourself, because there are going to be people who are going to be knocking at your door to shift those values because you know, our world is definitely changing.

Sonia Paul 29:39

Was there anything that you really wanted to include in that article that you weren't able to for some reason or another?

Jodi-Ann Burey 29:49

I mean, what do you think, Ruchika, I mean, when we first wrote the article, it was what, 4000 words?

Sonia Paul 29:55

And also like, when did you first start like doing this writing together?

Ruchika Tulshyan 30:02

Oh my gosh, should we tell her the story? There's a, there's a fun story behind how this all came about.

Jodi-Ann Burey 30:08

Yes, please do, you go for it.

Ruchika Tulshyan 30:10

Yeah, I mean, I, you know, I'm a contributor to HBR. So I pitched the article to my editor, didn't think much of it. I was like, this is something I care deeply about, can I just write it? And she's like, yes, sure. So I started working on it, it felt like something was missing. And I think part of it is also — it just speaks to the way last year was. The pandemic, 2020, right. I was isolated, I didn't really meet many people, the only people I literally saw was my, at that time, three year old son, and my partner, and that's literally it, like, was not seeing anyone else in person. And it was just, it was one of those moments where I was writing this article that I felt very deeply about. And it felt like something was missing. Because these are the types of conversations you need to have in community. You need to have it with other women of color, with friends, with people who you admire, people who you want to be. Like, that's where you're having these conversations. And I was missing those, as was like a whole world.

And so, Jodi-Ann, and I just decided, let's, you know, let's meet for an outdoor lunch, let's just, you know, I know we're in the middle of a pandemic, let's do this safely masked and distant, and let's just get together because we miss being in community. At that time, we've known each other professionally on and off, but we certainly had never collaborated together. And I just mentioned, hey, I'm working on this piece would love your thoughts, would love your ideas. And Jodi-Ann just had so much of background in both sort of reading the original study and had like, fully formed, like ideas and thoughts about how that original study in 1978, to where we were in 2020, you know, sort of the arc of how imposter syndrome and phenomenon turned syndrome had showed up in our society. And as we were having this conversation, it felt like that those missing pieces just clicked into place. And the article came out in February of the next year. So I mean, it took a good six months, right from the time you and I then met to it finally publishing, it went through 4000 words being whittled down to whatever the final article is, half of it. But I think it's so much better for it. And if I think of what I wish we had explored, like, I can't think of anything that I wish we had explored in that original piece that is currently missing, and I believe we will write a follow-up, it is on its way.

Sonia Paul 32:35

Yeah, cuz I'm like, what's on the cutting room floor? You know, you always want to know.

Jodi-Ann Burey 32:39

What's left there will definitely get picked up for sure. And, you know, absolutely Ruchika, that is exactly how our meeting went down. And it was really cool for me to hear about what that pre-story was, because my part of this picks up at the lunch that we had. And my pre-life before this life-changing lunch. In all seriousness, right, I think that lunch really definitely changed the trajectory of my work. But I was in a period of my life where I was very dedicated to finding my voice and being unapologetic about it. Or I wouldn't say maybe finding my voice, but giving more space for the voice that I had that for so long, had been tempered because of the workplaces that I was in. And so I was on a mission to fight for my voice, whatever that would cost. And I started toying with ideas in my head of what are just some things I don't agree with. And I want to be as clear about it as that. Like, no, this is BS. I don't cosign this at all, and just be very definitive. And I had started exploring the sense of bringing your full authentic self to work and been doing a lot of thinking and reading around that. My TED talk is about that. And as I was forming those ideas, I was like, you know what else I don't agree with, imposter syndrome!

Like, I surprisingly found the article. It's available. There's no paywall on it, like anyone can read it, and really started thinking through like, why doesn't this resonate with me and had done a couple of public talks on it, but didn't really have a large platform at that time. So I wasn't doing a speaking/writing full-time yet. And so being able to meet with Ruchika, and once you said imposter syndrome, like you're absolutely right, I was just like, like, I just like, I think I dumped on you for like 10 minutes of all these things that I thought about it. So I was just so excited to find someone who was also on the same wavelength as me. Because there's so many women, they're like, you know, I have imposter syndrome and I experienced imposter syndrome, and I found myself in those meetings like rolling my eyes like, girl, stop. But then to talk to Ruchika, who also wanted to push back against it, it just made me so excited. And it was just such a wonderful and generative partnership and collaboration, and it's been incredible to continue to think and expand this idea with you as we continue to engage off the page on it.

Ruchika Tulshyan 35:04

Yeah. Thank you. Sonia, can I ask Jodi-Ann a question? Actually, if you don't mind?

Jodi-Ann Burey 35:08

Oh, God.

Ruchika Tulshyan 35:11

So I'm curious about — so a couple of things. Firstly, like when I think of your TED Talk came out in November, the article didn't come out till February. Like I remember, the first time I watched I've literally had like goosebumps and tears and like, just like I felt so seen, right. And I hope that to some extent, that's what people feel some small modicum of that when they read the article, when they read the imposter syndrome article. Actually, you and your TED Talk, literally talk about like being almost like, shut down for bringing your authentic self to work. How does that impact imposter syndrome? And I'm curious how you said that you don't identify and you never did identify with imposter syndrome. And yet you describe this experience, as you were talking in your TED Talk, like I think I certainly felt and so many other people did. And now your talks been viewed a million times. So like, how do you reconcile this feeling of your authentic self is being literally shut down? And yet you have that resilience and that strength to not feel imposter syndrome? Like, I'm just wondering, how did you reconcile those two ideas?

Jodi-Ann Burey 36:20

Yeah, that's so interesting to put these in conversation with each other. And so thank you for asking that. I think, you know, over time in my academic experiences, and my professional experiences in trying to show up and getting excited about the job and getting excited about the work and just like ready to go, roll my sleeves up and get the work done. And that being a problem for a lot of people throughout my career. And so I think being a person of color, I think we have a socialization that allows us to see the water that we're swimming in a little bit more. And so it wasn't something that like professionally, I internalize. That, okay, there's something wrong with me, why I am not showing up in a way that gets me good performance reviews. For me was like, I feel to my core that I'm doing the right thing. And that is not being rewarded in the environments that I'm in.

Very early in my career, and I've talked about this a little bit before, the first three years of my adult career, I worked in majority Black and Latinx environments. And anytime, like I, you know, kind of messed up at work, I didn't feel like there was something wrong with me. I just felt like I was learning. It wasn't until I was in predominantly white environments where there was this feeling that there was just something wrong with me, like I was, you know, trying to fit a square into a circle, whatever that — what is that?

Sonia Paul 37:49

Fit a, fit a square into a round hole or something?

Jodi-Ann Burey 37:53

I have no idea what that is. So I think like, because I had such an environmental focus and trying to understand the context that I was in, I didn't necessarily internalize it. So then when I saw imposter syndrome, I'm like, wait, I've been busting my tail to be, quote, unquote, successful in these environments. And it just felt to me, like I was then supposed to question myself. And the more like, as we talk about being in predominantly white environments, but as I worked in predominantly white female environments, is when I got more exposure to this concept of imposter syndrome. And I'm like, absolutely not. It is not me. It's not me. I've been gaslit left, right, and center. And so — I think, yeah, when you have this experience of constantly trying to be yourself, and people telling you that that is not good enough, and you knowing that that's not true, it becomes harder then, to buy into this idea that I am a fraud.

Sonia Paul 39:03

Yeah, sorry. Also, I have to just like apologize to listeners, because I laughed when you said that you were hearing about imposter syndrome from all these white women.

Jodi-Ann Burey 39:13

Oh, that is funny. I don't know if, I don't think you should apologize.

Sonia Paul 39:17

Okay, this is interesting. But why? I mean, did you get any feedback from people who would identify as white women of like, why it became so inflamed for them if it's not the truth for the two of you and for a lot of other women who are able to diagnose actually like, what's going on behind the scenes?

Jodi-Ann Burey 39:39

I have a good answer for that. But I don't know the tone of your podcast.

Sonia Paul 39:44

I don't know, we, we are. We are about just telling the truth, but also having fun while telling the truth. Yeah.

Ruchika Tulshyan 39:52

I think what that means is go ahead, Jodi-Ann. Go for it.

Jodi-Ann Burey 39:56

The short of it is this. You know, people say, what would Josh do? Josh has killed whole communities, you know what I'm saying? Like, there's a sense of like, white patriarchy, white supremacy that I, I can't get anything out of it. Right. But for white women, there's something there for them. And so I think it creates this culture where it's easier to kind of fall in line with solutions that are not structural, because the structure is what keeps them at that second tear, right? At the right hand of the white dude. I think as women of color, and folks who continue to have layered marginalizations, there is nothing in the structure that is there for us. The structure was set up to keep us out. And so I think it makes it easier — and this is all generalizing here — for women of color, to reject the system, because there's really nothing there for us that wouldn't lead to the detriment of people who look like us.

Ruchika Tulshyan 41:08

I want to add that I think this is something I'd like to see more Asian women, especially Indian women, really learn and internalize from Black women and the liberation movements of Black people in this country, and actually really around the world, right. I've studied the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa as well. In fact, I think we have it in our own histories as well, if we look at the anti-colonial movements all over Asia, all over Africa, but especially in India. And somehow, when we come to this country, we're expected to fall in line. We're expected to uphold white supremacy and anti-Blackness, and we're taught that we're going to benefit from it. And then for I think, for some of us, you know, it's like, oh, we achieved the American dream, we lifted ourselves out of, you know, some semblance of poverty, or whatever it is, we were able to distance ourselves from the communities and the countries that we originally came from, for the American dream. So look at us, we should feel so proud of ourselves.

But I think for a lot of us, there's like a gaping hole. And in many ways, I'm horrified. And I'm so sad about the anti-Asian violence. And at the same time, this is the first time ever, in all the years, in the decade almost that I've been living in the United States, that people are actually talking about it. Because for so long, it was like, oh, Asians, they come to this country. They work hard, which by the way, “Asian” itself — terrible term. I mean, there's no nuance to it, how many countries? How many languages, how many religions? How many cultures? Are we talking about? Like, that's ridiculous that we are a catch-all, right. And we experience the greatest intergroup income deviation, right? On one hand, you've got Indian and Chinese, especially Taiwanese, Americans who are right at the top levels of income brackets in this country. And then in the same group, you have Burmese immigrants who are really experiencing huge levels of poverty and violence. So I just want to say that, I think that I would love to see, especially as this is, you know, Asian, AAPI Heritage Month, I think it's really important for more of us to examine how much we think proximity to white supremacy and anti-Blackness is going to benefit us, and how much work we need to do to dismantle those systems as well.

Sonia Paul 43:34

Yeah. And something I wanted to ask, especially given that so much of this is about, like these structural systemic toxicities, or toxins, whatever is the appropriate word. Um, and, you know, women of color rejecting that, well, you know, I can speak for my industry, journalism, audio, there's a lot of people just being like, hey, forget this. I'm leaving. We're like seeing like an exodus of people from a variety of institutions. And I'm just wondering if you have any thoughts about the significance of that when we are still actually trying to drive for structural change? And if that's coming from these very women who are leaving? What, then?

Ruchika Tulshyan 44:19

Yeah, I mean, I think we're ripe for a change in the world right now, as Jodi-Ann said. I think we are ripe for that change, where more of us step into our power. We connect as a group, we build our tribes, right. And I'm very, very excited that I see that happening more and more. As Jodi-Ann and I talked about in the article, we rejected fundamentally white supremacist workplace structures to create our own as entrepreneurs, and I really think the next wave of success, quote-unquote, is going to come from more of us doing that.

Sonia Paul 44:55

Is there anything else the two of you want to add before you wrap up?

Jodi-Ann Burey 44:59

I think we're good. I'm super excited about this collaboration. As I said, I'm excited that the work continues to lap the globe. And people are thinking differently about, you know, how they see themselves in the workplaces. And I'm just happy to be a part of this wave of being more honest about what our work cultures look like and what it's going to take for women, especially women of color, to fully show up in the power that we have to change our culture.

Sonia Paul 45:33

Thank you both so much for this.

So that's all we have for today of Loitering, the occasional but lovable traveling mini pod I am currently testing in newsletter format. Thank you for listening and have a great day. Goodbye!

Here is a direct link to the Harvard Business Review article that inspired this conversation, and the study in question that inspired Ruchika and Jodi-Ann’s research.

And if you’re interested in some other work I’ve been up to…

In early April, a story I reported on the future of the restaurant industry published with the San Francisco Public Press. I also hosted a 3-part series on the topic for the Press’ podcast, “Civic.” You can read the story AND listen to those episodes here (the podcast episodes are embedded in the text story).

Also in April, a non-narrated audio story I produced about the history of Filipino nursing in the U.S. published with a new media outlet called iPondr. Check it out here.

And here’s a multimedia project I worked on for The Washington Post about some lessons learned from the pandemic on how we should think about public transit. I was just one part of a team effort. Hope you’ll read AND listen (a lot of loitering took place on my part for that project).

Subscribe at loitering.substack.com

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Hi everyone,

I hope you all are staying safe and well, despite the pandemic and attempted coup... That being said, this episode of Loitering with Tracie Hunte was recorded just over a week ago at the tail end of 2020 but already feels like a lifetime ago. There’s no transcript, but there is some useful listening that’ll offer context to the discussion (namely this piece about protests and this piece about Nina Simone). I should also mention that while there’s been some radio drama recently, this was pure radio joy.

On another note, one of Loitering’s favorite listeners, Chris Turillo, reminded me of this piece recently, and I thought it was worth sharing with all of you.

Thanks to Tracie for loitering. :) Here’s to staying strong in 2021.

Sonia

Subscribe at loitering.substack.com

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Sonia Paul 00:13

Hello, everyone, welcome to Loitering, the occasional, but lovable traveling mini pod I am currently testing in newsletter format. And today I am loitering in Fort Greene —

Avery Trufelman 00:24

Watch out!

Sonia Paul 00:25

Oh my gosh. I very nearly stepped on poop. And today, I am loitering in Fort Greene Park and walking around Fort Greene with a very special guest. Can you please introduce yourself?

Avery Trufelman 00:38

Sure. Hi, I'm Avery Trufelman. I make podcasts. And now I live in Brooklyn and I moved here during the pandemic. It's weird.

Sonia Paul 00:48

And where were you before, Avery?

Avery Trufelman 00:50

In the Bay Area, where you live, and so it's very weird to be walking with Sonia on the other side of the country now.

Sonia Paul 00:58

Or not so weird at all.

Avery Trufelman 01:00

Right. Like, no weirder than anything else that has happened this year. Like, who knows, right? Anything could happen.

Sonia Paul 01:05

Exactly. Okay, Avery. Um, tell us a little bit about your time since being back in New York. What has been the most memorable aspect for you in the last few months?

Avery Trufelman 01:20

It's weird, in this moment of extreme nothing, right. Like, I can't go to bars, and I can't really meet people, like, I can't do anything. I can't go to people's homes. It does feel like so much is happening. Like every week bring some sort of little fresh, tiny crisis. And oh, God, was it two weeks ago? I waited in line. It's funny, now that I live in New York have to go back to saying "on line," like, New Yorkers say, like, I waited on line. And I used to say that when I moved to California, and everyone was like, what does that mean? Like, the internet? But now that I'm back, I have to untrain my — like, get back to my New Yorker-ism of waiting on line. So I was waiting on line for a test. And the line was so long —

Sonia Paul

Wait, a test for what?

Avery Trufelman

A COVID test, a COVID test, which like, we all have to do all the time now. And it takes forever, and it's freezing. It's like, totally hellish. And um, I did a rapid test. And that day, they called me. And they're like, you've, you tested positive. I was like, oh, oh, I had no symptoms at all. I was shocked. And um.

Sonia Paul 02:00

Why, what prompted you to get a test in the first place?

Avery Trufelman 02:25

Oh, because it was like, Thanksgiving, and I was about to go home. So it was 10 days before Thanksgiving. And I was like, you know, it's the thing to do, like take a test and then quarantine. I was like, make sure I'm negative and then quarantine. And I was not expecting the test to come back positive. It was super — it was super weird. And um, it was kind of fascinating because I watched the mechanisms of New York State sort of snap into gear. The contact tracers called me, they called me every day. I got sent this pack of like, masks and hand sanitizer. And I mean, the amenities here are kind of amazing. They'll put you up in a hotel if you need it. They asked me to list every business I had interacted with, every person I'd interacted with. I had to go and call everyone and be like, "Hey, I just want to let you know that I tested positive for COVID." And it was a total nightmare. It was like, oh, this is what it must have felt like during the AIDS crisis, to call everyone up and be like, "Hey, I have this thing." And a lot of people were really understanding. Some people were furious.

Sonia Paul 03:29

Can I ask, like, this rapid test. I mean, given that you had no known exposures, no known symptoms… Like, how confident, how certain were you about these results? Like, were you in disbelief at all?

Avery Trufelman 03:44

Oh, well I mean, it seems likely, like, there are a lot of asymptomatic carriers. And also like, I'm not a scientist. I don't know. I feel like there's so much of a doctrine of healthy skepticism now. Like, Leticia Wright just posted that tweet about like, "Maybe we shouldn't trust the vaccines." And like, I don't want to be anti-medicine. Like, it would just be the perfect American a*e thing to do, to test positive and be like, "Nah, I don't believe it." Like, of course, I, I quarantined, I didn't do anything. And my friends were so sweet. Like, my friend sent me groceries, my friend sent me flowers, which like, honestly, I really needed. It was very weird to be like, ah, I want a snack, and like, not be able to go to the store and get it. So, I waited a few days, and then I took more COVID tests, I took three more. I took like, a rapid and a PCR and a saliva test. And I was really stressed out, and those all came back negative.

Sonia Paul 04:38

Interesting, because, you know, isn't it the case too that the rapid tests aren't that accurate anyway? I mean, like —

Avery Trufelman 04:45

Which I'm learning. Yeah, apparently, they're like, not even legal in Denmark. They're terrible science.

Sonia Paul 04:50

So why do you think we have something called rapid tests?

Avery Trufelman 04:54

Cuz we're busy, we need our test results now! And that was me, I was like, "I need these results today. Like, I'm so busy." Doing what? There's literally nowhere to go. I don't know why. So I feel like that's part of like a shift in the cultural ethos, is we need to be like, just wait three days for a PCR test. Yeah, so it was crazy. It was like, oh, it was a false positive. I still quarantined anyway, for the full time, just to be certain. As much as anyone can be certain about anything. But yeah, like, I think it's important to be skeptical of the rapid tests, but you know, it's like a fine line to walk, right? I think all the time about that brilliant New Yorker comic, where it shows a guy in an airplane. And he's like, "Who's sick of these elitist pilots flying the plane? Who thinks I should fly the plane?" It's like, that's America. Like, I don't want to be like, "Listen, as a human, I don't trust doctors." Like, of course I trust science, and I trust experts and the people who are risking their lives for us every day. So I don't know, I don't know what to make of it. I can't say it's like, fundamentally shifted the way I believe. I think I'm just like, that's a crazy — that was a crazy fluke. And it's really hard to know that my scenario was a best-case scenario? Like, I wasn't even sick. And it still sucked. It still sucks just to like, culturally, go around and tell everyone that I tested positive. And have some people be mad at me and like, nurse the uncertainty and quarantine. Like, all of that already sucked. I cannot imagine actually being sick on top of it. And, you know, my family got in a huge argument about whether or not I should come home for Thanksgiving. And just to realize how the policy and the science of this moment is actually just affecting our personal lives. And I'm sure similar problems are ricocheting throughout the country and throughout the world right now on all these divides. So, I mean, I hope, pray, inshallah, that, you know, I don't test positive again. But in a weird way, I'm kind of grateful for the experience, to have almost like, roleplayed, what it would have been like to test positive and to know the resources that are there. But man, that was a — that was a trip.

Sonia Paul 07:08

Yeah, I mean, like... so you went through all the steps. You pretended — I mean, you did, theoretically, according to this rapid test, have COVID. But...I know you mentioned that it hasn't fundamentally altered the way you think. But, do you think this year, with all the uncertainty it has wrought... Has it made you question what it means to be certain about the future? Or certain about whatever present circumstances you thought you could count on?

Avery Trufelman 07:44

That's a good question. You know, honestly, I think I've always prided myself as the kind of person who like, says yes to everything. If someone's like, want to go to this weird event, I'm like, "Yeah, totally." Like, even if it's not really my jam. Like, I'm a person who says yes to things. And honestly, like, you're right. The false-positive did change me in some ways because I was dating someone before. And I was kind of on the fence about it. Like, I don't know about this person. But whatever, like, winter is coming. I need a winter cuff. And uh...I mean, like, she's great, also. But I was like, I don't know if this is like the right thing to do right now. And I was like, trying to push my luck. I was like, trying to go to museums, I was trying to do a pottery class. And after that false positive, I was like, nah, like, none of this is worth it, for that scare. And so it helped me realize that, like, I do want a degree of certainty. But unfortunately, the only way I can do that is close myself — because now that I live in New York, my family is here. I live entirely too close to them. Like, now, you know, there's like a cold breeze coming on our necks right now. And I can feel winter approaching. It’s like, tunnel vision, time to settle down. Like, I'm just going to live in my apartment and do my job and see my family sometimes. And I think I can only do this because I hope — no, pray — that this is temporary, and it won't be forever. But, it's going to be like, a very unadventurous year. And that's a form of certainty. It's like, I guess, yeah, it — being boring.

Sonia Paul 09:12

And like, it sounds like what you're saying, and please correct me if I'm wrong, that having gone through the experience of so much uncertainty has made you want to rely on the only things you can be certain of right now, because it's too much to try to incorporate the less than certain aspects.

Avery Trufelman 09:31

I mean, I think yes, but I don't know if it has to do with like, a fundamental desire for like, uncertainty or certainty in my soul. I think if I still lived on the other side of the country, I would be willing to, like, take more risks and, you know, like, indulge in the occasional lapse of judgment that I used to shamefully indulge in. But I think now that I'm like, with my family out here, and I had that scare, I'm just like, it's not worth it. Like, nothing. Nothing is worth that feeling of like, horror and guilt and shame and — people were very sweet, and they're like, you shouldn't have any shame. It's a deadly virus that's going around. But it's like, I don't know, man. Like, it's time to like, it's time to cut back. So, I used to pot up with some college friends of mine, and we like cut that pot, like, and just like, shutting my whole life down. Which is what I should have done in the first place. So it's uh, that's all right... I like uncertainty. I don't think I'm trying to run away from the fundamental idea of uncertainty. And it's not like uncertainty has gone away, like you could still f*g get — like, there could be something in my building with COVID. But, I think it has more to do with like, selfishness and selflessness. And I think I have to just be like, not prioritize my own, trying to find my own exciting adventures right now, and just like, be a little more boring for my parents. But speaking of, I gotta go to this meeting. I'm so sorry. It's so good to see you. Thank you so much for doing this.

Sonia Paul 11:00

So, any final thoughts?

Avery Trufelman 11:02

When you were like, what's going on? How's your life? Like, literally, Sonia, like, I don't do anything. I just like, rollover out of bed, I do my job, I work, and then I cook some food, and then I roll back in bed and go to sleep at night. Like, and that's just how it's gonna be all winter long. And that's okay.

Sonia Paul 11:17

Okay, so that's all we have for today of Loitering, the occasional but lovable, traveling mini pod I am currently testing in newsletter format. Thank you for listening and have a great day. Goodbye!

Some links:

I wasn’t sure what to expect when I started reading this, but it is very good.

Male friendships during the pandemic: Agree or disagree?

A story about mochi.

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Hi everyone,

Well, the day is finally here. Election day. And here is some perspective on what you’re thinking about the election, from Josh in El Cerrito.

Meanwhile, a story I started working on last October finally came out last Friday. It’s gotten a lot more attention than I anticipated, which I think is a good thing. Here’s a link to it if you’re interested, and here’s a link to a Twitter thread with some broader points (and you can see it’s also attracted a number of trolls).

Speaking of trolls: To the person who signed up for Loitering with the email address “olinguitouk+SoniaPaul@gmail.com” — bravo. You sure know how to not be discreet about your intentions.

Ok, more again after the election! Take care.

XO,

Sonia

Music for this work, "Loitering on the Election", is a derivative of "Gaena" by Blue Dot Sessions, used under CC BY-NC 4.0. "Gaena" is licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0 by Sonia Paul.

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I’d love to know. And if you’re willing, I’d love to share your thoughts on an upcoming episode of Loitering.

Just record a voice memo on your phone — any voice recording app you have should work — and email it directly back to me. Please include your name and where you’re located. If you’d rather not reveal your name, that’s fine. AND, if you’re not in the U.S., that’s also ok. But tell us, what does it look like from afar?

Recording voice memos is super easy. In fact, it’s what I did to record this episode. :)

Please forward this note along to your friends and networks who might be interested. I’m not looking for any particular political views, but I am interested in stitching together an aural snapshot of our thoughts at this moment in history, whatever they may be.

Also, if you follow me on social media, you may have seen that I’m currently doing some research for a story I’m developing on self-care. What exactly is the story? Well, that’s what I’m trying to find out! If you’re willing to fill out this simple Google form, I’d super appreciate it.

Thanks so much & be well,

Sonia

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Heylo,

You may remember from a previous Loitering episode and newsletter that I mentioned an interview with Yashica Dutt, activist and author of Coming Out As Dalit, was en route. Here it is, finally. It’s actually an interview we did last spring — before a US lawsuit alleging caste discrimination was filed against Cisco (and some news on that: The California Department of Fair Employment and Housing is removing the lawsuit from the federal court and refiling it in a state court); before debates around caste also came up with the Netflix show Indian Matchmaking; and before Isabel Wilkerson’s book Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents also released. (And also, before Yashica turned a year older!) It’s incredible how much movement caste is finding in US conversations in just over a year, but it’s still an extraordinarily nuanced issue. This interview with Yashica is one of the most insightful interviews I’ve ever done and digs deep into her personal experience, as well as extrapolates how we can better understand caste and the ways it manifests. If you’re mostly only a reader of Loitering, please also listen! The auditory experience of the interview is quite different. I experimented with scoring a little bit more as well, so let me know what you think.

You can hear and read in the interview that we’re often using “lower” and “upper” to denote caste hierarchies, but — and this is where we can thank conversations that have been happening over the past year — a better and more sensitive way to think about this is “oppressed,” or “stigmatized,” and “elite,” or “privileged” castes.

And a note, this interview is heavy and contains descriptions of suicide, so please take care of yourself. xx

If you or someone you know is in crisis, call the U.S. National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 800-273-8255, text TALK to 741741 or visit SpeakingOfSuicide.com/resources for additional resources.

Sonia Paul 00:11

So just to start out, can you please introduce yourself, your name, your age where you're from what you do.

Yashica Dutt 00:19

Hi, I'm Yashica Dutt. I am 33 years old. I am originally from New Delhi, India. But I've been living in the city since 2014. I recently wrote a book. It's called Coming Out as Dalit. It is just available in the Indian subcontinent for now. But it's a book about my journey of growing up as an untouchable person, quote, unquote, in India, but hiding the fact that I was a lower caste person, and how that got me a front-row seat to what it means to be hiding your identity in India, especially in the late 90s, in the early to late 90s, 2000s. And then till 2014, till I left. I was a journalist back home in New Delhi, I also try and unpack the issue of caste, as it means to modern-day India and how it has a social and cultural impact on the country. Also, in the book, I've tried to look at the history of the movement and how it has parallels with the civil rights movement and the Black Lives Matter movement in the United States, because this is where I was living. And this is how I was being impacted. And I was thinking about the ideas of how race and cast collide. So a couple of chapters deal with that. But overall, it's the spine of a memoir, but it has nonfiction and historical backgrounds and facts. It's a wide scope book.

Sonia Paul 01:45

Yeah. I mean, I read it. It's great. Congratulations. You know, I'm glad you like, really preface what the book is about, because I'm going to ask you a lot about that. And, you know, I just want to also clarify, so when you say you live in the city, you live in New York City right now?

Yashica Dutt 02:00

I live in New York City right now.

Sonia Paul 02:02

Okay. Um, you know, you already answered my second question, which is like, briefly, what is the book about? And I think, you know, just to start off, if you could go back to the moment in your own personal history, where you realized your family's caste background. And what exactly took place to make you realize that your family was a member of the so-called untouchable class, also known as Dalit class?

Yashica Dutt 02:30

If you ask me to chart a moment in my personal history or childhood, where I realized I was born in an untouchable caste, I don't think I can come up with that, because ever since my earliest memories started forming, I remember growing up with the reality that I was from a lower caste and I had to make up for it, to fit in with the society, with the rest of the caste-based society in India. And the things that I had to do, the measures that I had to take. How I had to be careful about not talking about my caste, how I had to observe how girls in my school — I went to an all-girls school in Rajasthan, which is a state in India — how they behaved and then try and mimic those behaviors. So it was a whole process. And there is a concept of passing in African American culture that I read about. And it felt very similar to that, that you have to adopt the mannerisms and the behaviors of the other culture. And I was very young when my parents told me about how I had to hide my identity and how I had to lie about it if I wanted to not be discriminated. It was just a matter of fact reality. It wasn't something that one day I woke up, and I was being told that I from an untouchable caste. It was just an idea that existed in my reality, like any other idea, like I was five or six or that I lived in a certain place. Similarly, I was lower caste. So it's just permeated in my whole existence.

Sonia Paul 03:58

I guess I'm just to help us comprehend what it means to be lower caste. What were some of the indicators, in your experience, that were the hallmarks of that caste identity? Like, what were the experiences in your life that were telling you that you were lower caste?

Yashica Dutt 04:20

The experiences in my life were — first of all, I have to preface this by saying that these are just my experiences. There are different kinds of lower caste experiences based on the location of class, and gender, and whether they're in an urban or rural setting, those ideas and experiences change completely. So this is just me and I can just speak for myself. But, what it meant to be lower caste when I was a young person, when I was a child, was that some people in my family, not many generations ago, like maybe even my grandmother, they were, they were involved in the work of manual scavenging, which, for the listeners who don't know, it literally translates to cleaning human excrement. Sometimes bare hands, sometimes with no equipment and often scooping it up and carrying it in wooden baskets on top of your heads. So it was a shameful part of my identity. It was something that my parents told me that we had to overcome that we have to hide that because if other people find out that that's our history — which is frankly, I don't feel any shame about it anymore, because that is not the history that we chose. And there is pride in doing whatever we do and what we were forced to do on the base of our caste. So I have no shame in it anymore. But as a five-year-old, as a six-year-old, that shame was ingrained deeply. So that was the biggest marker, that first of all — you had to completely lie about who you were, you had to lead a different kind of life, when you were home, and you had to lead a different kind of life in your school or out with friends. And the other thing was that we had a different last name. So for example, my grandfather's last name was Das, D-A-S. And my dad's last name was Dutt. And my last name is Dutt. And I just didn't understand how those two are different because other families in my, my school or my neighborhood, they all shared the same last name, but we just didn't. And it didn't make sense to me. And when I would ask my parents, even as a young kid, they would say that this is just how it is, you will understand it when you grow older. So that sort of told me and the whole production of pretending that you are somebody else, right from the start, sort of told me that we were different, and not only different in a good way, but different in a way that we had to hide who we were. I didn't know what caste meant, as maybe a five, six-year-old, but I knew that it was something that was not good. And it was something that would bring me shame, that would cause people to laugh at me, that would cause people to not want to sit next to me, or not want to come to my house for birthday parties, for example. So as a young child, those experiences shaped my idea of who I was and what I had to do to make a space for myself in this world.

Sonia Paul 07:09

And so with regard to last names, can you talk a little bit about how caste is exemplified in a last name? Like, how should we understand what your grandfather's last name meant, versus your father's last name, versus your last name?

Yashica Dutt 07:29

Sure, so our family name that none of us carry anymore is Nidaniya, and that itself is an indicator that we are the Bhangi caste, b-h-a-n-g-i, the caste of manual scavengers. And like many other people in India do, we get rid of the names that are indicators of our origins and our castes. And at that time, if you live in an Indian society for long enough, you'll understand — you're made to learn what last name belongs to which caste. Even I wouldn't know the intricacies, I wouldn't be able to see a last name and say you are that caste, but I would know whether you're an upper caste or low caste person. So yeah, I think growing up you understand, like a Sharma last name, a Mishra last name, these two last names are Brahmin last names, which is the so-called uppermost castes, then an Agarwal last name is, if you have Agarwal friends, they are from the merchant class, which is also an upper caste. Which is not to say that there wasn't an ascending scale of superiority, it definitely existed. But in modern day India, upper castes, more or less fall in the same bracket. And the only distinction, so to speak, that exists socially and culturally is between untouchables and OBCs, which is the Other Backward Castes and the upper castes. So growing up, or being in an Indian society, which can exist in the US as well. You learn what name is associated with which caste. It's just culture.

Sonia Paul 08:58

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I noticed in your book, you talked about being able to talk in a sort of Indian English versus carry a regional accent, or light skin versus dark skin, or your taste in clothing and fashion. And I'm wondering if you can unpack how all these different signifiers somehow then became correlated with caste.

Yashica Dutt 09:23

Yeah, it's very interesting, because there are certain physical traits and certain characteristics that are associated with upper castes in India, which might or might not be true, because in the south, like, for example, there are lots of dark-skinned Brahmins. And so you can universally say that anyone who's light-skinned or fair, as we call it back home, is an upper-class person on anyone who's dark-skinned or dark, quote-unquote, is a lower caste person. But somehow those indicators have, you know, because there is so much going on. There's an internalized hatred for our skin color. There's internalized hatred for accent, it gets tangled with what it means to be lower caste. So the performance of being upper caste is somehow equated right now — especially for a person who's trying to transcend it — to being urban, to being English speaking, and to being light-skinned, westernized, having access to the kind of education that the other people think a lower caste person would certainly not. So when you transcend those barriers, you set yourself above all the questioning that might come as regard to what your cast is. For example, for me, I was told since I was very young, that I had to learn how to speak really good English, learn how to write really good English. I had to be extremely fashion-forward, whatever that meant in early 90s, in India. But I had to cultivate a sense of style, I had to be light-skinned, or fair. I've talked about this in the book that my mom was very insistent on me not looking tan, not looking darker, just being above the surface of all indicators of what it means to be lower caste. So she would create these homemade face packs. And I know they're very trendy right now. But in, in Indian culture, we've been using them forever. So you know, these dry or wet bags that it would turmeric or oats, or, you know, all the other trendy ingredients that you hear about.

Sonia Paul 11:28

Yeah, like a face mask.

Yashica Dutt 11:29

Yeah, face back is what I would,

Sonia Paul 11:31

Yeah, yeah. I know what like a face pack is. And I think here in the US, the closest thing they have to equate it with is a face mask, even though they're slightly different. But yeah, and so your mom would create these face packs for you, and --

Yashica Dutt 11:44

Right, when I was six, or seven. I've talked about in the book, a six or seven-year-old would not like something goey and gopy been put on their face every morning before they go to school and then have the remnants stuck on the ears, and other kids point out about something weird stuck on the ears that's dry and flaky, and then being made fun. The result was entirely different. My mom was doing it because she wanted me to be light-skinned, and my sister as well. But what was happening in my daily school life was it had a completely adverse effect. So it had this own complexity. The whole performance takes a toll on you if you're a child, and it takes a toll on you if you're a parent as well. So there were these things that I had to do. Be really good at school. Be really good at speaking English. Be really good at fashion, be very well turned out. And if I was all of those things, because not many people in India associate those markers with a lower caste or an untouchable identity, because untouchables are supposed to be universally dark, they're supposed to be dirty. That's the idea that people have — most untouchable identities, that they're supposed to be dark, they're supposed to be dirty, they're not supposed to know how to speak English, they're not even supposed to be educated. And in my parents' heads if I was able to transcend that somehow, then I could transcend caste, then I could do this performance of urban, upper-caste identity.

13:08

And they were accurate. I did that and nobody questioned my caste till I told people about it for 30 years. So in a way, I was able to transcend caste and pass very successfully as an upper-caste person. No one asked me what my caste was, I mean people did. The question was always permanent and always present. But when I told them that I was a Brahmin or an Agarwal or some other upper caste combination, they would believe me. And that was essential.

Sonia Paul

What did passing as a so-called upper caste person offer you?

Yashica Dutt

A front-row seat to upper caste lives.

Sonia Paul 13:48

So what does that look like?

Yashica Dutt 13:53

That looks like my life. But if I had to unpack that, it meant that I didn't have to be discriminated. I escaped the kind of open discrimination that comes with declaring or having an obvious sort of Dalit or untouchable identity. It also meant that when people looked at me, they assumed that I was an upper-caste person. So the questions and the discrimination, like I mentioned, that would come my way. That stopped right there. It also meant that I could work as a journalist at one of the largest English language newspapers in India, and work in fashion, work in culture, without ever coming across the question of what my caste was. It meant that I could have friends where the question of caste didn't exist. There is a lot to unpack in that statement, because caste obviously exists everywhere, but in certain class structures, we like to pretend that of course, if you are here, that means you might be upper caste.

Sonia Paul 14:59

Like here in like the US, or?

Yashica Dutt 15:02

In this, if you're upper class, you're assumed to be upper caste, which is not necessarily true, because there are so many Dalit industrialists, there are so many Dalit entrepreneurs, there's so many Dalit engineers and doctors. But the idea still exists.

15:20

So coming back to the question, passing gave me a window of opportunity that wouldn't have been given to me if I was open with my Dalit identity. And I've written about this in the book as well, that I learned my lesson pretty quickly, especially at 15, when I talked about my Dalit identity to my friend and her parents. And it wasn't just me going and declaring it with a banner in my hand. They called me one day over — and they saw me with my friend, on and off, and they said, 'Why don't you come over and have tea?' And they asked me, the second question was, what's your caste? And in that moment, I had a decision to make, whether I was going to tell them the truth, or I was going to go on giving the same concoction of lies I've been saying for the past 15 years, I was 15, then. And I decided, you know what, these people are doctors. And they seem really progressive. And I'm sure they're educated, and they won't care about what my caste is. And I am their daughter's friend, and I go to school with her. I'm going to be okay.

16:24

So without raising my head — I was looking at the floor — without raising my head, I said, 'I'm from the scheduled caste.' And scheduled caste is another euphemism for untouchables or Dalits. It's list of castes, and it's a government given name. So I just said, I'm scheduled caste. And in that moment, I felt the vibe and the energy in that room change, like somebody had sucked the air out of there. And they fumbled, there was a minute of silence, and they said, 'Oh, you know, that's okay. It's fine. You know, we don't care about that. We don't care about that sort of thing. It's fine if you're a scheduled caste, we're really progressive.' And I was like, 'Oh, okay.' I knew they were saying that, but I knew they didn't mean it. So I walked out of the house thinking I had made a big mistake. And I shouldn't have said what I said, and I was right, because the next day when I saw my friend in the school bus, and I said hi to her, she turned away from me. She didn't even pretend to talk to me, she didn't even say my parents asked me not to speak to you anymore. She just turned away, like, she didn't know me. And that was the sharpest reminder of what my place was going to look like in the world, if I was going to be open with my identity, and I was like, 'Well, my mom was right. Always listen to mom.' And I stopped talking about my caste after that.

17:49

So that's what my life would have looked like. I might have had to lose some friends. I might have to worry about whether my friends, my teachers, my colleagues would accept me. By passing as an upper caste person, I didn't have to worry about all that.

Sonia Paul 18:05

I'm wondering because you mentioned in writing your book, you were borrowing a lot from the civil rights movement and thinking about parallels in the US. And I want to go into that. And just to start, why was it that you chose the word 'passing' to describe the way you latched on to a privileged caste identity?

Yashica Dutt 18:28

I read about this at grad school, I went to Columbia Journalism School, and we read about this concept of passing.

Sonia Paul 18:35

What is the concept of passing? Sorry, just for people who may not know?

Yashica Dutt 18:40

Well, I might not have the dictionary definition. But here's what I understand. It's when people — especially in terms of, if you're an African American person, and you somehow feel like you can pass off as a white person, then you do everything, you can change your racial identity in terms of dressing differently, or doing your hair up differently, or moving to a different neighborhood, having a different name, changing your speech patterns, cutting your ties with anybody who might give your identity away. And that's — from my understanding — that's the concept of passing. And when I read that, it was like a window that opened. I said, 'Wow, ha, that's something I know. That's something I've been doing for a long time.' For all my life. I didn't have to do it in New York anymore, because nobody was asking what my caste was here, so I could let my guard down. But in Delhi, in India, I had to do that performance over and over. Of course, it wasn't that extreme and wasn't even the same experience. It manifested itself in the context of caste, which looked entirely different. But the idea was that you were adopting a different identity, whether it was cultural or whether it was racial or whether it was caste identity. And a lot of it was coming out of the so-called internalized shame that you felt about who you were, and you wanted to hide that, you wanted to reject that. So for me, that's what passing looks like.

Sonia Paul 20:11

Yeah, it's interesting, I think there is a way... some people who think of any kind of aspiration, you know, whatever an aspirational class might look like to you, there's a way you might try to pass as that class without ever actually fulfilling that aspiration, if that makes sense.

Yashica Dutt 20:35

I mean, I definitely think there are different kinds of passing. But racial passing, for sure, and caste-based passing also, are rooted in shame. When you transcend class, sure, you are trying to fit in, you grew up in a certain neighborhood, and you're trying to transcend into a different lifestyle. And that happens too, and that is a certain type of passing. But this is rooted in your identity. Racial and caste identities are, in my opinion, a lot stronger than class identities, because they are these rigid systems that are created, that have been in place for the very reason that you're not supposed to break out of them. So in that sense, in my opinion, when you're passing from a race or from a caste, it looks very different. And I think it has a completely different impact.

Sonia Paul 21:33

I'm wondering, because people often talk about the relationship or parallel between caste and racism, and caste and class. But as you've mentioned, class alone is not something through which we can gauge a person's caste. So how then does drawing that parallel, either support or refute what caste ought to be? Am I making sense?

Yashica Dutt 22:05

Yeah, I understand what you're getting at. And I get that question all the time. So how does it work in the context of outside a South Asian community, because caste exists in Bangladesh and Pakistan as well. So it's not just an Indian thing. So I would say the closest parallel is race. And it's not class, because as with race, you can be an Emmy Award-winning person, and you still have difficulty finding a cab on the street. Or, you could be from whatever class and still be stopped on a traffic light, and be discriminated, and have all the horrible experiences that come with being African American in this country. As with caste, you could be a Dalit industrialist, and you could go into someone's house, and you would still not be offered water because they think you're polluted, or they think you're dirty. And that did not change. They wouldn't have offered you water, a glass of water, which carries a lot of cultural significance, especially in Indian culture. When you offer someone a glass of water, it means that you are treating your guests with respect, you're welcoming them in your home, you're honoring them. And when you refuse that honor to somebody, if they're Dalit, it doesn't matter how much money they've had, or how rich they've become, they will have to face the same kind of discrimination. Dalit industrialists have a really difficult time starting industry, starting small businesses in particular. As I've mentioned in the book, Dalit people who want to start small businesses don't get funding, they don't get the kind of network and community support they should. For example, food stall, because the idea of purity versus pollution, which is at the crux of this issue of caste lends itself most to food. My mother tried to start a small business in our hometown in Rajasthan. And everybody advised her that if you do that, they know your caste, no one's going to come and eat the food cooked by you. Because your touch in itself is polluting. Similarly, if a Dalit person starts a snack store. People aren't going to go visit it because they know it's that Dalit person's shop, and that's how that shop gets labeled as, or that's how some other industry gets labeled as. This is that so-called caste person's shop. We don't do business with them. A same person with the same kind of resources, same circumstances, who is an upper caste person would not have those limitations, would not face that discrimination in the first place. For example, Agarwal, which is a merchant cast. A network of Agarwal vendors who would be so happy to support another Agarwal who's trying to start a business, because that's what our girls do. They have businesses. It's a generalization, but more often than not in India, at least that's the case. So that's how caste manifests itself, especially in terms of class. I am in New York. And if I had to go back home, and I did visit home, I visited Delhi in February. And by then I'd come out as a Dalit person. I wrote a Facebook note in 2016. And everybody knew who I was. And I saw attitudes change. And you could call me, an upper middle-class person in India. And nobody would openly discriminate against me because I only stuck around with people — self preservation, I only stuck around people who I knew would not do that to me. But even so, I saw attitudes change. When I came to Columbia, and I came out and as Dalit, journalists who work in major newspapers in India wondered how could that person be at Columbia? And they forgot that Dr. BR Ambedkar, who is — you know, who's our version of MLK, he spent a lot of time at Columbia, and Columbia really honors his legacy in a big way. But back home, journalists are wondering how did a Dalit person, how did an untouchable person, even get to Columbia? Or when I came out, people on Twitter were telling me, you don't even look Dalit. They still tell me that online. Everybody tells me how I don't look Dalit. Or if I speak English, I might be a Christian Dalit. That's another, that's a whole other story. We don't have to get into that right now. But yeah, sure, you can transcend class, it's easier to do that. But your caste will stay with you. Unless, like me, you make a lot of effort to hide it, which itself takes its own toll.

Sonia Paul 26:24

Yeah. You know, you chose the phrasing of 'coming out' as Dalit to describe that experience. And it makes me think about how members of the LGBTQ community, the queer community, use that phrase to actually show who they really are. And I was wondering if that was something that you are also thinking about, versus It was just something that seemed like natural to you.

Yashica Dutt 26:52

It's exactly what I was thinking about before I decided to write this note. And I wanted to contextualize my experience of whether it was relying on the word passing, or whether it was using the term coming out, I wanted to rely on terms that we already knew of, in popular culture and mainstream culture, to articulate what my experience looked like. Because as far as I was concerned, there was not much literature available on what it meant like to live a life in hiding, and what it meant like, especially as a Dalit person, what it meant like to come out of that life. I didn't know anybody who had done that. And it was new for me. So I wanted to use ideas and theories and terms that were readily available. And that when I said those things, people would say, okay, that's what that means. So when I thought about coming out, it was — and of course, this is in no way to compare my experience to an LGBTQ experience, that's completely different. But in terms of ideologies, and how experiences can feel like, it really was, like coming out of the closet, it really was like hiding your identity for decades, and worrying what would happen to you, if you reveal that identity to the world, and how you take your time. And it's a whole art. It's a process of how you come to terms with who you are, and who you reject the shame that has been ingrained in you about who you are. And you allow yourself to own that, and you allow yourself to feel pride in that. So in those ways, that experience felt very similar. And like I said, I wanted people to understand because there was no language for that. And I just thought this was the best way for us to do it. As a journalist, that's what we do. You know, we explain how people can understand them best.

Sonia Paul 28:50

Right. Can you like talk more about this note that you wrote on Facebook? For people who don't know anything about it? Like, what was that note, and what was the tipping point to spur you to write it?

Yashica Dutt 29:05

So it wasn't just the note. You know, I just want to take you back a little bit what happened before the note. I came to Columbia Journalism School in 2014. And I was exposed to these wonderful, amazing ideas. I was exposed to what it means to be a part of a system that's so intrinsic, and that's so rigid, that it's really not up to you as an individual to just break out of it. And when I was exposed to these, these wonderful, life-altering, for me at least, theories, I really started thinking about what it meant to be Dalit. And even in one of the essays I wrote in my class, there was a question about what your identity is, and I thought about identity was a woman, my identity was the fact that I lived in an urban area, I lived in Delhi. But I couldn't ignore that my identity was also a caste identity.

30:00

And I'd been mulling over that question for a while, especially being a part of really good classes, we talked about what our identities meant to us and how they go a long way in shaping our idea of the world. And I also saw that there was a space in the United States, especially at that time, to talk about different kinds of identities, that there was a positive reception to that, that when you talked about your pain, your trauma, when you talked about what it means to have lived that kind of life, there were people who would listen to you and there were people who would empathize. So I felt more and more free to discuss that idea. I felt more free to discuss my life. And I obviously graduated in 2015. And I started thinking about what I wanted to do next, and how I could put into words or create something out of this question of being Dalit. And then in early 2016, I was freelancing as a journalist, I heard about this student, his name is Rohith Vemula. And he was 26 years old at the time, and he was a Dalit student leader. And he committed suicide.

If you or someone you know is in crisis, call the U.S. National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 800-273-8255, text TALK to 741741 or visit SpeakingOfSuicide.com/resources for additional resources.

Sonia Paul 31:15

In India.

Yashica Dutt 31:16

In India, in Hyderabad University. He was a student at Hyderabad University and he committed suicide or as how I would put it, he was forced to institutionally commit suicide, because he was discriminated against, for speaking out against the casteist policies of the administration, for raising his voice, for being a student leader, for standing for what he believed in. And he was also from an extremely lower class. He had to do multiple jobs to survive, his mother had to do multiple jobs for him to go to school. And they stopped his fellowship money. And when you have no money to survive, and you feel like you can't go on living a life that you believe in, but you can't do anything else either. He was forced to hang himself. But before he did that, he wrote this beautiful letter, where he talked about his hopes and dreams and how, when you're from lower caste in India, you're reduced, you're identity is reduced to just a number. And what he meant by that number was that you're just a vote, a ballot for the politicians twist and turn at their will. And he talked about how he wanted to write about science, how he wanted to talk about the stars, how he wanted to just learn and educate himself. But now he wouldn't be able to do that. And it was poignant and poetic and really moving. And it started circulating on Facebook. And I ignored it for one full day. But one day on 20th January in 2016, I was sitting at a coffee shop in Chelsea. I was like, 'Well, I have to read what this is about.' I knew it would take some time. And I would need the mental capacity to deal with it. Because I knew that this kid was Dalit. But when I read this note, it just, time stopped and everything converged to my laptop screen. And that's all that mattered for the next 40 minutes as I read that note over and over again. And it really made an effect on me not because of how beautiful the note was, which it was. But because I had never read any Dalit writing in English before. And that really shattered my own perception. Not that it didn't exist, it did. But I was so far removed from that by my own doing and also not wanting to expose myself as being Dalit, that I'd never read any Dalit person who wrote in English before this, and so beautifully. And also in his life, I saw parallels to my own, in the sense that the kind of struggles that his mother had to undergo, and how as a single mother, she raised her children. And despite everything, despite being a construction worker, which in India, it means extremely low wages, unlivable wages, and hardships, physically hard working conditions. And it's not what we think of as construction workers in the US, which is an extremely respectable union protected job. In India, it's a different reality. And his mother did all of those jobs, whatever she could to make sure her children went to school. And my mother did that too. So I realized that we weren't just separated by a hair of reality, then my life could be that, and I could be him. And that really moved me. And I realized that I'm sitting in this cafe in New York, and I just got this great education from Columbia. What am I doing with it?

34:40

I'm a journalist, I needed to do something and I needed to talk about my own experience and create a space for people like me. People like Rohith. What I didn't know at that time, that communities where people could talk about caste, and people could discuss their experiences already existed. I just didn't know of them and I wanted to do something.

35:00

So I started a Tumblr. And I called it Documents of Dalit Discrimination, which was a safe space for people to talk about the caste experiences, because a lot of online discourse on caste in India can be taken over by debates on affirmative action, which can get really ugly, and casteist slurs and just open and bald discrimination. So I didn't want my Tumblr to do that. I wanted us to share our history, to share our trauma and to cultivate pride in who we are, and to honor Rohith's memory. So I created this Tumblr, and I wanted to tell everybody on my timeline about it, I wanted to announce it. And I wanted it to be read by more people so that they write to me and this space could become a thriving space for all of us. And I realized that I can't do that unless I talked about my own story, my own story of passing, of growing up as a Dalit person, of hiding my identity, and now being where I was. So I decided I had to come out as a Dalit person. And that's what I did in that note, and sort of went viral in India and among the Indian community in the US and abroad. And it took a life of its own, I wrote a little more, and then I ended up getting a book deal out of that.

Sonia Paul 36:23

In the submissions you got of Dalit discrimination, what parts of the world did they come from?

Yashica Dutt 36:29

They came from all parts of India, they came from Nepal, some of them came from Pakistan, I think some of them came from the US as well. But most of it was from the South Asian subcontinent. And people were talking about, yes, this is how I feel. This is how I felt all my life, I just didn't have a space to talk about it. So there were all these varied experiences coming in. And that made me — made me feel less alone. And as I continued posting them, from the messages that I was receiving, everybody said that it made them feel less alone as well.

Sonia Paul 37:09

Your book is largely about the experience of caste in India. What's been your experience of caste in the United States?

Yashica Dutt 37:20

It's complex, and slightly nuanced, because United States is the place where I learned how to put my guard down. New York was a city that taught me how to truly be myself, without having to worry about facing caste at the next corner. Because I was not just surrounded by Indians, I was surrounded by other people from other parts of the world. Also, it was in New York and New York specifically, where, when I first time talked about my caste in my classroom, people were shocked. People were angry for me. And I was so neutralized. And I had internalized that idea so deeply by that point that I just talked about it in a very casual matter of fact way. When I saw my classmates' faces and their reactions, that's when I realized that this was something I needed to be angry about as well. So in that sense, the US gave me the freedom to thrive and the empathy that I hadn't received before to talk about my caste experiences. And also, it gave me the idea that if I express myself, I would still be respected. But that was in a multicultural community. In an Indian community, which I have had very few experiences of an Indian only community. So I am not going to be able to exclusively speak about that. But I am certain that in an Indian community, the question of caste would come up, if not, with first-generation, second-generation Indian Americans, or Asian Indians, it would come up with their parents. It would come up when I went to the house. They would ask very casually, 'Beta,' which means like child, 'what's your caste? What do your parents do, which part of the country you're from? What's your caste?' And then I would have to lie again. And then if I chose to lie, then it would be, it would mean doing that whole performance, carrying it to the US. And if I didn't choose to lie, that would mean that the parents wouldn't like me, or they would not want the children to hang out with me or God forbid, if I had a romantic interest in a South Asian person. They wouldn't want that child to marry me for sure, unless they were Dalit themselves. So caste is still very much a part of the Indian community in the US. It exists, it's alive, it's present. And it's considered cultural. A very, vivid example of how caste is alive and well is that California book law case.

Sonia Paul 39:53

Oh, the textbook controversy.

Yashica Dutt 39:54

Textbook, yeah. Where a community of Indian Americans in California, which you might be familiar with, talked about how they wanted the word caste to be removed from textbooks in American schools. Because they thought that this was being used to bully their children, that people were asking their children about what caste meant, and their kids would be very threatened by that. Which, from the Dalit community, they were wonderful activists and other South Asian activists as well, who opposed that. Because that is the very clear and present reality of an Indian society, you cannot hide that you can't say that my child feels bullied. So please don't talk about caste. Maybe you should tell your child and also yourself to not practice caste, or to maybe give them strategies of how to cope with that question, instead of completely erasing that. And there were these moving testimonies by children, gave these moving speeches about, you know, how India is not casteist anymore. It's a casteless society, we don't even practice it. But if you ask those parents, their parents, to marry their children to an untouchable person, I don't think they would agree to that. Very few would, because I've seen examples, even within the Indian American community where they openly talk about, 'oh, we're planning for our son or daughter to get married. And we're looking within our own caste.' So that hasn't gone away. And I think if I may add that, it's stunning how the Indian American community has managed to keep the question of caste so subdued, it's just, it blows my mind. Because it's like a secret that we don't want to share with anybody else. Because outside of the community, most Americans have no idea. And when I speak to them, and they asked me what my work is, they asked me, 'isn't that a thing of the past? Isn't that something that existed in ancient India?' And that's completely untrue. Caste is very much a reality. And also, because of how the history of Indian American migration to the United States has been, only a certain type of person with a certain location and caste and class has managed to make it. The kind of Indian American immigrant that we know, in a mainstream cultural way, is most of the times and upper castes and an upper-class person, or at least a middle-class person. It is near impossible for somebody to come legally to United States, to come as a documented immigrant, unless they have the resources and the means to do that. And how the structure works back in India, mostly people with the resources and means to do that are the upper caste people. So a swath of the population in the US of Indian Americans looks like upper caste and upper class, and they're very happy to hide this grim reality of what the society really is. They're happy to not talk about it, and they're very happy to call it 'culture.' If it's culture, then that's the culture that we should be thinking of getting rid of, because it's harming and leading to brutal discrimination, deaths, murders, and rapes of people.

Sonia Paul 43:12

Yeah, I mean, why? Why do you think it's become known as culture?

Yashica Dutt 43:20

Well, it's the same way that, that misogyny in Indian American communities is called culture, it's the same way that anything that has to do with taking away the power of women is called as culture, it's because it's convenient. It's because it's the way things are done back home. And there are beautiful, amazing things from Indian culture that we should honor and cherish and keep alive. We have great traditions, in all religions in India. But caste is not a tradition that you want to keep alive. Neither is the particular brand of South Asian misogyny that comes from back home. And somehow instead of processing and unpacking that, we just bring it here. And we just keep it, you know, under our beds, and we just allow it to grow. And we say 'Don't touch that. That's my culture.'

Sonia Paul 44:11

Do you think it's that people are hiding it or that people don't know that it is caste?

Yashica Dutt 44:21

It goes both ways, right? I mean, you have to hide something for someone to not know. If I introduced myself to somebody today. And I would say, I am from India, and I'm from an untouchable caste. Because that's my identity. It is obviously a lot more complicated than that. There are different reasons to why I would do that. But when you speak to your friends are non-Indian, non-South Asian about what India is like and what Indian culture is, if you leave out caste, then you doing your culture disservice. And honestly, it's not somebody's fault.

45:00

It's because caste is such an ingrained part of Indian society that we don't even think of it as anything out of the ordinary. You introduce yourself as a Hindu or a Muslim or a Christian, but you don't talk about caste, because it's taken for granted. And if you're upper caste, it works because it doesn't affect you. If you're untouchable, or Dalit. Or if you're from another backward class, which is the lowest caste in the caste system, then it affects you, then you want to talk about it, you want to bring up the discrimination that happens with you. But if you're enjoying the benefits of a system, then it's very easy for you to be caste neutral, or say, 'Oh, we don't believe in caste anymore, because I'm benefiting from it.' It doesn't affect me at all.

Sonia Paul 45:44

Yeah.

Yashica Dutt 45:45

So it goes both ways.

Sonia Paul 45:47

This moment you've described of sharing your experience with your classmates at Columbia? Were there Indians or other South Asians in that group?

Yashica Dutt 45:58

No.

Sonia Paul 45:59

How do you think the presence of other South Asians would have influenced how you negotiated that experience?

Yashica Dutt 46:08

I would have been mindful of how freely, quote-unquote, I could speak about this, or what would be the reaction to me expressing myself, or if I would get into a confrontation with my classmate. I would definitely have thought about whether I want to talk about this. Whether I want to go deep, whether I want to be so open with what I'm saying. Having a South Asian person in that group would have changed my answer to that question about what is your identity? What are your experiences with that identity? So I would have, I would have thought about it, maybe I would not have had the same reaction. Or maybe I would have censored myself, maybe I would have redacted myself a little bit.

46:56

Because even some friends that I went to school with were from the Indian community who were Indians, were extremely shocked to find out that I was a lower caste person. And of course, they were my friends. And they were on board with what I was saying, they understood it. But they said to me that 'we didn't think about caste in the same way as you think about. And if you talked about this with us, before you wrote the book, and before you wrote the note, then we would have tried to contest it in some way, we would have said, but oh, but you know, I am upper caste, but I grew up poor. So how is that any better than you?'

Sonia Paul 47:32

They said that to you? And what did you say?

Yashica Dutt 47:36

I said, 'Go read my book.' No, I had, I had a conversation with them. And I explained to them that class and caste manifests itself in very different ways. You have a whole support system of a caste that is not known to do manual scavenging, that is known to do anything else but deal with human excrement, or deal with dead animals. That's not what your caste chosen profession is. So if you want to do business, or if you want to become an academic, or if you want to start a small business, then you will have way more support, than an untouchable person trying to leave their job that is assigned to them by their caste and to come and start a small business. That would affect them that much more, and that would affect them differently. Also, there are many layers to this question about how caste plays out, versus how class plays out in India. And the kind of support structures and how difficult it is for people to transcend one or the other, and how you might be discriminated for being poor. But you don't get discriminated for being Dalit.

48:44

A poor and Dalit person gets discriminated for being poor and being Dalit.

Sonia Paul 48:49

Before he first came to the US. What was your image of the typical South Asian in this country, and did caste factor into that image at all?

Yashica Dutt 49:02

My image of a South Asian person in this country was a doctor, an engineer, somebody who worked in tech, more or less, like most people in this country. And a lot of people back home. I thought you had to have the kind of money, which is true. Not everybody has a lot of resources to be able to do that. But I didn't unpack the idea of how caste played a role because I was already performing the identity of being upper caste at that time. So I didn't think that would be an extremely different experience for me versus them. It was just a question of whether I had the resources. And the reason I didn't have the kind of resources has to do with what caste I came from in a big way.

Sonia Paul 49:50

So, I mean that and given some scholarship that's been done on immigration trends and how US immigration policy functions to prefer immigrants who are highly skilled or come from certain educational backgrounds that would benefit from caste privilege in the South Asian context -- it is safe to say that regardless if people are thinking about it or not, this idea of a professional engineer or doctor relates to coming from an ancestry that was historically privileged, meaning an upper-caste identity.

Yashica Dutt 50:35

Absolutely. I mean, Asian Americans are the fastest-growing demographic in this country. And we are known to have incomes that are way higher than the national average. Of course, that's not the case back home. But the idea of Indians in the US is rich, because of a certain reason, because of who we are accepting here, and what are the caps on income, and what allows you to get an H-1B visa, or any other kind of visa, and how, you know, that sifts through who's being allowed and who's not being allowed. But like you've correctly identified, historically, access to wealth, and access to resources has been something that only upper castes could do. Because — let's not forget Dalits, untouchables weren't even allowed in education till like, 150 years ago. I've talked about this, my great grandfather — which is not that many generations ago, if you think about it, he was alive till 1980, 1990 — he went to school, and he was not allowed to hold a pencil. Because that's not what untouchables did. Because if they held a pencil, or if they held a slate — that's how you wrote back in the early 1900s in India — if you held a slate, then the slate would get polluted. Or the rock that it came from, would get polluted, because that's how polluting, and that's how dirty that's how demeaning the touch of an untouchable person was, that even a slate would get dirty, and then it could be unfit for use. So if you wanted to be educated, you had to sit outside the classroom, and you had to learn the alphabet by scrawling a stick in the mud, because that's the only thing you were allowed to hold. So if a community is inherently denied access to education, for fundamentally for generations, how are they supposed to acquire any kind of wealth? They were starting — and this is a beautiful metaphor that's been often used for race in this country — they were starting so far behind the starting line. Whereas upper-class people were way far ahead. With their generations of education, their generations of privilege, with their generations of resources, that it's going to take us a really long time to even become equal. Which is why it directly reflects in who are the people who are coming to the US, and how the Indian American population looks like. Which is not to say that Dalits don't exist. Sujatha Gidla, who is also a Dalit person, who wrote the beautiful Ants Among Elephants, to much acclaim, is a Dalit person and lives in New York, she worked for the MTA at that point. So the US also has Dalits. I know so many amazing scientists and engineers and doctors who are Dalits. But because we are seen as a monolith, that question doesn't arise. We're just seen as blanket, affluent upper caste people, upper-caste for people who know about caste.

Sonia Paul 53:28

I mean, but who's we when you're talking about because we're seen as a monolith? Who are you talking about?

Yashica Dutt 53:33

The Asian Indian community. That's the Indian American community in the United States.

Sonia Paul 53:38

Yeah. And I mean, I think it's also hard for some people to grasp because caste really functions throughout all of South Asia. But there's a particular conversation around caste in India. And I'm wondering why you think that is?

Yashica Dutt 53:56

India is the largest country in the subcontinent. Let's start with that. A bulk of the South Asian community is made up of Indians. Also, Hinduism, which is basically the religion where caste comes from, is heavily practiced in India. It's heavily practiced in Nepal. Which is not to say Pakistan doesn't have its own version of caste, it definitely does. It's morphed, it's a nuanced idea. It's morphed into a cultural trait more than a religious trait now. But ultimately, and fundamentally, it's Hinduism, where caste comes from. And the maximum number of Hindus in the subcontinent are from India, which is why India sort of dominates — I mean, in my mind, for me, and especially being an Indian, it kind of dominates the question of caste in the United States in particular.

Sonia Paul 54:54

You mentioned Sujatha, who wrote the book Ants Among Elephants — I haven't read the book yet, but from what I understand, she also talks about her experience in India. And I'm just wondering, you know, these discussions of like, you know, it's just culture here in the US. What are some other indicators, though, of caste functioning in the US that may be those with a caste lens might realize is caste-oriented, but others might just interpret as so-called culture.

Yashica Dutt 55:27

I think marriages. In the US in particular, marriages are the biggest indicator of caste, and how that system is still continuing over generations. And Indian weddings are known to be lavish, are known to be rooted in tradition and culture, but caste is as much as part of that culture. So that's one. Secondly, I think, if you have an Indian-owned workplace, and that's — of course, I won't be able to give you any data on this, because this is something that has been told to me in confidence, but I'm aware of — not every — but one or two Indian-owned workplaces, where somebody's caste identity, or majority of Indians or somebody who runs it, the caste identity often comes up. It might not be a question of whether we want to discriminate against them or not. But definitely, the question will come up. Or, are you vegetarian or non-vegetarian? That is also a major distinction because Dalits or untouchables are inherently like — a lot of people give up eating meat for cultural and other health reasons or personal beliefs. But traditionally, the divide is, if you're non-vegetarian, you might be an untouchable person, or a lot of people hold on to their vegetarianism with not just a sense of saving the environment or being good to the animals, but a sense of superiority, a sense of purity. That is very specifically a South Asian trait, that I, my food is purer than yours, because it has not been contaminated by meat. And that often and not always, because there's so many upper caste people who consume meat. But that tends to become, in certain areas, a marker of what caste identity is. And I know it's a little complicated for somebody who's not familiar with caste or Indian culture to grasp that. But if you are Indian, you know what I'm talking about. Somebody can just say, 'Oh, you eat meat? Well, yeah. Don't sit next to me. I can't tolerate this. Or please don't cook your food in my utensils if you eat meat, because it's going to pollute the food that I cook in future.' Especially beef, which I mean, a lot of Indians are known to not eat beef, but little known fact is that Dalit community is known to consume beef, because that was the only source of protein for somebody who was poor. And especially if you were dealing with dead animals, and you had no food to eat, you didn't have time for purity and pollution debate, you just wanted to feed your family. So this blanket idea that Indians don't eat beef is not true. So I think food can be a major indicator of what someone's caste is. I think in certain academic circles, it's present where people find, especially if you're working on Dalit subjects, Dalit related issues, then that questions comes out, are you Dalit? Or are you not, especially in the US? And if the answer is yes, then it definitely — it's so subconscious. Because it's not the color of your skin. Unlike race. That bias manifests itself in very subtle but insidious ways. If that makes sense.

Sonia Paul 58:48

I want to go back to the moment where we first met, and it was at this like Ambedkar association of North America celebration. And I was wondering what your experience of Dalitness was like in that situation? And if you could talk like, what is that association?

Yashica Dutt 59:09

Sure. But Sonia, you might not recall, we didn't meet there first. We first met in New Delhi at an alumni meeting, when you came to talk about how great it was to come to Columbia.

Sonia Paul 59:22

I remember that I was wearing a white salwar kameez. And I had actually just come from — well, from Lucknow, but I was in Delhi to, yeah, be present for my tabla guruji's funeral. And I remember though, yeah, it was a community of people, of Columbia graduates. Wow. Yes.

Yashica Dutt 59:43

Yeah, I remember that. But moving forward.

Sonia Paul 59:45

Yeah. So our second time meeting was at Columbia, where we got to talk more one on one in person.

Yashica Dutt 59:53

Right.

Sonia Paul 59:53

And yeah, but what was your experience of Dalit identity in that space, and what, what was being created there?

Yashica Dutt 1:00:02

I did not know that the word Dalit could signify so much empowerment till I had met the Dalits in the US, in New York.

1:00:14

Before that, I was trying to convince myself, I was trying to tell myself that, no, I want to be proud of who I am. And I believed it, of course. And I'd read Dr. Ambedkar's work. And I felt galvanized, I felt charged, I felt excited, proud about who I was. But really until I met, that community of people who were just themselves, there was no shame in what your caste was. There were people from so many parts of the United States, who had come from different parts of the country. All of us spoke different languages, except English. And I went there, and I just felt, for the first time among South Asians, I felt accepted. I felt like I found the people I was looking for.

1:01:04

There was this unfettered pride in who you are. And you could feel it, just, the energy of that place was so charged. It was the 125th birth anniversary celebration of Dr. BR Ambedkar. And it took place in Barnard College, opposite Columbia, why I mentioned that is because it had personal significance to me, because I presented a paper, I was on a panel. I talked about atrocities on Dalits in India, especially on women. And when I stood on that podium, and it dawned on me that I was surrounded by all these beautiful Dalit people. And I had this huge portrait of Ambedkar behind me. And across the street was where, in 1917, at Columbia, he first understood and explained caste in his master's thesis. And I mean, of course, caste had been talked a lot before that, but from a Dalit, that was huge, that held huge significance. And it became a moment that I don't think I can ever forget, where I'm surrounded by all this legacy and all this history. And for the first time, I'm learning to look at it with absolute pride. And that's when I realized that there is no need for shame, and how fake and how forced and artificial, the idea of caste is. That experience really opened my eyes. Because I saw people who were smart, who were bright, who were intellectual, who had multiple degrees, who were everything, that at least the world in India, the society, the small, self-contained world in India, things of Dalits to not be, and it shattered my own expectations. And when I saw all these people filled with so much strength, and so much energy and confidence, it really blew my mind. And I realized that I'm never going to be ashamed of being Dalit ever again. This, this small community in New York exists. And there is hope that we can replicate this in India and other Indian communities across the world, including the US.

Sonia Paul 1:03:29

Something I've been observing and wondering about is that, you know, there are a lot of prominent South Asians in this country. You know, whether they're lawyers who have come to political prominence, or actors, stars, philanthropists, tech entrepreneurs.

1:03:51

As far as I've observed, nobody has really talked about caste. And I'm wondering if you think about that, and what would happen if they considered this issue?

Yashica Dutt 1:04:02

I think about that all the time. I look at somebody and I, and I wonder what their caste is. And more often than not, I look at the last name, and I know the answer is upper caste. And like I said, it doesn't serve any purpose for them to talk about caste at all. As far as they know, it really is a thing of the past. It really doesn't matter for them, that if certain people from a lower caste are killed in certain part of India, because it's not something that affects them directly. They see no reason to bring that issue up. It's not present or persistent, which is why we need somebody who is Dalit, and Indian American, to really bring that issue to the forefront because it is us to whom this issue is personal.

1:04:50

We are the ones who feel the brunt of that discrimination. It is not a priority for somebody who is upper caste to talk about this and also, I think, to give credit where it's due, I don't think they have the opportunity to talk about caste in that sense, either. I mean, for a mainstream US audience, to introduce that complicated idea is also a task. A Dalit activist, going to national prominence, and then talking about this, I definitely see that happening. But I have no hopes from an upper caste person to bring that issue up on their own.

Sonia Paul 1:05:40

Something else this kind of relates to then, it makes me wonder, what do you think is the narrative of the South Asian diaspora in the US, if it is that some issues are more urgent to some than others, and it would take a certain kind of person to bring this to the forefront? When we are perceived as a demographic, we are perceived, more or less as a homogenous group, even though there's great variation. So what then ought we to do about how we can create a narrative that encompasses all these intricacies and complexities without diluting them?

Yashica Dutt 1:06:26

Are you asking me how we can?

Sonia Paul 1:06:29

Yeah, I mean, what's the way to move forward to tell a story, that, that maybe is not like, willing to wait, for example?

Yashica Dutt 1:06:40

I think it's on us as storytellers to bring up these issues and ideas and make them mainstream and widespread in mainstream American culture. I think we need to, as storytellers, in every art form, whether we're in media, or we're in Hollywood, or on television, we need to bring about caste. And I think like, Master of None did a great job. And keeping Aziz's personal politics and his personal history aside for a moment — that if you just look at the show, I think it did a good job in, in showcasing Muslim Indian identity, and what that meant. So that was a story he could talk about because it was personal to him. And as a storyteller, he created a shift in the dynamic that, 'Oh, there are Muslim Americans. Hasan Minhaj is doing that.

1:07:40

So, you know, he talks about his identity. So I think, because of our space, as minority as a so-called model minority in this country, it makes sense for us to talk about our own stories. I'm not saying everyone should do that, and they shouldn't talk about other ideas, but I understand why people make that choice. So as journalists, and as filmmakers and screenwriters, when we are looking at different Indian American identities, maybe it makes sense to also discuss their caste.

Sonia Paul 1:08:24

Is there anything that we didn't touch upon that you think is important to get out that is worthwhile to ponder or debate further or should be our lasting thought or takeaway?

Yashica Dutt 1:08:42

I think you covered pretty much everything. Indian American community, my experiences back home. I think we've got it covered.

Sonia Paul 1:08:50

Thank you so much, Yashica. This has been really wonderful.

Some links:

Coming Out As Dalit, by Yashica Dutt

Ants Among Elephants, by Sujatha Gidla

Also good resources on caste: Caste Matters, by Suraj Yengde, and The Annihilation of Caste, by Bhimrao R. Ambedkar

If you’re curious about the California textbook controversy, have a listen to this story I reported on it, which aired back in 2017.

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Ants Among Elephants: An Untouchable Family and the Making of Modern India

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Hello, friends! This episode of Loitering features an interview with the one and only Vidur Malik. Please listen and follow along below.

Sonia Paul 00:13

Hello, everyone, welcome to Loitering, the occasional but lovable traveling mini pod I am currently testing in newsletter format. And today I am loitering over outside pho with a very special guest. Can you please introduce yourself?

Vidur Malik 00:30

My name is Victor Malik. I am a associate marriage and family therapist who lives in Hayward.

Sonia 00:36

And also, as you can hear, we are very much outside. We are in outdoor dining at a pho place in the bay. And, yeah, you can hear some children and families around us. But it's also a very special occasion because Vidur and I are catching up. And so, Vidur, the reason we know each other has to do with our time in journalism school together. So can you explain a little bit about your history as a journalist, and how that led you actually into an entirely different line of work?

Vidur 01:08

Yeah. So when I was growing up, I was trying to figure out what I was good at, and what I was passionate about. And I always knew I liked sports. And I always knew I like to write. So I thought, why not combine those two and become a sports writer. And I kind of took that kind of very naive idea through high school and college and worked on my school papers and studied journalism, and went to Columbia where I met you. And at that point, I thought that sports journalism was my calling. And I was just going to do it and not ask any questions about it. But as I got into the field and started working daily, as a journalist, I realized it just was not fulfilling for me. And I didn't feel like I could cut it as a journalist. I didn't think I had the qualities that somebody like you has or other reporters have.

Sonia 01:47

That's a lie

Vidur 01:47

It's not! Like, I didn't think that — you know, you have to be tenacious, you have to be okay, working unpredictable and long hours. And you have to be okay annoying people and asking questions that will upset people. And that always freaks me out. And I had to psych myself up every time I did an interview, or like, just went out and did reporting. And that was not sustainable. I couldn't do that into my 70s, you know, so I had to do something that I didn't dread doing every day. And I had always enjoyed mentoring and sort of just supporting people who are going through things. And I had done peer mentoring in high school and college. And I really liked the idea of just sitting with somebody, and not necessarily solving their problems, but helping them figure out a solution that works for them. And the more I thought about it, the more I was like, you know, you should be in some sort of counseling or psychology. And so I was living in New York, after finishing Columbia. And I wanted to go back home to California. And I applied to the Santa Clara University School of Counseling Psychology, and I got in, and I haven't looked back, and I work as an associate marriage and family therapist who is working on getting my license.

Sonia 02:50

Okay, that's quite a story. Also, I really want to unwrap more though, like the transferable skills between being a journalist and being a therapist. What do you see as some of the things that maybe you're taking away from actually being in journalism school that journalists themselves might underappreciate?

Vidur 03:11

Well, information gathering for one, knowing when to ask a follow-up question, knowing how to phrase questions to get a lot of information. That's a big one. And then the second one is just writing quickly. As a clinician, anybody will tell you who works in the field, there's a lot of paperwork, and a lot of documentation, and assessments and treatment plans. And often you're doing more paperwork than actual therapy. So being able to write quickly, and write clearly quickly is helpful for me, because I can write a note in a few minutes and kind of distill an hour-long therapy session into a few sentences and feel like I can do that pretty effectively. And journalism helped me a lot with that.

Sonia 03:48

Wow, did you feel like, self-conscious, though, about making a career switch? Because I think there are a lot of journalists who talk about like, 'oh, what would it be like to leave journalism,' but not even just with journalism, but with any industry — sometimes it's like seen as taboo, or it's just too daunting to actually make that switch. So what were — what were you thinking when you were actually going through this decision?

Vidur 04:11

I only feel self-conscious about it when I talk about it with other journalists. Because I think —

Sonia 04:16

— I hope not me,

Vidur 04:17

No. Because the worry is — they might think, well, Vidur couldn't cut it in this field. And I kind of think that too. Like, I felt like I was good at journalism, and I got generally good feedback. And I worked hard. But I just knew it wasn't sustainable for me. So I think some of the self-consciousness just comes through when I talk to people who are in the field and are probably gonna do it for a long time. And, you know, sometimes they feel like, oh, I don't measure up to them. But, you know, I work through that. And it doesn't stop me from telling people what I'm doing now. So that's really the only time I get self-conscious about it.

Sonia 04:48

That's so interesting, but like in terms of measuring up, you're actually like doing a really great thing right now. Like, I mean, being a counselor, especially in this era that we're in right now. So can you talk a little bit more about the work you're doing? You're working with high school students, right?

Vidur 05:04

Yeah, I'm a clinician at a high school in the Bay Area. So right now we're doing virtual learning. So logistically, that just presents a challenge in terms of how do you do the work over a computer or over the phone. It's work that has always been done, you know, with two people in the same room, and kind of that, that feedback that you get from being in the same room with somebody that's nonverbal, that you can't quite like quantify. And that kind of doesn't really exist over the phone or over a laptop, but you just find ways to get around it. And I think now more than ever, people just need space to check in about themselves. So even if it's done remotely, or virtually, the space itself is still important.

Sonia 05:45

I mean, I can't imagine — well, I can a little bit because I have some friends who are teachers — but what it's like to be a high school student and learn in a pandemic. Can you talk a bit broadly, like while respecting patient confidentiality, about some of the issues that young people are going through that maybe we might take for granted as adults or working professionals going through our own hurdles?

Vidur 06:07

Yeah. I think that generally, such a big part of school, and education, is just socializing with peers and understanding just how to interact with people your own age, how to have conversations, how to make friends, how to handle conflicts, and resolve them. And that's a lot harder to do when you're not in school every day with your classmates in a class. So I think that social element of school that we all probably took for granted, I know I took for granted, just doesn't exist anymore. The idea of like, being with the same classmates, maybe throughout K through 12, being with the same classmates in the same class every day, that just doesn't exist. So I think that social element is missing. And I think, you know, I wonder what it's like for our students to go through that. I also think that in terms of the education itself, you know, it's a lot easier to get distracted, when you're at your home environment in front of your laptop, as opposed to when you're in school, you kind of know, I'm in school mode, right now, when I can get home, I could play PlayStation or do anything else I do at home. But now, all those distractions are right there in front of you. And it's hard to get away from them when you don't actually leave your house. So that's a huge issue that I think a lot of students are facing right now is just, there's no boundaries between home and school. That doesn't really exist right now.

Sonia 07:20

Yeah, it's like a sort of lead up to... there's no boundaries between work and personal life for a lot of working professionals. Um, how do you advise your students to cope? I mean, you can't necessarily give a solution to their problems, but you could advise them on how they can work toward a solution. So, how are you doing that?

Vidur 07:43

So I think — I try to support my students with a lot of mindfulness nowadays, I think has been helpful. So you know, if they find themselves getting distracted, while they're in class, having a point of focus in their room, whether it's like a poster or a post-it note or a picture that they can use to kind of reset themselves and just get back into the moment can be helpful. So I'll recommend a lot of like quick mindfulness activities that a student can do, no matter where they are kind of at anytime. I think in addition to that, just taking breaks. So, really just utilizing those breaks, to just go for a walk, get some food, just whatever they need to do to kind of safely cope with getting through the school day is helpful. So I think those two things are things that I recommend, and then just again, having this space where they're like they're meeting with me once a week to check in, you know, just to know that whatever they're carrying, that they do have a place to get it out whether it's with me or another trusted adult or a friend.

Sonia 08:33

Right. So in addition to doing this work, you're also working part-time on the weekend, counseling adults. So from an outside perspective, it seems like you're surrounded by a lot of people who may just like be venting to you, or you're listening to a lot of difficulty that people are encountering and trying to help them manage that. But also, like how are you managing your own stress and mental health at this time, I think especially like, we were talking about vicarious trauma, sometimes we can be too empathetic, or too empathic. So how do you think about taking care of yourself while also helping people take care of themselves?

Vidur 09:12

So I've always been somebody that likes taking little breaks, I'm not somebody who could like work several hours without a break. I was never like that at school either. I never pulled all nighters or anything like that. So, I really prioritize taking small breaks, even if it's just going for a quick walk around the neighborhood. I do that, you know, I'll watch TV for a few minutes if I'm in between like phone calls or meetings. So wherever I can, I try to just do something fun and something safe for myself. I also am in my own therapy, and that's a great place for me to kind of have an outlet to talk about things. I think what I found is really important is that when I'm with a client, I have to be fully present for them. So that means that stuff, you know, it'll come up because I'm a human, and I'm gonna have reactions to things that my clients say. But I know that that's not the time for me to get that feeling out. So for me that time is therapy. So I know that I have that for me. And that allows me to just be fully present, when I know that it's not my time to talk about my stuff, because I know that I do have an opportunity for that. So that's reassuring to know that that opportunity does exist for me to have that space.

Sonia 10:11

And how would you...um. How would you advise friends who are maybe in the position of being kind of pseudo-therapists to their own friends? I think cuz, you know, people like to take care of each other, we'd like to be available for support. Sometimes people do need feedback outside of therapist they may already have, but also like, what happens when maybe friends may project their own feelings or insecurities, or also, just maybe trying to problem solve too much when they really shouldn't be in that position? So how do we think about being available as friends for each other, especially right now, versus knowing what boundaries we should actually establish around that?

Vidur 10:53

Yeah, so I think support is so unique for everybody. And it looks different for everyone, depending on what they're going through. So I think one thing that could be helpful is when you are being a friend to somebody and supporting them through something is asking them what they need. So you may even ask, like, would it be helpful if I gave advice, or like, talked about what I think would work? Or do you just need me to listen right now? Do you not need advice? Do you just need space to talk? So, knowing what your friend needs in the moment is a great way for you to think about, like, how can I be helpful right now without kind of taking on too much, you know. If somebody doesn't want a problem solver, and you do problem solve, I can, you know, lead to some awkwardness, and it can lead to you taking on too much responsibility. So, asking at the beginning, you know, how can I be helpful to you, it just allows you to kind of understand, like, what you can do in the moment. And I think that prevents that sort of vicarious stress and allows you to just be fully present in the moment with your friend.

Sonia 11:45

Wow, that's so interesting. Thank you so much, Vidur. And as you could tell, like, our own environment has changed the family next door to us with the very active child — actually, they're still next to us. But the child is now slurping his pho. But yeah, is there anything else you want to add, Vidur, that we didn't touch on?

Vidur 12:04

Um, I think just, you know, not that I have all the answers or anything. But I think one thing that I've learned for myself is that it's hard sometimes to measure how much we're carrying or how much stress we're facing. And I think right now is one of those times. I think that we are all dealing with the effects of the pandemic, and the fires and just what's happening in our country, in our world right now. And I think it might be helpful every now and then just to say, how do I notice myself carrying stress? Is it in my body, is it in my shoulders, is it in my chest, do I get headaches? And just take a moment to say, what could be helpful for me right now? Can I take a walk? Could I take a nap, can I listen to some music. And if you do that a couple of times a day or a few times a day. Again, it might not solve what's going on for you. But it will give you a chance to just be kind to you and kind of put you first in a really intentional way. Because I think sometimes it can be easy to put us, you know, kind of down the list of priorities. So just checking in with yourself regularly every day just allows you to kind of make you number one for a little while, and just sort of respond immediately and safely to ways that you might be carrying stress.

Sonia 13:16

Thank you so much, Vidur. You know what, maybe you're not a journalist anymore, but you can be like a podcast host about these issues.

Vidur 13:23

Thank you. I will think about that.

Sonia 13:25

We can have an updated Loitering episode. Okay, so that's all we have for today of Loitering, the occasional but lovable traveling mini pod I am currently testing in newsletter format. Thank you for listening and have a nice day. Goodbye!

*Outside pho = outdoor dining with safe social distance. Vidur ate pho, while I had boba (I had actually eaten a Vietnamese sandwich just before!)

Speaking of food, this is me not trying to be a “journalist influencer” but a “Sonia influencer,” and this is pretty good.

Some links:

Speaking of young people, this story is a grim but necessary read on the students left behind by remote learning.

If you, like me, are an alum of Columbia Journalism School (or are a current student, faculty, or staff), please consider signing this petition to drop the criminal charges filed against Andrea Sahouri. Sahouri is a reporter for The Des Moines Register and was arrested back in May while covering a protest against the killing of George Floyd. While other journalists were arrested covering protests over the summer in various cities, the charges were usually dropped once a journalist’s identity was established. Sahouri is one of few journalists still facing criminal charges.

“In the last three months America has lost more people than Sri Lanka lost in 30 years of civil war.” And more here on what it means to experience collapse.

If you’re interested in China, TikTok, balkanized internets, and what it’s like to try to practice journalism when a government doesn’t like your reporting, have a listen to this interview on Big Technology with BuzzFeed’s Megha Rajagopalan. You can read a discussion of that interview here too.

Around the same time COVID-19 was breaking out in the U.S., I was anticipating traveling to Detroit to report a story for the podcast 70 Million that I first started researching at the end of last year. Little did I know that the issues at stake in the story — police-mandated surveillance and facial recognition technology — would animate on tensions that would erupt even more as the year moved forward, and we entered into a national conversation on policing in our country. Given the curtails to travel the pandemic imposed, I ended up not reporting on location in Detroit, but doing a very meta thing: I recorded a FaceTime tour of downtown Detroit, and a Zoom tour of the police department's "Real Time Crime Center, as part of my reporting about the rise of cameras all around us. The pandemic has definitely made all of us way more comfortable in front of screens than ever, but it's worth thinking about what happens when this comfort — and the fine lines between real safety and the perception of safety — also contribute to the rise of surveillance. Hope you'll have a listen to the story.

And on a final note: Let’s all become hot for ourselves and not care so much who does and does not see it in quarantine.

I’d love feedback, or just to hear from you, so please feel free to get in touch. And if you know someone you think may like to read or listen to Loitering, please share. Thanks.

Subscribe at loitering.substack.com

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Heylo,

It’s been quite a while since Loitering last dropped… not that some significant loitering hasn’t happened since then. But as we all know, 2020 is the year where hustling doesn’t seem to make as much sense as it once did, given the broader forces, news, and circumstances around us. Life is exhausting! And sometimes, you need to just concentrate on holding the ice cream cone rather than adding more flavors to it (for more insight on that, please see the headline photo, taken in the late summer of 2018, and listen to the latest episode of Loitering with Evan, Adam, and Jesse Adam, featuring special guest co-producer Evan).

Meanwhile, while I did have a wonderful Loitering zoom session with Loitering’s “target audience” — also known as my friend Fonzie, also known as Mr. D :) — earlier this summer, and have an episode with Yashica Dutt, author of the book Coming Out As Dalit, that’s been in the works for a long time, both are TBD for now. Mr. D is an English teacher and Dean of students at a high school in the Bay Area, so our conversation about teaching and learning in the pandemic quickly became antiquated as the news cycle kept moving (we hope to re-Loiter later this fall). And sadly, just as I was going through final edits of my interview with Yashica, my audio file (and its backup files!) corrupted. :( Then I just got wrapped up with work, particularly a story for which I first interviewed Yashica last year.

To make a long story short, the delays around that story (which, to be clear, is now a different story on the same topic) have very much to do with inequities in our media industry, discussions which inflamed as the Black Lives Matter protests became the largest movement in American history. Twitter has especially become the hotspot for journalists to vent about their struggles, and for a while this summer, it felt like the trauma and frustrations associated with being a journalist or producer of color in American media was surrounding me too much — even as I was also trying to figure out the best way to navigate my own experiences.

So rather than hoping for retweets that might give me a false impression of validation and closure, I opted to make it very clear (once again) in emails and subsequent phone calls to the place where a certain experience of mine did transpire — and man, talk about exhausting. 2020 has been a year of reckoning for everyone. While the media industry seems sincere in trying to circumvent its lack of diversity when it comes to coverage and who is in the position to shape and report such stories, with the way journalism economics is going, it also just feels… late. And, therefore, a more extractive process at times for a person like me. Is the journalism industry going to stop laying off reporters? Will they stop tightening their freelance budgets and instead maybe consider hiring one of these freelancers full-time, or at least offer them the chance to do expensive, deep-dive reporting? Probably not, at least not to those first few questions. It’s difficult to not then sometimes feel like a guinea pig for how XX organization can do better when they want to have these phone calls. The other party’s well-meaning can only mean something when actual action is the result.

And in this environment, some full-time staffers at news organizations have opted to leave their jobs and create their own individual subscription news coverage on this platform you’re reading right now. This is a trend I’ve been following for a while, with both curiosity and trepidation. Most news coverage on this focuses on staffers who are choosing to go independent, rather than independents who have maybe fallen into that model for other reasons. My current feelings on this trend center on observations that the folks Substack is recruiting to be star independents — a sort of “journalism influencer” — are people who, at their media companies beforehand, were the ones who were actually encouraged and validated for their contributions, and given the chance to do the deep reporting for which they became known. So when it comes to “fixing” a crisis in news coverage, there’s still a huge gaping hole about the problems journalists of color have been venting about all along. I am sure there are exceptions to this, and I would love to discuss this further and be proven wrong since I do think Substack is doing something interesting. But these are some of my current thoughts.

That being said, I am not too proud to hold back in asking you, if you are not already a subscriber, to now subscribe. :)

On an entirely different note, we are officially in Libra season, if that means anything to you. While I am not necessarily in the cohort of millennials turning to astrology as the main framework for understanding life, I will admit I look forward to seeing what Susan Miller has in store for me every month and try to imagine how it will or won’t make sense. But this year, I am excited about Libra season mostly because it signifies something else in my house: kombucha.

Let’s backtrack to June, when I saw this email on a local Bay Area listserve I’m on.

OBVIOUSLY, this captured my interest. Jun scoby, ey? I got in touch with the email poster, a man named Marcus. But it turned out I would be far down the list of others who got in touch with him before me. Upon learning about this, I mentioned it was ok, no worries because I’m not that hardcore. Then it turned into this other exchange, where I learned a bit about comparative resilience.

I was a bit overwhelmed at the information and had to explain myself.

Marcus got back to me the very next day. He was excited. He suggested that since kombucha scobies are a bit more resilient — albeit take more time to brew — it might be a better option for someone starting out. So low and behold, some weeks later, I walked over to meet Marcus at a safe social distance and came back with a scoby. He also gave me an entire rundown about how to brew kombucha and was so excellent at it that — with his permission — I am now sharing this presentation with you here.

Marcus and I live in the same neighborhood, and as I walked back with this scoby specimen, a few people eyed it (and me) warily. It really did look disgusting.

Then me, being the tired and busy and burnt out person I am, let the scoby sit for a while instead of brewing up some kombucha right away. It was only thanks to my housemate, who has experience in the kombucha department, that we finally got things going. Here is a brief illustration of what transpired that COVID Friday night.

We wrote a note to ourselves on the ready date.

We will let you know how it turned out.

Some links:

Here’s a story that keeps running through my mind, and a podcast interview with the writer of that story, which I similarly can’t stop thinking about. The podcast interview with the writer, Jiayang Fan, vocalizes the depths of conversations I personally wish we had more of — around what it means to create stories and create the self.

Speaking of seeing the self, Yashica Dutt wrote this review of Isabel Wilkerson’s new book Caste that — especially if you’re interested in caste and the implications of that book — you should read.

The children born on 9/11 are about to vote, which makes you wonder about what it must be like to grow up with your life defined by tragedy (also, Sabrina Toppa pointed out that the focus group didn’t include any Muslim or Arab kids born on 9/11, which would more than likely reveal realities and experiences someone like Paul Krugman also seems oblivious to).

I hope you’re listening to the new iteration of The Cut Podcast.

Today’s news adds to the collective burden so many communities — but particularly Black communities — are facing. These two episodes of The Daily about Breonna Taylor and what transpired the night police killed her are worth listening to. Here’s Part 1, here’s Part 2, and here’s a newsletter about the reporter and producers’ process.

This piece about why we’re not mourning the 200,000+ people who have died from COVID-19 is a sad but necessary read. This line in particular drives it home: “Properly mourning and memorializing the dead would require a national reckoning with how government at every level mishandled the pandemic, how the US failed so much in contrast to other countries, and how structural inequalities made the virus much deadlier for Black and Latinx Americans.”

My mini beat is pretty relevant this year. Here’s a recent piece I reported that was co-published in The Guardian and The Juggernaut.

I have a couple of stories I’ve been working on for a long time coming out soon too, so I hope to send another Loitering update sooner rather than later!

P.S. Don’t forget to register to vote.

P.P.S. Don’t forget to get a flu shot either.

I’d love feedback, or just to hear from you, so please feel free to get in touch. And if you know someone you think may like to read or listen to Loitering, please share. Thank you.

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Hi everyone,

I’m doing Loitering a little differently today. No transcript — what you’ll read here is different from what you will listen to. Hope you’ll do both.

On Friday night, I went to a protest in downtown Oakland. Just a few days prior I had been asking friends how they felt to meet in person while safe social distancing, as a sort of temperature check to see how people were feeling given COVID-19. But by Friday, it was clear that many people’s first big social gathering in the pandemic was going to be a protest. It was for me.

I reached out to a producer at a show on New York Public Radio I sometimes contribute to, The Takeaway, and while I didn’t get a formal commission — they couldn’t predict how the news would play out over the weekend to know what Monday’s show would be — they alerted their executive producer and we agreed to stay in touch. This is what’s called “stringing” in journalism. Without a formal go-ahead, I could have said no, but the gravity of the moment was too big. A friend came over and we went together.

Social distancing in this kind of situation is impossible, as you can see. And it’s not like the people there were oblivious either. “The risk in the minds of many Black and Brown people is worth it,” Cat Brooks and Rebecca Ruiz of the Anti-Police Terror Project said in a statement to The Mercury News about the protests. “It’s a conundrum because we want to live but, also, we want to live.”

I didn’t end up doing any interviews on Friday — there was too much to absorb, too much movement to feel like I could concentrate on that while also taking the necessary pictures to post to social media for this kind of breaking news situation. But beyond that, I also admittedly didn’t have it in me to ask people why they were there. Just as it’s exhausting for black people to constantly have to explain themselves to the world, it’s exhausting to be the journalist on the other end asking them to repeat the trauma of their lives — and for what, the sake of a good sound bite? For what audience? It’s so painfully obvious why they’re there. The crowd that night was mostly younger people of all backgrounds. I didn’t need to ask.

I woke up the next two days feeling heavier than I have in a long time, Sunday especially. After spending a good portion of the night scrolling through Twitter and following in real-time the violence and frenzy that escalated, I started Sunday morning biking to the stores nearby that had been broken into and looted, to scope out what had happened. And who was doing that looting? The passive voice is shining at this moment because it’s hard to pinpoint. But also, as Trevor Noah and others have pointed out, spending so much time trying to distinguish between protestors and looters and rioters misses the point: The current social contract is not working.

Later on Sunday, a car caravan protest organized by the Anti-Police Terror Project began at the Port of Oakland, to move throughout the city. The Anti-Police Terror Project has been organizing around police terror since the murder of Oscar Grant in 2009 at Oakland’s Fruitvale BART Station. Its goal is to engage in what they call “radical reform policies” that don’t reinforce the status quo, its co-founder Cat Brooks told me.

By then, I was back in touch with the executive producer at The Takeaway and more motivated to go and interview the protestors (this is where this Loitering interview with Fay and Susan comes from). As some have commented — and this is mostly a critique of national media — many news reports are drowning out the voices of demonstrators. The car caravan, though, attracted thousands of people, including a lot of families, older people, white people and POCs wanting to be present but also wanting to social distance. People were on foot, bike and car, wearing signs on their backs and affixed to their car doors, and listening to the organizers pump up the crowd with music and directions on 88.1 FM — which, according to my friend Wikipedia, seems to be a station owned by El Cerrito High in the Bay Area. Not sure the backstory of how that came into fruition (“I have no idea,” Cat Brooks told me. “I have an amazing team”). But it was a novel form of protest, especially in a pandemic.

You can read more about it in this article by Johana Bhuiyan at the LA Times.

And below are Fay Rohrbach and Susan Schulman, whose interview you can listen to above. Fay is the one in the orange mask.

Also… if you’re alarmed at the level of violence police are escalating against black people, protestors and media workers, good. It is alarming.

What are you going to do with that knowledge? My cousin texted me last night if I knew whether blackout Tuesday meant more people would be protesting. It was the first time I had heard of it, although if you’re on Instagram today, you may be seeing it all over your feeds. A social media protest can often become an empty gesture, especially on a platform like Instagram owned by a company its own workers are criticizing for its inactions on President Trump’s inflammatory comments. But I at least had to be a bit more myopic in considering this black square. Instagram, for me, is a visual diary, a mesh of photos related to work as well as family, friends and moments that take my breath away. Thinking about others like George Floyd whose breaths are taken away for entirely different reasons, the choice is clear: I want to remember this moment in history and what I was doing at this time.

It’s true that too much social media (which I know I’ve been guilty of!) can be fatiguing. Here are a few links of the audio-visual variety that require some sit-down viewing and listening as opposed to skimming:

Listen to The Takeaway’s segment on the pain fueling demonstrations (and hear some Oakland too).

“There’s no right way to protest because that’s what protest is.” And more wisdom from Uncle Trevor. I recommend listening in full.

A brief story on a big issue I reported for Marketplace News.

A look at how the Indian police is trying to rebrand in a pandemic.

I’d love feedback, or just to hear from you, so please feel free to get in touch. And if you know someone you think may like to read or listen to Loitering, please share. Thanks.

Subscribe at loitering.substack.com

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Sonia Paul 00:10

Hello everyone, welcome to Loitering, the occasional but lovable traveling mini pod I am currently testing a newsletter format. And today I am not traveling but loitering on Zoom with a very special guest. Can you please introduce yourself?

Eva Holland 00:25

Hi, I'm Eva Holland. I'm a freelance writer. I live in the Yukon Territory in northern Canada. And I have my first book just out. It's called Nerve: Adventures in the Science of Fear.

Sonia 00:35

Great, and so for people are kind of unfamiliar, what is the Yukon? Can you talk about where that is, exactly, and what kind of environment surrounds it?

Eva 00:45

Sure. So the Yukon is one of three Canadian territories. We fill the northern part of the country. And basically, we're a territory rather than a province, so we have fewer sort of regional powers, like in terms of devolution of powers from the federal government. Provinces have less than American states do, and territories have less than provinces. And we are north of British Columbia and just east of Alaska. So we're kind of a little triangle there next door to Alaska. The Yukon is about the size of California, but with 35,000 people instead of 35 million. So it's pretty empty. It's a sub-Arctic, primarily, the very northernmost part of the territory is north of the Arctic Circle. So it's, you know, forests and mountains and rivers and lakes and bears and caribou and all that good stuff. And it's where the Klondike Gold Rush took place. And we still have a lot of mining here and tourism when there's not a pandemic. It's a pretty cool place.

Sonia 01:44

Okay, that's really interesting. This is a good segue for a question I had was that you kind of live in the wild, I think. Of course, maybe you might not realize that or other people around you might not realize that, but I think compared to a lot of people who live in cities and more urban environments, you're in a place that is pretty out in the open. And I found it very interesting because I know some people who might think that sort of environment might be a very scary place to live in. And I was curious how you would describe your relationship with your environment and whether or not there's any fear in being in that sort of environment, especially when you consider things like isolation and the availability of different resources.

Eva 02:29

Yeah, I mean, it's all relative, right? By Yukon standards, Whitehorse, the capital city, quote, unquote, where I live, is the big town right? And we have three Starbucks and kind of have a lot of creature comforts compared to some more remote communities. But on the other hand, like we get grizzly bears coming into town sometimes and moose and stuff, so it is pretty wild. But, I used to find places like this scary when I was younger and was more of a city kid and had less experience. I felt safer in cities, just sort of safety in numbers kind of ways. That isolation can feel really vulnerable. But I have changed my perspective on that, I think. I mean, there's still — your imagination is gonna run wild. There's a reason why tons of horror movies take place in like, a cabin in the woods or something. But as I've gotten to know, this community, I've been here for just over 10 years, my perceptions of what's safe, or I guess my comfort zone in different scenarios, has really changed in that time. And now I feel pretty safe in wilderness settings, and certainly in this community.

Sonia 03:22

Yeah, so there's safety in a physical environment, but your book is more so about different emotions that you're trying to tackle. And then you have this line that I think is just kind of pretty emblematic of like, your mission with this book, is that it says, "I've sometimes felt as though my life is less a pursuit of happiness, and more an ongoing endless duel with fear." So, can you just expand upon that and what exactly you're trying to talk about here?

Eva 03:50

I, I guess I've — and I know that this squares strangely sometimes for people who follow my writing was sort of my professional persona or some of the stuff I've written about done for work — but I've always felt like a pretty cautious person, pretty risk-averse, scared of lots of things. And particularly since I moved here 10 years ago and have been trying to learn all this wilderness adventure travel stuff, I'm always less experienced than everyone I'm going out and about with, and I'm always the most scared. So I think I really internalized that role of sort of the token scaredy-cat in the group. And there's been a process of sort of coming to terms with that and being like, it's okay to be a beginner, it's okay to learn things. It's okay to be nervous. But, it's also not a fun role to be in, and I was getting tired of the extent to which I felt like fear was hemming me in and making my life smaller, I guess, than I wanted it to be. So I decided that I wanted to change that dynamic.

Sonia 04:44

And you did so in the form of a book.

Eva 04:47

Yeah.

Sonia 04:48

And so, do you think you would have done this had you not written a book? Like, what was the process of doing it as a writer, and how does that relate to you actually doing it. Like what do you have done it any other way?

Eva 05:01

I think I would have done some of it, even if I wasn't writing about it. It did start as a personal project, specifically, the thread of my fear of heights and wanting to overcome my fear of heights was something that I took on as a personal project before I decided to write about it. I don't know if I hadn't had a book contract to fulfill, if I would have stuck to it as persistently or been as willing to put money into things like therapy for trauma or phobias. So I don't know that I would have been as successful as I ultimately was, spoiler alert, in changing some of the dynamics of my relationship with fear if I hadn't been doing the book. And this is part of that, I guess, split persona that I referred to earlier — I've always been more driven when I have to write about something. I'm always more willing to push myself, push my boundaries, do something scary if I have to come up with a story about it and get paid. And so, doing it as a book really meant that I would see it through. I don't know that I would have stuck to it when things got hard otherwise.

Sonia 05:54

How much is it that money has to do with that versus other people just know you're doing it?

Eva Holland 06:00

Hmm, that's a good question. A bit of both, I think. But yeah, the money piece is real. I'm not somebody who spends a lot of money on self-improvement type of stuff. And not that I spent a ton of money on, for instance, the therapy that I did to resolve the trauma from my car accidents, I think I ultimately spent maybe four or $500 on those four sessions. I can't remember, I'd have to check it out. But it wasn't outrageous. Certainly, the value to now no longer be having panic attacks and flashbacks when I'm driving is enormous. But I don't know if I would have invested that money if I didn't see it as sort of a professional investment, rather than a personal one, which is kind of dysfunctional now that I think about it.

Sonia 06:37

Oh, you tell me, a couple of friends and I are currently going through a book together that is kind of like, a self-improvement type book. And we had to write work views and life views. And it was really interesting to talk about the differences between the two among us — but let's just backtrack for the audience.

So the fears that you talked about in your book or your fear of heights, you're sort of anxiety around driving cars or getting into car accidents, and then also this fear of loss, with losing your mother. And at one point in your book, I remember you remarking that you didn't even realize that some of these fears were actually fears until you verbalized them. And I was wondering like, what is the role of verbalizing or actualizing something out into the world, in this whole relationship with fear. Because you also talk about like, fear that's internal versus fear that's external.

Eva 07:31

I think it's important to name it. And I don't think you can really, at least I couldn't, speaking for myself, understand what was happening to me until I named it until I recognized a pattern and said, "Oh, I'm afraid of heights." It's not just that I happen to sometimes have panic attacks when I'm exposed to heights. It's that there's something consistent happening here. And the same thing with the others. I mean, the fear of losing my mom was something that had been with me for a long time, but it was helpful after she died, I think, to confront whether or not that fear was now mutating into a fear of people around dying more generally. And it was helpful to name what was happening with these car accidents that I'd had and the flashbacks.

08:06

You don't always notice right away. Sometimes it takes someone external to you. The prologue of the book opens with me having a pretty serious breakdown partway up a mountain, basically, on an ice climbing trip. And I told that story to my oldest friend a few months after it happened. And I said, I don't know what happened, I just freaked out. And she looked at me like I was kind of like, really missing something obvious. And she was like, "Eva, that was a panic attack." And I was kind of like, "Well, I don't have panic attacks. Like, that's not something that happens to me. But it is, it can be, right? You can't really address a problem or decide whether it's even is a problem until you've named it for what it is and identified the role that it's playing in your life.

Sonia 08:43

What happens when maybe certain people around you try to undermine what is actually like a legitimate fear for you? That's like a sort of another idea that you kind of got at is that — Are my fears just silly? Like, how rational are they? Like you have this example in your book where you thought you were being stalked by someone, and it turned out this person's actually stalking a lot of different people, calling up numbers in the phone book, and then you felt like so silly afterward, like who would just call the cops about like these one-off phone calls? And so, like, how do you grapple with naming fears that maybe in society or culturally speaking, it may not seem as scary to other people?

Eva 09:26

Yeah, it's hard. Shame and embarrassment is such a part of this puzzle for everyone, I think. Certainly, it was for me. I felt really lucky here in that the people that mattered, the people that were close to me, didn't question the authenticity of what was happening to me. They didn't make fun of me. Probably that was because my fears were so close to the surface that most of them had seen me cry or hyperventilate or have some sort of panic. And so they knew it was real because they'd seen it happen. They'd seen me go from like, rational, happy, competent person, to like, crying on the ground. The incident with the guy that I thought was stalking me — it would have been a different story if it was people in my life saying you're blown out of proportion. But it was, you know, it was internet commenters in the local paper. And so it upset me and made me feel foolish. And it made me question myself, but not to the extent that if I had been undermined by people that I cared about, I think. But yeah, no, I mean, the public-facing piece of it is so hard. My panic was always worse if I had an audience, and it was extra worse if I had an audience of strangers or people that I didn't assume would be sympathetic. So there were things I would try with my close friends around who I knew it would be okay, if I cried or whatever that I wouldn't do if I thought there might be more variables in terms of who might see me.

Sonia 10:40

Yeah, and then you talk a lot in the book about the distinctions between fear and anxiety and trauma. And I go through this situation, not just with these words, but other words that then make me second guess like what are the actual definitions? What are we really trying to say when we say these words? And I was wondering if you can help us — me — parse out the distinctions between fear and anxiety and trauma? Because it sounds like they're like, cousins, almost, as opposed to like direct siblings, if that makes sense.

Eva 11:14

I think there's a limit to how finely we can parse those distinctions. I did try. But what I found when I tried is that if you push too hard on those distinctions, they fall apart under pressure. So there's a utility to making a distinction to a certain point. You know, the sort of official distinction between fear and anxiety is that fear is present when you perceive an objective threat. A clear and present threat to your safety. And anxiety is about a perceived threat or a more amorphous threat or a potential threat or an imagined threat. And so you could say that like, a bear in your campsite. That's fear, because that's a threat. And lying awake at night worrying about a bear in your campsite, even if there is no bear in your campsite would be anxiety. And then anxiety to a point of sort of being unreasonable or — maladaptive is the term that neuroscientists use — would be lying awake at night worrying about a bear in your campsite when you're not even in bear country.

So there's like, there's this kind of gradations of how we react to threat and the possibility of threat. But they do come apart pretty quickly. Because, you know, you don't always know if there's a bear or not. If you're in bear country, what's a legitimate fear versus an anxiety gets harder to say, because you don't know what's around the next corner. So, it's tricky. A woman that I quote in the book gave the examples of the hydrogen bomb and the terrorist as clear and present threats that prompt fear as opposed to anxiety. But I can't think of two better examples of things that induce anxiety even when they're not present, when they're hypothetical. The atom bomb was a symbol of dread and fear and potential threat for people all over the world for decades. It didn't have to be present. There didn't have to be a possibility of a launch for people to feel that way. And, you know, I mean, people have written books on the idea of the terrorist in our minds. So it's tricky, and I do you think there's some utility in trying to make those distinctions, partly in terms of managing your own response. Like, to say to yourself, okay, is this a real threat right now? Or is this in my head? That can be useful. But we hit our limits pretty quickly, I think, because they are all closely related. It's a spectrum, I guess.

Sonia 13:15

Yeah. And now, of course, we have this thing that is both clear and present in front of us, or also like, hypothetically, in front of us. COVID-19. And it was wondering how the emergence of this pandemic has adjusted your thoughts on these topics, if at all.

Eva 13:35

It's kind of the perfect example, right? Maybe even better than the bomb. It's a literal threat to many people right now. And it's a potential literal threat to all of us. But in the meantime, for a lot of us, it's an ambiguous threat. You know, if you're sitting in a community that it hasn't reached yet. Doesn't mean you're not afraid, but it's not a threat to you yet, at least not as a physical medical threat. It might be a threat to your economic situation already. So it's a perfect example of how complicated this threat assessment thing is, objective versus subjective versus theoretical or imagined threat. It's interesting to have this sort of dramatic example of how all this stuff works for me to kind of put in the context of my research.

Sonia 14:14

It seemed to me in reading that there's a very strong relationship between fear, agency, discomfort and control. And what is your sense of that?

Eva 14:26

I think that's very perceptive. Yeah, agency and control. You know, one of the most fascinating things to me that I learned is that even the illusion of control can protect you from fear. You know, until the illusion runs out. If you think you have control of a situation, then that can buffer you against fear. You know, none of us like losing control, particularly in a potentially dangerous situation. That's when fear starts to creep in, is when we no longer feel like we can control the variables around us, to find our way out of danger. And that's something that trauma researchers have learned. You know, they're still trying to understand why some people are more traumatized by the same event than others. But one thing that they think is part of it is if you have a sense of agency, if you feel that you can save yourself, or that you did save yourself from the situation. Then that protects your mind from traumatic memories after the fact.

Sonia 15:17

Yeah, and I mean, your friend’s situation that you write about in the book where she was chased on her bicycle, like, would you mind talking about that? And maybe we can just use that as an example to figure this agency situation out?

Eva 15:33

Sure. So I have a friend from back when I was younger, who, a number of years ago was biking on a bike path in kind of a suburban area, and she was approached by this man who suggested that they ride together. And she got a weird vibe from him, and she declined to ride with him and went back the way she came. And all of a sudden, he appeared behind her, biking really hard, right on her tail, right off her rear wheel. And she didn't understand what he was doing or why, you know. But she had this huge spike of fear. And she swore at him and swerved away and then biked away really fast. And she immediately, immediately felt sort of the regret and the second-guessing of, you know, was he just being playful? Or did he want to race? Like, what was he doing? And why was I so rude? And she actually yelled out, "I'm sorry, you just scared me," back down the bike path after she was out of sight. And he killed the next girl who came along, it turned out.

So she ended up being, you know, a witness, and he was eventually convicted for murder of basically the next young woman to come along that day on the bike path. And that's like, one of the craziest stories I've ever heard. And I was really grateful she gave me permission to put it in the book. Because I think it really demonstrates — one, the power of fear to help us survive, if you listen to it and override the sort of politeness default that we have, even when we know something is wrong. And two, she didn't have trauma from that incident. She had sadness and anger, and a certain amount of survivor's guilt that passed with time. But she didn't end up feeling like she nearly died because she got herself out of it. And so, what she came away with was sort of a sense of agency and a sense of faith in her own ability to look after herself, as opposed to an undermining of her ability.

Sonia 17:17

Yeah, when I read that, I thought it was so profound, actually. I mean, I remember talking about this with another author who's written about women and crime and their relationship with crime, but this idea of like victimization mentality, and I think there's a tendency for a lot of people to grab onto that as well, when they go through something incredibly traumatic. And yeah, and it sounds like too, I mean, a lot of how people cope with all that could go wrong, or is legitimately scary in their lives, is also a personal journey, but it's a personal journey that's wrapped up in science, as you've written about.

17:58

And so I was wondering if you can maybe talk about some of the, quote-unquote, solutions you tried to figure out how to negotiate your fear with, say, heights or the car accidents or your mom's loss.

Eva 18:14

I think EMDR is the perfect example for what we're talking about here in terms of agency and how we sort of tell ourselves the story of what happened to us. So EMDR is a therapy that I underwent to try to resolve these flashbacks and sort of feelings of doom and panic that I was having while driving after having a series of serious car accidents. It stands for eye movement desensitization and reprocessing. It's a trauma therapy that was developed in the late 80s and early 90s. Basically, a trained therapist prompts you to move your eyes back and forth in a rhythm. They have different methods of doing that, I use these sort of buzzing pods. And they have you tell the story of what happened to you. And then, as you're telling the story, and your eyes are moving back and forth, they lead you through a series of questions about how you feel, how your body feels, if you feel tightness in your chest, if you feel — you know, your mouth downturned like you're about to cry, this sort of thing. And then you keep doing these sessions with these sets of eye movements while you focus in on these feelings, and then they seem to sort of dissolve. And somehow at the end of it, the intrusive memories that you're having from your traumatic event are no longer intrusive. You can still remember them. But they don't jump in and grab your brain anymore, for lack of a better description.

So I did EMDR to try to stop, you know, crying and pictured my own death when I was driving, basically. And agency was a big part of it. One of the things that we talked about with my therapist was — so I had two rollovers in winter conditions within four months of each other one winter. And the first one, I spun out on black ice on the highway. And I was spinning in my SUV across the highway, and I was like, this is fine. I'm gonna hit that big snowbank on the far side and I'm gonna come to a stop. This is okay. I'm spinning but there's no traffic, everything's fine. Back to that illusory sense of control, right? And then I hit the snowbank and flipped over it rolled into the ditch, but I didn't anticipate that. Whereas the next accident, partly because of the previous one — I hit a big patch of hail in a hailstorm, and I lost traction and I was fishtailing down the highway. And I knew what was coming, and I couldn't stop it. I was sitting there and especially in the car freaking out until I again rolled into the ditch. And the trauma from the second accident was way worse than the first. And what the therapist made me understand is that part of that was because of my fear and my awareness of my own lack of control. So that was really interesting to learn for me, a sort of a light bulb moment.

And then one of the things that we did in therapy is we sort of reframed the story that I told myself about these accidents. And where the story had been, "I'm incompetent, I'm terrible, I'm going to die next time. Maybe I should die." You know. We reframed it to, "I've been unlucky. I'm a good driver. Nobody could have prevented that," or you know, different kind of takeaways, trying to reframe my understanding of what happened to take away sort of the self-defeating and critical part of my mind that was sort of beating myself up over this. It was really interesting. And it taught me a lot about — yeah, agency and control, and how powerful it is to think we know what's happening, even when we don't. Our capacity for sort of self-deception is actually really important. It can protect you, which is sort of weird. So often we talk about kind of radical honesty or wanting to be really self-aware, but sometimes it's good to not know that you're in deep s**t, you know? If you can't fix it.

Sonia 21:22

Yeah, but how does the actual mechanism of flicking your eyeballs work to calm the nerves or just quell the fear?

Eva 21:32

Yeah, they're still trying to figure that out. And people were really skeptical about this therapy in the 90s. And they've come to accept it. It's now quite widespread because it keeps working better than the placebo effect, and better than some of the other trauma therapies that we have for some people. But they don't understand the mechanism at all. They do know they have isolated the eye movements in clinical trials. And if you take them away, and it's essentially just talk therapy, it doesn't work. They have straws to grasp at, you know, we understand that, you know, REM sleep is related to our memory storage processes. So something about eye movement may be connected to memory. They have documented changes in people's brains before and after EMDR in terms of sort of, like, a density of gray matter and this sort of thing. There's a ton of studies underway to try to pinpoint this mechanism, but they really don't know why it works. They just know that it does for some people, for more people than not, I think.

Sonia 22:24

Wow, yeah. And I also kind of just want to touch on the topic of avoidance. Because, you know, I feel like we get mixed messages about fear. I mean, why should people put themselves through stressful situations that make them fearful or anxious versus this whole sort of other message of "it's time to face your fear?" And choose that, even though the struggle of facing your fear is a struggle as opposed to joy. And so, how should we figure out an approach to fear when culturally, there are these disparate ways? And if we can't rely on like a cultural indicator, what is the like, strongest scientific indicator for how we should approach our fear?

Eva 23:11

Hmm. Yeah, I mean, that's something that I only really touch lightly on in the book, but I wrestle with a lot is when is avoidance, okay, basically. And I think — it really depends on the level of sort of impairment that you're experiencing in your life. If the thing that you fear is quite tightly focused, you know, quite a narrow fear and it's not bleeding out into your life, then maybe it's not worth the pain of confronting it. Because this stuff is hard, right? It's hard, it can be expensive. So for instance, I write about a woman in the book who was afraid of mice. To the point where she was terrorized by it. She couldn't put her feet on the floor in a dark room because she was so afraid. So I think if you're afraid of mice, and your home is mouse-free, and you only have a panic if you see a mouse and you never see mice, then that's okay. Maybe you don't need to address that fear of mice.

But if you are being terrorized by imagined mice even when there are no mice present — like, one of the definitions of addiction, right, is if it's affecting your work life or your family life or sort of impairing you in some way beyond the actual effect of the substance. If it's bleeding out into your life in harmful ways, and I think that phobias or fears more generally, I think a similar bar is useful of like, is this impairing you in meaningful ways? And if not, then maybe you just let it ride. You know, like, if you're afraid of sharks, but you don't live near the ocean, and you can still enjoy a beach vacation once a year, then great. If you're afraid of sharks, and it means you can't get in the bathtub, then maybe you want to take action, right? I mean, everybody has to make their own call, but I think that's probably a useful guideline.

Sonia 24:42

Yeah. And also, now that you finish this book, do you think you're a less fearful person? Like, is it also because maybe you're "out" with your fear that the fear is not as big? How do you feel about all that?

Eva 24:59

I do think I'm a less fearful person now than I was before I started on the book, which was not an outcome I anticipated. It certainly was not something I promised in my book proposal, like, I'm gonna sort this s**t out. You know, I didn't expect that necessarily. But I am less fearful now. I am also less embarrassed about being afraid when I am afraid. So that's also helpful progress. You know, I'd say I have a healthier relationship overall with fear. The aspects of my fears that were really kind of irrational and that were impairing my life because they were so exaggerated, I've made some real progress on resolving. And where I have fears otherwise, because of course, I still have lots of fears — I have a healthy relationship to accepting them, understanding them, and not maybe overreacting to them. But not expecting to live a life free of fear by any means.

Sonia 25:44

Yeah. How do you think your online presence has maybe like, confused or assisted your relationship with fear? Because you talk a little bit about like, people wouldn't consider you to be a fearful person because you're kind of out there, you have a large social media presence. I mean, you live out in the Yukon, and you do pretty adventurous reporting. And so I was wondering if you have any thoughts on that at all?

Eva 26:14

Yes, it's funny, I shouldn't have looked, but I looked at Goodreads earlier today. And I saw, like, a review from someone who liked the book generally, but her one hang-up was she was kind of like, "This person claims to be fearful, and like, look at her life. She's not fearful." And I don't really know what to say to that, because fear isn't necessarily about what you see on the outside, right? People can be terrified and you might not know. There's fear of the emotion that we feel inside. And then there's how we react to those fears on the outside. And, I mean, I get, I get the skepticism. I have a friend who has been kind of my rock climbing teacher who told me he was afraid of heights too. And I was like, "No, you're not. Like, I've seen you climb, you never seem scared." He's like, "Well, I just keep it on the inside. I'm scared every single time." But I guess, I'd say it's really about how we experience these things internally. And, I don't know, the trip with memoir, especially one that's as driven by memory and sort of internal emotional states as the sections of memoir in this book are, is that, you just have to trust me, I guess, that I really was terrified. Yeah, no, it's a funny thing.

Sonia 27:13

Well, yeah, I mean, and I totally — I think it's very legitimate for someone like you to actually have these fears. And it's kind of like, well, who do you know, you only know, like an online presence. But then, I guess maybe the broader idea my question was touching at is that so much of our lives, especially now, you know, we're all online. We're all on Zoom. It is a performance. And so how much does performance sort of like, shape fear or our way of coping with fear, if at all? I don't know if that's just like me meandering in my thoughts, but...

Eva 27:47

No, I think I see what you mean. And I have found some relief, I guess, in having this book out there. Because now I don't have to keep up any kind of performance. You know, like, I didn't advertise the fact that I was afraid of heights if I told an editor that I would do a story for them that involves going up a mountain. You know, like, I didn't want them to know that I had like, a limitation there that might affect the story. And so, it's kind of freeing to just be like, "Here's all the stuff I'm afraid of. And to not be embarrassed or to try to hide it and paper it over with some sort of facade of bravery is kind of a relief. And so I don't know, yeah.

Sonia 28:24

What is the most useful thing you learn throughout the course of reporting and writing your book that you think listeners of this podcast or readers of the Q&A format to the podcast would find nice during this time of shelter in place and the pandemic?

Eva 28:43

I think the most useful thing was not any of the stuff I learned about how to control or overcome fear, but was really what I learned about the necessity of fear. You know, fear is a survival tool. It's an instinct that we have to keep us alive. And learning to kind of come to terms with that, and to accept that fear has a really vital role to play in my life really helped me be more at peace with the fears that I do still have and with the fact that I will be afraid of things in future. You know, letting go of some of that shame and the desire to fix it, and to just say, "Okay, it's okay to be scared." In fact, it's really important and a good thing to be scared in some ways, because it keeps us alive. That was helpful for me. It's something I've been thinking about during this time, because it's so easy to be really hard on ourselves about fear and anxiety and dread and to think, "Oh, you know, I'm sitting here freaking out, and I'm not, you know, intubating people in an ICU. I'm just sitting at home being scared." Like, it's really easy to beat yourself up about this stuff, but it's okay. It's important to feel afraid right now, actually, you know.

Sonia 29:44

Thank you so much for making the time to talk with me and talk about these ideas. I really appreciate that.

Eva Holland 29:52

Thanks. That was great. That was really fun.

Sonia Paul 29:54

So, that's all we have for today of Loitering, the occasional but lovable traveling mini pod I'm currently testing a newsletter format. Thank you for listening and have a great day. Goodbye!

Some links to listen, read, watch:

Nerve: Adventures in the Science of Fear, by Eva Holland

Also by Eva: The Frontier Couple Who Chose Death Over Life Apart; and Saving Baby Boy Green (on the future of neonatal medicine)

If you’re looking for a podcast to binge, I highly recommend Floodlines, from The Atlantic

If you like to think about (or at least want to consider), the parallels between physical and emotional endurance: To Run My Best Marathon at Age 44, I had to Outrun My Past, by Nicholas Thompson

Anatomy of an internet shutdown, by Jina Moore (for the new news site Rest of World, about the influence of technology around the world)

I Was Depressed Before All of This. Now What?, by Elizabeth Flock (whom you might remember from Loitering by the River)

Even my mom called to ask me if I was watching the PBS series on Asian Americans (I am!), and it’s worth watching, especially now given rising xenophobia against Asians (see this for one of the most glaring examples)

My Restaurant Was My Life For 20 Years. Does the World Need It Anymore?, by Gabrielle Hamilton

The Coronavirus is Rewriting Our Imaginations, by Kim Stanley Robinson

Subscribe at loitering.substack.com

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Dear Friends,

As we continue to navigate the current pandemic, I figured it might be worth it to release this brief episode with my housemate, a former paramedic (although another author interview is coming soon!). At the end of this newsletter, I’ve also linked to a few stories that might pique your interest at this time.

Wishing you all good health, positive energy, patience and lots of support!

XOXO

Sonia Paul 00:10

Hello, everyone, welcome to Loitering, the occasional but lovable traveling mini pod I am currently testing in newsletter format. And today, I am loitering in the kitchen with a very special guest. Can you please introduce yourself?

Eli Weinburd 00:24

My name is Eli Weinburd. I was formerly a paramedic and currently work for Planned Parenthood.

Sonia 00:31

And he's also my roommate. So Eli, tell me a little bit about your background as a paramedic, especially as it relates to our current circumstances right now with COVID-19.

Eli 00:44

So my background is not super extensive, but I was a paramedic in Minnesota and then I was a paramedic in New Mexico. In terms of how it relates to where we are now — this came up because we heard a siren in the background. After deciding not to work as a paramedic, hearing the sound of sirens had a very significant connotation for me of relief that I was not on the ambulance needing to respond to whatever we were responding to. Now it feels like it's related to COVID. And I could be useful. And that's one of the reasons that I no longer work as a paramedic is because I did not feel useful taking people with chronic conditions to the emergency room.

Sonia 01:31

So, just to backtrack, this was the situation Eli was facing in that many of the people who are calling 911 to get an ambulance to go to the emergency room weren't having like, a sudden crisis. They were suffering from long term conditions that they just hadn't gone to their regular doctor to attend to — right?

Eli 01:50

Yeah. You can't do anything for someone who has been suffering with like, addiction or alcohol abuse for the last 20 years in a 15-minute ride to the hospital. And when you see them week after week, it is discouraging. With the demand and the call for the state, and even in my like, perusal of job websites, the explosion of job openings — the need feels different. And because it feels like there's a need, I feel more open to doing that work.

Sonia 02:24

What do you think about the situation of, you know, healthcare workers being on the front lines? And of course, you feel called to this profession even more so now, but it's also exposing yourself and — you know, we've talked about this, I live with you, the people around you to what you might also be exposed to, what's going on in your mind about that?

Eli 02:48

Yeah, I mean, there's a certain amount of, you know, being young and feeling invulnerable, which I won't deny.

Sonia 02:57

How old are you?

Eli 03:00

Thank you very much. But it seems to be an aspect of my own self-identity that if called upon, I would respond. And in this circumstance, we are called upon. And I've already fucked up. Because a few weeks ago, I was experiencing cold and flu-like symptoms, and I went to the grocery store, because I wanted to feel normal. I wanted to feel like I was healthy enough to get out of the house. And I shouldn't have. Now that I'm feeling healthy again, I could work on an ambulance.

Sonia 03:42

And this is just something that I also want to touch on while we're at it — the salary of a paramedic. So, can you talk a little bit about some of the salaries you've known in different situations and what the salary is here, and whether or not that's actually fair, given the kind of work paramedics are doing right now.

Eli 04:02

So, when I was in Minnesota working for the Mayo Clinic, world-renowned health care hospital, they paid me $20 an hour — $20 and 91 cents an hour. I think there are adjustments, obviously. for night shifts where you get a couple more dollars. And then working in Alamo on the Navajo reservation, they paid me $19 and 13 cents or something. There is a job posting with the San Francisco Fire Department that has a pay range between $47 and $61 per hour. The difference is staggering.

That said, like, I can't actually imagine how much it costs to have a family in San Francisco, which would not be my circumstance, obviously. But it definitely matters in terms of the cost of living and what you're getting paid. I've also been offered a paramedic job that paid like $13. And...I mean...it's hard to feel completely dismissive of something that other people don't have. Like, migrant workers who are bunking together and yet are getting paid less than $13, less than minimum wage, even possibly. Their risk is also high because they're getting crowded into — I'm getting sidetracked.

Sonia 05:38

It's ok. So the rates for being a paramedic are pretty shitty.

Eli 05:42

Yes, absolutely. They say EMT-P, EMT paramedic, stands for EMT paid, while EMT-B, EMT basic, stands for EMT broke.

Sonia Paul 05:53

Oh my gosh. Wow.

Eli 05:55

But, we're all broke. EMS, and specifically the profession of being a paramedic, has been attempting to professionalize itself for a number of years now. But, I think ultimately it's a fact where it's still essentially a blue-collar, working-class job, and emergency medical technician is an appropriate label. Because even if there's a push in the education of paramedics, to have them educated in a way that does not make them a technician, that is how they are being paid, and that's who ends up taking the job or sticking with it. And then the people who have the expertise and the knowledge and the commitment to raise that to a level beyond "technician," for lack of a better word, go on to medical school, or transfer into nursing, or do something that pays a living wage.

Sonia 06:54

So, the other day Governor Newsom, he called upon all medical professionals to rise to the cause. So, there is this website that already exists for healthcare workers to volunteer to be of service, to work in the case of an emergency. So, have you submitted your name up there? What's going on?

Eli 07:14

Yeah. So I filled out the information on the California Health Corps dot gov website. And now I guess I wait to hear back from them. From my understanding, it is a paid position and not a volunteer position, which is important, because at this point, we are still paying rent.

Sonia 07:35

Yeah, this is another thing we were talking about is just — I mean, of course, there is this moral conviction that a lot of people have to serve, especially right now. There's also economic reasons that people need to work. They need to pay what they have to pay including rent, utilities, family supplies.

What is the invisible aspect of being a paramedic that you think needs to be visibilized right now, even more so, where, paramedics, really, they're on the frontlines of addressing this pandemic right now?

Eli 08:14

A lot of paramedic response, from my experience, is responding to elder care facilities of one kind or another, whether it's nursing homes or assisted living facilities. From what I hear, those are largely on lockdown. I imagine they're still calling. A lot of what they called for were UTIs, urinary tract infections, in their elderly patients. And... I don't know, they're just a lot of variables in that situation and the interaction between emergency response, and what is intended at least to be non-emergent care for the vulnerable elder population in the U.S. Like, if we could take care of them where they're at, it would be great.

Sonia 09:03

Yeah. Well, so this has been a pretty heavy loitering conversation, to say the least. But of course, you know, we're coping. We're still here. Eli's laughing. We're trying to keep our spirits despite everything else that's happening. And, yeah. So, that's all we have for today of Loitering, the occasional but lovable traveling mini pod I am currently testing newsletter format. Thank you for listening and have a great day. Goodbye!

Some links:

One Worker’s Experience on the Morgue Overflow Shift, by Arun Venugopal

Our Pandemic Summer, by Ed Yong

The Rise of a Hindu Vigilante in the Age of WhatsApp and Modi, by Mohammad Ali

Millennials Don’t Stand a Chance, by Annie Lowery

The coronavirus has been great for Instacart. For its workers, it’s a different story., by Johana Bhuiyan

Planet Money has been doing some really great work if you’re wondering about $$.

It’s devastating that podcast producer Liyna Anwar passed away (shout out to UCLAradio.com News days), but if you’re in the mood to cook, read this 2012 blog series she and a friend did for Food52 about how to throw a backyard South Asian-inspired feast. More information about Liyna here and here.

Just wait for it.

On Twitter. On Facebook. More stories.

Subscribe at loitering.substack.com

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Dear Friends,

It’s no doubt these are hectic and stressful times. At the end of the newsletter, I’ve linked to a few resources that may be useful for you and your families and friends as we all work to help curb the spread of COVID-19.

Wishing you all good health, good vibes, patience and lots of support!

XOXO

Sonia Paul 00:10

Yeah, what happened to your leg?

Sopan Deb 00:12

Oh man, I wish there was a better story behind this but literally I was crossing the street in the Lower East Side and I got trucked by car. I wish there was a better story, like, I was like, saving a baby from getting run over or something, but I think what happened was I didn't realize it was a two-way street. I looked one way, didn't see cars coming, went for it, and then got trucked from the other side.

Sonia 00:32

Trucked from the other side meaning a truck—

Sopan 00:34

No, sorry, a car hit me. A car hit me. If I truck hit me, I don't think I'd be here right now.

Sonia 00:39

Oh my gosh, did you need surgery or anything, what happened?

Sopan 00:42

Yeah, I had surgery the next day. There's like, a rod inside my leg that will always be there. Like a permanent friend. But you know, all things considered, you know, there's no ligament damage or anything. So, it's not so bad.

Sonia 00:53

You seem awfully easygoing, given the severity of what happened.

Sopan 00:58

Well, I'll answer seriously because I know you're sound-checking. I also realized that I come from a huge privilege here because I have a kind of job that allows me to work from home. There's that. Wesley, who's my fiance — Wesley has the kind of job where they let her stay at home for a month and take care of me. And so I had that. I have health insurance. So, like, it could have been a lot worse. I'm also fortunate in the fact I got hit by a car and lived, right? It could have been a lot worse. It's annoying and painful in the meantime, but it could have been a lot worse. That's what I keep telling myself.

Sonia 01:31

Yeah, that's a nice way of framing it.

Sopan 01:34

Yeah, otherwise just gonna be sad all day and no one wants to do that.

Sonia 01:37

Totally. Okay, let's backtrack. Hello, everyone. Welcome to Loitering, the occasional but lovable traveling mini pod I am currently testing in newsletter format. And today, I am loitering over doughnuts with a very special guest. Could you introduce yourself? Who are you and what do you do? What is this job you have that gives you a certain amount of privilege and flexibility?

Sopan 02:00

Yeah, sure. So my name is Sopan Deb. I am a writer for The New York Times where I cover mostly the NBA now, but I also, I recently left the culture beat of the Times. And the culture is like film, TV, television, dance, art, music, and I still contribute to that section. But most of my job is covering basketball now. Then before that, I covered the presidential campaign for CBS. I covered the Trump campaign, I was one five or so campaign embeds that traveled the country with him for a year and a half. And then I'm also a comedian on the side. So, I have a bunch of different balls in the air.

Sonia 02:08

And now okay, so you recently wrote this book called Missed Translations: Meeting the Immigrant Parents Who Raised Me. And we got in touch because I saw that you had posted some excerpts of what you had sent to publishers about why you wrote this book. So can you talk a little bit about the motivations behind this piece of work?

Sopan 02:47

Yeah, absolutely. So the book is about how essentially stand up comedy and covering the Trump campaign pushed me to reconnect with my parents. My parents were arranged to get married. They're both Indian. They're both Bengali. And they had a very bad marriage. And so when we were growing up, I didn't know anything about them. We were more like distant roommates than we were a family. We barely ate together. When we did talk, it was just yelling at each other. So I grew up never getting to know them. I didn't know how they met, I didn't know how many siblings they had, and I didn't really know any of my grandparents. And what that did is it made me want to be white. I grew up in a mostly white suburb of New Jersey called Howell. And I'd go to my friend's houses. And I'd see them eating dinner together and having normal conversations with each other, talking about crushes and talking about therapy and stuff like that, and be like, wow, I don't have that in my house.

And then, in college, my father after my parents finally got divorced, my father just left the country and moved back to India without telling anybody. Just bounced. Um, and then my mom and I kind of lost touch. And then, as I was turning 30, I realized it had been more than 11 years since I'd seen my father and it had been several years since I'd seen my mother. I didn't even know where they were living at the time. It was time to go find them, and time to go reconnect with them, and actually learn who they are, and what their stories are. And so I did, and that's what the book tracks. I found out a lot of stuff. There are a lot of plot twists throughout. There's a lot of like, crazy stuff that I found out that was really shocking. But when I started this process, I literally did not know where they were living. I didn't know their ages.

Sonia 04:20

Yeah. So like, when you were growing up, I mean, you mentioned it felt like you were more like distant roommates. But, I felt like in the beginning parts of the book, it did feel like there was a sort of sense of culture or family understanding that they were trying to embark on you. You talk about like, you were a musician, and you used to practice Indian music. So what happened?

Sopan 04:41

Yeah, I don't know if you can relate to this. I'm sure you can on some level. I think a lot of South Asian families, what they do is they put their kid in activities, but it's for the resume. It's not for themselves. It's not like my parents put me into piano lessons because they were excited to nurture my mind. They wanted me to do better on my SAT scores, and, you know, being a musician helps with that, right? So when we were growing up, we had a little bit more of a family culture. It was strained. It got to a point where it was intolerable as I got older. But when I was younger, yeah. You know, my mom put me in piano lessons, karate, baseball, all the regular stuff. But, I always felt like it was more for her than it was for me. And I think that's not necessarily unusual with immigrant children. And then by the time I think I kind of got to middle school, that's when everything kind of started disintegrating to a point where any semblance of family culture we had was no longer in existence.

Sonia 05:34

Yeah. And wanted to get into the beginning of your book, because you — you talk about being at the Big Brown Comedy Hour.

Sopan 05:42

Yeah!

Sonia 05:43

Yeah! And, okay, so there are a few passages that I thought were really telling and I wanted to like, kind of explore a little bit more sort of the truth that you were getting at. I don't know if you would prefer I read or if you want to read it yourself? Okay. All right. So—

Sopan 05:59

I've read the book, so I know—

Sonia 06:02

I've also read the book, I read it over the holidays. So, you're at this like Big Brown Comedy Hour, you talk about like, being a stand up comic. And you're saying that you know, talking about your family and background. And so you get in here, you say, "But I was handling this crowd someone else's honesty with that joke, telling them what I pictured a stereotypical Christmas with Indian parents to be like." And then you note, "It was a paradox. I had spent much of my life running away from my skin color and culture. And yet the thing I felt most comfortable discussing on stage was my South Asian identity. Talking about any version of the brown experience felt cathartic, whether it was the mangled one of my childhood, or the way I imagined a happy brown kid growing up."

And then on the second page right after that, you note, "But what the crowd never knew and what I couldn't bring myself to tell them was the crippling anxiety and sadness I felt about each the truths I had morphed into a laugh line. I was comfortable talking about this stuff from behind a microphone, but only to an extent. Sometimes it felt like I was playing the part of a brown guy on stage. But when I dropped the facade and delved into my actual life, the words deflected the guilt and vulnerability I wasn't yet ready to face. Much of my material, especially the stuff about my parents, resulted from unfamiliarity, both with myself and with them."

And so, like, I really wanted to explore this tension you talk about of being a "version" of the brown experience, or playing the part of a brown guy on stage. And so I'm like wondering, was there a particular example or role model of that version of brownness that you were trying to attach yourself to? And if so, who was that? What was that?

Sopan 07:48

Was there a particular role model?… You know, speaking about stand up. When I first started doing stand up, I tried to be very much like, in kind of the Mitch Hedberg type, doing observational comedy. I remember the first joke I ever told on stage was, "Oh, I like to say a word about race relations. Has anyone here ever had sex while watching NASCAR? If not, then we can't really talk about it." And I remember this just, just total silence from the crowd. And it was a lot of like, those types of kind of one-liners. I was like, wow, I'm bombing with this. So suddenly I start talking about being brown. The problem we talking about being brown is that I spent much of my life, as you just read, feeling white on the inside. Not wanting to be brown, because my thought was being brown was what brought my parents together. They are miserable. They have made me miserable for much of my life. So, I'm not going to subscribe to being brown. I'm gonna identify with my white friends and the white people around me because they seem happier.

08:46

And then as I started doing stand up, I found myself oddly wanting to talk about being brown. And I would do that one of two ways. I'd either talk about the true stuff, which is — “funny story about my parents.” Or I'd make stuff up. You know, and like one of the jokes I told was about Christmas. And this is the one you just mentioned. And the joke was something like, "One of my favorite traditions of Christmas is asking my mother what the meaning of Christmas is. And she'd said, 'oh, it's when Jesus died on the cross. Well, Mom, well, why did Jesus die on the cross? It's because Jesus decided become a carpenter instead of a doctor." And, and I love the joke. It always kills. You know, whenever I tell the joke. And I still tell it because I really like the joke. But it's dishonest. Because I never had a Christmas with my parents growing up. We never did presents. I was delivering what I assumed other brown kids were doing with their families in writing that joke. But I felt oddly comfortable doing it.

So it got to a point after, you know, six, seven years of doing stand up where I was like, why is this what you want to talk about? Is it possible that you're actually way more interested in kind of the brown side of you? And it's not a side, it's who I am. Is it possible that this is actually what you subscribe to and that you want to connect with that side of yourself? And that's essentially how I thought of, okay, well, maybe it's time to get in touch with your parents. Maybe now is the time.

Sonia 10:06

Yeah. It's so interesting, because I'm wondering like, was there something fueling the assumption you had about what other brown kids or South Asian kids did? Like, where did the notion that this would be what they did come from, you think?

Sopan 10:21

Well, the notion came from the fact that not every kid had parents that were as disconnected as mine were. So you have to assume that they're connected somewhere. And if they're connected, they're probably celebrating Christmas, they're happy somewhere, they're happy in some way. And so I pictured what that happiness would look like in a typical brown family. And I say typical, I mean, it's by no means monolithic. There's many, many different stories, different variations. But in my case, it was just assumptions. I'm not saying that they were correct assumptions. But I was making up a composite in my mind of what a happy life for me would have looked like, if I had the traditional kind of, "son of an immigrant parents" experience.

Sonia 11:04

Interesting. And, you have a brother.

Sopan 11:07

I do.

Sonia 11:07

An older brother. How much older is he again?

Sopan 11:09

10 years older.

Sonia 11:10

So, was there any discussion between the two of you growing up about what your experiences were like? Was there any sense of sort of bonding because you were both growing up in this experience? Or was it just like, the age difference was too much, or—

Sopan 11:25

Very little discussion about it — for several reasons. The first of which, I mean, look, the age difference matters. Let me tell you how that manifested itself. So when I was eight, he was going to college. When I was going to college, he was just getting engaged to get married. When I was at the age that he was getting engaged to get married, he just had a second kid. So we've never been on the same page, even just like on a life, world. We have a perfectly good relationship, but he was out of the house for a lot of the bad times to my parents. And he had a different experience with him than I did. He's not in the book as much, not because I didn't want it to be, but because this is my story. And it's not his. He would have a different story to tell.

So, part of the thing I write about in this book, and why I think this book has appealed to a lot of people is that, you know, it's about communication. It's about how important it is for families to communicate. And my parents never did. And that's why we ended up having the relationship, or lack thereof, that we did. We never communicated, we never tried to talk to each other. And the thing you just mentioned about, did you and your brother talk? Well, we didn't, really. And that's one example of where I think our family had a lot of shortcomings. And that's not just on them. It's also on me for not giving them a chance.

Sonia 12:39

Yeah, it seems like that’s something that you sort of realized through the course of trying to discover your parents, is that you had certain expectations for what their parenting ought to look like. But then it was only recently that you sort of started to examine, well, what does it mean to be a child, and sort of respond to my parents in a certain way, because you know, you talk about, like, therapy and the importance of communication. And so what was part of the process of you coming to realize those aspects of yourself that were sort of lacking along the way? Did it have to do with kind of just like, growing up and reflecting, or was therapy a part of that? Like, was it just a part of the communication your parents eventually gave you?

Sopan 13:20

Well, I'm older now. And I'm much more settled now. Right? I have a job, I have a career. I know where my next paycheck is coming from. So I kind of, I think I have mental space right now to think about that stuff. Something like this requires everyone to look inward. And people can do that to varying degrees. I think a lot of people have a tendency to say, "This thing is happening to me, this terrible thing is happening to me. This coworker is mistreating me. This boss is screwing me over. This friend is being really rude to me. This person did this to me." And we rarely ever look at what we are contributing to that. What is it that you're contributing to the dynamic that is making the final product what it is? And I realized, as I got to know my parents and speak to them and hear their stories, and listen to how they got to where they are, and why my father left the country, and how my mom ended up in New Jersey, I realized like, 50 years ago, your mom and dad, this isn't the life they pictured for themselves. They didn't get here by themselves. They got here in part because of several factors. But you can't discount the fact that you, as a child, are a part of that. And does that mean that I take like, full responsibility, no, I mean, as I said, we have to look inward. That means all of us have to look at what we contributed to that. But people have varying levels of capability to do that. And I don't know what my capability is. But throughout the book, I think it increased, if that makes sense.

Sonia 14:46

Yeah, no, it's really interesting because you talk about reaching out to your parents and going to India to meet your father, reaching back out to your mom. You noted that a lot of it had to do with you had turned 30. You were thinking about this, but also, you talk about your career and like, being a campaign embed with Trump. And I'm just wondering, was there a specific moment, a sort of like, turning point that you really realized, no, now is the time I need to reach out to my parents?

Sopan 15:17

I got a wedding invitation to go to India for an old friend of mine. She was getting married, and she invited me to her wedding. And so I looked at my then-girlfriend, Wesley, who's now my fiance, and I said, "Oh, do you want to go to India?" And I was always nervous about going to India, like, because it's a lot of time off work, and, you know, whatever. And then, you know, I was like, well, we're going to India, you know, my dad's out there. I don't think I could justify going to India and not see my father. And then, you know, Wesley, who's, you know, kind of the star of the book and in her own way, she said, "Of course, you have to go. We have to go." And then I said, "Well, if I'm gonna find my father, I can't not find my mother as well." And so I decided to find my mother.

And then after that, I was like, whenever in my 20s and growing up, whenever I tell other people about my parents and my relationship with them, or my dad leaving the country or that I haven't spoken to my mom in years, I never thought of it as an abnormal thing. It's just what I was used to. In the same way that, if you had a college roommate that you're no longer in touch with, that's normal. That's not an abnormal thing. That's how I felt about my family. But whenever I tell other people about it, they said, "That's not normal." So, I was like, since that's not normal, we might as well track this process in some way. We might as well write down how I'm feeling every step of the way. We might as well journal it in some way. I mean, you are a writer. I mean, this is what you do for a living, you might as well do that.

Initially, we thought about doing it as a documentary.

Sonia 16:36

Who's we?

Sopan 16:36

Me and Wesley. My now-fiance. But at the time, she was my girlfriend, and so we, we kicked around doing it as a documentary, but I thought putting cameras in my parents' faces would have been a little bit too invasive. Given how, you know, they're not very media savvy. It would have been a lot for them, I think. So I think writing was the more — easier way to do it. So throughout the whole process, I'm recording, I'm shooting video, I'm writing, and so a lot of the reactions you see in the book are in real-time, very exact, and they change throughout the book. A lot of memoirs are like, based on recall. This book, we're calling it a memoir, because it's easy to call it memoir — it's not really a memoir. It's more, like, narrative nonfiction in that very little of this is based on recall, it's based on recordings, I've spaced on my notes in the moment and all that stuff. I think to help ease my communication with my parents, I approached it like a journalist. Dispassionate, let's see where this takes me. Because that took a while before I was like, really comfortable with my parents. And really comfortable in talking to them about stuff. Because look, you're South Asian, you know, that we're not great at talking about stuff at home. You know, we're not.

Sonia 16:39

Unless we just want to like, vomit it all out.

Sopan 17:44

You know, it's true. Like, you know, there's no like, we're not good at talking about feelings. You know, we're not good at healthy confrontation. Because the generation before us, my parents, when they came to this country, they didn't have the freedom to think about mental health. And they didn't have the freedom to think about feelings. They were just trying to get through the day. They're just trying to figure out how to get to bed at night, and where the next paycheck was coming from. You know, my dad has a story about coming to this country with $8 in his pocket. Every single Indian dad or uncle has that same story. And it varies how much money they have in their pocket, but it's usually less than $20, is usually the range. But whether that's accurate or not, it speaks to kind of a survivalist mentality.

And so I grew up in white America, in the suburbs, where my fulfillment is emotional, it's physical. I'm striving for — how do I pursue my professional passions, but also my creative passions. My parents never thought about pursuing passions. They never had that option. They didn't even know to have that option. It's not like people that pursue an acting career, but don't make it. It's my parents wouldn't even know that they could pursue an acting career. And so it made those conversations really interesting, but I had to approach it as a journalist first just for my own — my own comfort level,

Sonia 19:01

What's really striking to me is that this book is like, intensely personal. And, I mean, it's trying to uncover a lot of uncomfortable truths about not just your life, but your parents' lives. And so, how was it for you to get your parents on board with that? I mean, I feel like a lot of the sort of shield about the discomfort surrounding their lives has to do with shame and what they want other people to know about them. And so here you go, let me like, broadcast it to the world in a published memoir, and like, do they realize that there's going to be an audience getting to know them in this intimate way now? Or was it more just like you think they were so excited to get to meet you again?

Sopan 19:38

I think it was that. I think it was getting to see me again. I think they had both reached a point in their lives where they did not think they were going to see me again. Or they didn't know. And frankly, I didn't either. I won't delve too much into this other than to say, reading the manuscript for them was difficult. But, look, I made clear to them from the start what I was doing. I was very open with them and transparent with them about the process. And they reacted differently to the book. But they both had their issues with it. And honestly, if my mom wrote a book, and my dad wrote a book, and my brother wrote a book. If they wrote, each wrote their own versions of Missed Translations, it'd be much different than mine. All I can say is that this is my version. This is my truth. This is what I can bring. I don't think I would have done anything differently.

Sopan 19:39

And I guess I'm wondering, did you have certain goals or expectations of what you wanted to find out from your parents? Or was it kind of like, let's just see where this goes?

Sopan

You're starting from zero. There's some stuff I found out that I was genuinely shocked by. One of the first questions I asked each of my parents was, what's your birthday? Because I didn't know!

Sonia 20:41

Yeah, I was just about to ask like, so did you celebrate your birthday growing up?

Sopan 20:46

Every now and then. Rarely.

Sonia 20:48

But it's just like, this idea. It's like, you have a birthday. Your brother has a birthday. Did you ever wonder, do my parents have a birthday? Why don't we blow out candles for them?

Sopan 20:55

No, I, I, we —I didn't. It's very strange, right? You know, I'd celebrate my brother's birthday or vice versa. I never once thought about my parents' birthdays were. Because we were just that distant from each other. You know, I'd see my friends be close with their grandparents. I never once thought about, okay, who are my grandparents? I just never thought like that. It was very strange. It's still very strange. I never thought to ask, like, did you have brothers and sisters growing up? I mean, I knew one uncle. But even just how they met. I never knew that story.

So, to answer your question, there are two things that I did know I want to get at. The first of which is, I wanted to know why my father left this country without telling anybody, because I think I was deep down very hurt by that. Secondly, there was a period of time when my mom was so depressed when I was in middle school, that she essentially just locked herself in her room for about, I want to say it was about, six months. And she'd only come out to like, go to her job, which was as a cashier at a Drug Fair, which is now Walgreens. I was 14, 13-14 years old at a time, and I never understood what was happening. And I wanted to know from her, what was that? That was a little bit strange for a 13-year-old to watch, and like not see his or her mother for a while.

22:05

And it was only in talking to her now that I understood the depths of depression she was dealing with. And it was only in talking to my father, that I understood the depths of depression that he was dealing with, and the disconnect that they both felt from us, as children, and the world around them. And so those were the two things I really wanted to get at. Everything else was just, where are we going from here? And part of it was also, I wanted to confront them and tell them look, you guys made me really unhappy as a child. And why did that happen? You know, and to varying degrees, you know, my parents were able to look inward. And now, as a result, I view them as humans in a way that I didn't before. I don't mean like, I didn't know they were humans. I mean, like, they're more than distant footnotes from my past. They're people in my life, if that makes sense. I keep saying if that makes sense. I'm sorry.

Sonia 22:56

No, no, it does make sense. I think it's really interesting because, you know, one thing I really appreciated about your book is that it really gets into a version of an Indian American childhood that isn't really public. I think like, what I was so interested is that like, there's this performance of brown identity that people who get to be spokespeople for the quote-unquote community or the diaspora talk about, and they sort of talk about growing up with a sense of Indianness in a way that almost seems very nostalgic, and like, rooted in like, familiarity with India, as opposed to resentment about India. And you talk very explicitly about kind of blaming India and Hinduism and arranged marriage for why things unfolded in your family the way it did.

So I, I kind of get what you mean. But I guess I'm wondering when you say, "if that makes sense," are you asking that of me because I'm also like, a brown face looking back at you, or because I'm like, a journalist and audio person, and you're anticipating what people in my position might think about those versions they are familiar with, versus the version that you're putting out into the the world right now?

Sopan 24:01

Maybe both. I also think that there's a lot here to chew on. And so I realize, I'm very familiar with it. And I have lived in this world literally my whole life, but also in the course of writing this book. So I'm very familiar with the ins and outs. I'm very familiar with how I feel about it. But I also realize that when you're explaining it to someone, it literally, you're just like, wait, what are you talking about right now? What do you mean that you blamed Hinduism and India? What does that mean? And so I realized, like, okay, to me, in my head, it makes perfect sense. I get it. But when I'm explaining to someone else, I realize okay, but someone else might not. And so I think that's where that comes from.

Sonia 24:35

Yeah, that was something I actually wanted to explore was like, when you say you blame these things, is it because they were the semblances of Indianness that you were exposed to and so, they just kind of became sort of, things to blame, or was it like, the particularities of something about arranged marriage, something about Hinduism?

Sopan 24:53

Both. So, this is by no means universal. You know, not everyone has to deal with this. But like, my parents got married — essentially how that happened is, my dad was already in this country. My mom was living in Canada. My dad put an ad in a newspaper. And then my grandmother on my mom's side answered on her behalf without my mom knowing or having a say in it. And then they were married soon after that. And I never knew the particulars of that. But growing up, I knew they were arranged. When I saw how unhappy they were. And I knew that, at least someone didn't have much say in getting together with them.

Meanwhile, you're watching TV all the time, and these amazing romantic comedies and love stories, you're like, s**t, that looks amazing. That's what I want. I can't believe my parents didn't have this. Well, why didn't your parents have this? Oh, it's because you know, they're Bengali, and this is how Bengalis get married. Well, I don't want that. And how could a culture mandate that? Then you have kind of the more stereotypical Indian stuff about like, your parents not caring much about your emotional well-being, it's more strictly about your resume, and strictly about your report card. And that was definitely the case in our household.

Sonia 25:55

Versus me. My mom made fun of me once when I complained about an A-.

Sopan 25:59

Oh, man. Yeah, you had the reverse. Yeah, get out of here!

Sonia 26:02

Yeah, she was like, really funny because it's like, I was always like, really into getting like, straight A's. And I went to Catholic school growing up, and she was like, "Huh, is anybody in the future gonna ask—"

Sopan 26:07

Yeah. So are your parents Hindu?

Sonia 26:12

My — so my family background's very unique. My mom is Catholic. My dad is Hindu, but he's also — he's also a Hindu who prays at a Sikh Gurdwara.

Sopan 26:22

Okay.

Sonia 26:22

My mom's father was Sikh. So the prescribed notion of what we understand "Indian" to be, like, my family totally, like, goes away from that.

Sopan 26:31

Because there's so many different stories.

Sonia 26:33

Yeah.

Sopan 26:34

Like, there's no one way, right.

Sonia 26:36

Exactly. And I think there's a lot more fluidity between cultures and traditions that people don't necessarily talk about —

Sopan 26:41

Especially in 2020. Right. And especially, I think there's a lot less rigidity about it, you know. Basically, there's certain parts of it that repelled me. I don't know what it was like for you when you were young, but like, I couldn't talk about crushes with my parents. You know, I couldn't talk about how much of an outsider I felt like in like my all-white school — mostly white. You know, I couldn't talk to them if I had a bad day with a friend, or if I got bullied or, you know, one of those things. I couldn't talk to them about that stuff.

That's not uniquely a brown problem. First of all, not all brown kids had this problem. And second of all, some white people, some white families go through that, but I ascribed it unfairly to being Indian. Before I was 12, when I was growing up, like in a six to 10 range, we would go to pujas. You know, so there was an Indian community that we were part of. And that was the sense I got from other kids as well. I was like, okay, so this is normal for people that look like me. So I don't want to look like this anymore, because I don't want that for myself. And that's where the rejection came from. Now, over time, you know, I realized as I got older that this was an irrational feeling. It wasn't correct. With the benefit of time, I can say that how you feel about something when you're 14 is not the most rational. It's not the most learned thing. So now, I'm just older now. Now I know differently.

Sonia 28:07

Yeah. Did you have a target audience in mind with this book?

Sopan 28:11

Yes. Anyone who has a relationship with someone that should be better. That was the target audience. I didn't really think about it. I mean, I did for book proposal purposes and whatnot. But for me, I never once wrote it that was about targeting someone. Every single word I wrote was because that's how I want to tell the story.

A lot of authors, I think — and this is, look, if you paint one painting, are you a painter? I don't think so. Am I an author because I wrote one book? I mean, for the purposes of publicity, I'm definitely gonna say yes, but in like two years, you know, I'm not gonna pretend I'm an author. But a lot of authors link their validation of a project to book sales. And, for me, what I've always told myself is, here are the barometers of success for this book. Number one, are you happy with it? Are you satisfied with it? Did this fulfill you? And I can say unequivocally that answer is yes. The second barometer is, if one person picks this book up that does not know you, is not related to you, is a total stranger to you. And reads this book, cover to cover, and tells you that they got something out of it, then that's fine. Everything else is immaterial. So I never once thought about what a target audience would look like.

29:21

Now, I do think that if you have a relationship with someone that should be better, you're going to get a lot out of this book. If you grew up brown in this country, you're gonna get something out of this book, because you will be able to relate to something in the book. You know, if you grew up in a household that was cold, or if you grew up in a household that's really close, you will get something out of this book. Look, I'm gonna pat myself on the back here. If you like storytelling, there are a lot of good stories in here that I'm really proud of in the way that we weave together. When I say we, I mean, Wesley and I. Wesley was very formative in this book. They asked me in the course of writing this book, "Hey, can you send over some comps?"

Sonia 29:53

Comps meaning what?

Sopan 29:54

Comps meaning comparable books. Maybe for publicity purposes or what they can pitch this at, and I had trouble thinking of them. I mean, there are some, obviously.

Sonia 30:03

Like, what ones come to mind?

Sopan 30:06

Well, I'm gonna self-promote here. The Washington Post wrote a piece about books to read in 2020. And they listed my book, and under the headline, "If you like Danny Shapiro's Inheritance, then you're gonna like Sopan Deb's Missed Translations." So there's that. You know, if you read a lot of Jhumpa Lahiri stuff, that, I mean, those are obviously fiction. You see a lot of the same themes, where you see a lot of like, the Bengali world really come to life. I mean, Trevor Noah's Born a Crime. I mean, his book is just marvelous and lovely and funny and so poignant. And we have very, very different stories. But his examines his South African identity. His is based a lot on recall, because it's about him growing up, but it's really a very poignant book and so great.

30:46

The truth is, like, there aren't a lot of books from the South Asian diaspora out there. There are some, but not many. And so I hope that this book gets other people to share their stories. Now, do I personally care about sales for this? I mean, of course you care on some level, but I do have that one person mark. What I don't want is the next like, brown person that has their own story to tell, when they're pitching it. Publishers say, "Well, we tried this with Sopan Deb, and let me tell you, that didn't, that didn't, that didn't work.” I don't want that. But I will say, generally speaking, this was not an easy book to sell. I'm very thankful to Dey Street and HarperCollins for taking a shot on it. But there aren't many stories like this out there. And I hope that one of the end products of this is that people share more of their stories.

Sonia 31:31

I have one more question.

Sopan 31:32

Yeah.

Sonia 31:33

So now, how connected do you feel to your brown side, even though it's not just the side, but the fact that you are brown. Like, I guess, where do you feel the authenticity of what that means now? Is it from getting to know your parents? Is it from just being older? Is it from like, having the space in your mind to think about this? Like, what does that actually mean to you now?

Sopan 32:00

That's a great question. I think — I don't feel as much of a fraud like I used to when I used to walk on the stage at the Big Brown Comedy Show. I feel more connected to it because my parents — because I understand where they came from, and by extension, I now understand where I came from. I still don't love the way my parents got together. I still don't love the way they were towards each other and the way they were towards us, which I think is some — some reflection of cultural values we place on certain things. But, do I feel better about it? Yeah. Am I trying to be white on the inside like I used to, no. This is who I am. And I'm happy with that. Do I have your typical South Asian story like, am I going to have an Indian wedding? Probably not. You know not because I'm anti having an Indian wedding, just because that's not the wedding that Wesley and I want. So, I would say, I feel better. How's that as the answer?

Sonia 32:57

Sounds really good. I mean, like thank you so much for sharing, and just being very open to talking about all of this too, because it is kind of like, I'm being a pseudo therapist, here.

Sopan 33:06

No, this is great. I really enjoyed this conversation. I hope this wasn't a labor for you.

Sonia 33:13

No, this is the occasional but lovable traveling mini pod I'm doing to keep myself going in life.

Sopan 33:19

Yeah, well, I'm happy that I got to cross paths with you.

Sonia 33:21

Okay, great. Thanks so much. So, that's all we have for today of Loitering, the occasional but lovable traveling mini pod I am currently testing a newsletter format. Thanks for listening and have a great day. Goodbye!

It was actually ONE chocolate sprinkles donut from Dunkin Donuts that we halved, back in January (another lifetime ago). Sopan’s leg is healing well!

Some useful links:

Sopan’s book: Missed Translations: Meeting the Immigrant Parents Who Raised Me

Sopan also recommended Tara Westover’s Educated as another good read.

Emergency Funds for Freelancers, Creatives, Losing Income During Coronavirus (Bay Area-based)

How to deal with uncertainty (thank you to therapist Thien Thanh for sharing)

Learning to Live With Coronavirus, from The New York Times’ The Daily

If you’re looking for a podcast to binge, I recommend Radiolab’s The Other Latif.

Check out what Sopan has been writing at the Times lately.

The best tweet I have seen so far this week.

On Twitter. On Facebook. More stories.

Subscribe at loitering.substack.com

Missed Translations: Meeting the Immigrant Parents Who Raised Me

View Details

Sonia Paul 00:10

Hello, everyone, welcome to Loitering, the occasional but lovable traveling mini pod I am currently testing in newsletter format. And today I am loitering at a clowning event** in Berkeley with two very special guests. Can you please introduce yourself?

Hannah Gaffe 00:27

My name is Hannah Gaff.

Joan Howard 00:29

My name is Joan Howard.

Sonia 00:30

And could you tell me what is going on here right now at this event and — I mean, the listeners can't see how you're dressed, but like, what is your presentation right now?

Joan 00:41

Is there something wrong with how I'm dressed?

Hannah 00:42

Yeah. What's the uh — is it?

Joan 00:44

I don't know. I think I look quite nice.

Hannah 00:45

Well, the title of this event is clown fundraiser, fun — fundraiser and silent auction.

00:56

(Shh. Sorry. Sshh — Be quiet! No. Okay. But I am trying. I'm talking. Okay.)

Hannah 01:07

And ClownCorps is our organization, and we're holding this event.

Joan 01:11

It's very heavy.

Hannah 01:12

It's a heavy event.

Joan 01:13

It's a very heavy event, but we're gonna hold it.

Hannah 01:15

We're holding it with our spirit.

Sonia 01:17

So what is the heaviness of what's happening right now? Can you elaborate a little bit?

Joan 01:23

That was good that — that was a really good transition. Well, it's a heavy time with the coronavirus, of course, becoming officially labeled a pandemic, and information coming from every which way, and a lot of anxiety and a lot of unknowns. And I, you know, speak for myself when, you know, I also say, it's really hard to live when you don't actually know if you're gonna go to work the next day, or if you're going to suddenly have to stay in your house. I mean, there's just a lot of unknowns. And it's especially scary for people who are at more risk, and it's just I think there's a lot of fear. It's just a lot fear.

Sonia 02:00

And what is the significance of clowning in this sort of tension? Because I think like, a lot of people don't really think about clowns beyond like, you know, maybe the movie It, or like Circus Circus.

Joan 02:12

Which, I would just like to point out, It is not a clown. It is, in fact, an alien (playing a clown) wearing a specific kind of clown costume.

Hannah 02:20

And in the book, he also wears other costumes.

Joan 02:23

Yes, he's not just a clown, just to be clear. He's still an alien.

Sonia 02:26

But that has sort of framed our perception of the clown. So what is the kind of frame that you're trying to push forward right now, especially in these times?

Hannah 02:35

So the clown, we believe the clown creates space, holds space, for people to experience what is happening in an open, public way, or in a way between two people. Between many people. And so, as clowns, we open up community space, and we open up direct communication between people, and we create a space in which people feel like they can play and laugh and feel released through laughter.

Joan 02:58

At things that seem unlaughable. Like that has always been the clown's role, like, from sort of day one, the clown shows up and creates a space in which people can laugh at what feels on unlaughable.

Hannah 03:09

Being able to laugh at things that are hard brings resilience.

Sonia 03:14

Yeah, but what about the sort of pushback that, you know, let me just play devil's advocate here. Like, maybe we shouldn't be laughing at something that's truly horrible. What if we're making lighthearted of a situation that really deserves our concentration and the full scrutiny that maybe members of our government aren't giving it, that we also need to offer that in response?

Joan 03:39

I would say that they're not mutually exclusive. And I think that laughter actually allows people to have some relief so that they can have more energy and more resilience to be able to then do the hard work. Because if you stay all of the time in the hard and the heavy, it becomes really difficult to move forward doing the hard work. So the laughter is actually a release. It's a relief. It brings energy. It also in this time where people are isolating for very important and good reasons, we also need to be in human contact of some kind, and we need to feel like a part of a community. And the clown also as a buoyant, connecting spirit offers that space as well. And um, just to be clear, we at this gathering do have the CDC on hand. We called the CDC, the Clown Disinfectant Committee, and they're here in full regalia with sanitizer sprays and tips on social distancing.

Sonia 04:38

You alluded to this earlier that the clown is the space between what we know and what we don't know. Can you elaborate on that?

Joan 04:48

Yeah, so the clown, unlike humans, who think about the future and remember the past, the clown shows up in every moment, is like, "I'm here! What now? Ooh, what's happening now? Oh, happening? What's happening now? Oh, that thing! And they respond very directly to the thing that's happening right in front of them. So it allows for a fresh take and a buoyant perspective on things that get really bogged down by past and future.

Hannah 04:50

And also, to be clear, the clown is very much in the moment experiencing what is happening. So the clown doesn't ignore this big thing that's happening right now, this, this really, you know, anxiety-inducing thing. The clown acknowledges it, and in fact, can be very deeply impacted by it. And in the face of that is still a clown, and still moves through it with failures, celebrating their failures, bouncing off of the hard things, bouncing right back up to the top, and then bringing people that laughter, which brings some resilience, so.

Joan 05:45

And also reminding us all as humans that we all have resilience and buoyancy, and like, this is the time in which we really need to find and remember our resilience and our buoyancy so we can continue to be humans together, and love one another and find a way to connect, even though we're also having to protect ourselves and take care and find ways to take care of one another's community.

Sonia 06:05

Is there anything else you would like to add?

Joan 06:08

I think I just want to go back a moment to the "laughing at," because I just want to be clear that clowns don't laugh at. They laugh. They laugh with what's happening, and play. So a clown plays. It's like, they see something. And they find the joy through their naivete and their curiosity and their wonder. And so therefore, they can invite other people to be in that space with them, and also find the wonder and the curiosity and the delight. And the laughter comes from that shared space. Not like, pointing out a thing and making fun of it. Yeah.

Sonia 06:46

And um, where should we look for clowns in our lives if we don't have like, regular events that, you know, we can come to to find these clowns?

Joan 06:54

Well, you can be a clown in your life.

Hannah 06:56

In fact, you probably already are.

Joan 06:59

Everyone is a clown. Really.

Hannah 07:03

We like to be clowns all the time, not just when we have our red nose on, because of the fact that we interact with the world in a more curious and open way. But you can check out our website, which is found ClownCorps.org. We offer workshops regularly. We really love meeting people and their clowns. And yeah, we're just excited to share some more clown love.

Joan 07:26

I have one more thought. Going back to, you asked what a clown was. And then I was like, "Ah, there's a phone in my face." So we have a teacher named Giovanni Fusetti, who talks about sublime stupidity, and that each one of us has our own unique silliness inside of us. And that a clown is an amplified version. It's a human who's amplified, so that our core and sort of most essential sublime stupidity gets to come out and play. And it's in this space, where we can connect very joyfully and very deeply with one another.

Sonia 08:02

That's so beautiful, thank you. And it is -- it's quite calming to me, in this moment. So, that's all we have for today of Loitering, the occasional but lovable traveling mini pod I am currently testing in newsletter format. Thank you for listening and have a great day. Goodbye!

**This clowning event in Berkeley was to fundraise for ClownCorps’ international social clowning tour in Bali. Their schedule is up in the air because of COVID-19, but if you would like more information on the point and scope of the tour, you can find that here.

Some useful links for these times:

The Dos and Don’ts of ‘Social Distancing, The Atlantic

Taking Care of Your Mental Health in the Face of Uncertainty (thank you to my sister and psychologist Christine Paul for sharing)

I Lived Through SARS and Reported on Ebola. These Are the Questions We Should Be Asking About Coronavirus., by Caroline Chen

Notes from a UCSF Expert panel — March 10. Some of these statistics — what could happen WITHOUT coordinated effort to stop the spread of COVID-19 — are truly sobering. But that’s why we all need to take the necessary precautions to stay healthy and look out for one another.

Subscribe at loitering.substack.com

View Details

Sonia 00:11

Hello, everyone, welcome to Loitering, the occasional, but lovable traveling mini pod I am currently testing in newsletter format. And today I am loitering at Crixa Cakes in Berkeley with a very special guest. Can you please introduce yourself?

Lewis Raven Wallace 00:27

Hi, I'm Lewis Raven Wallace. I am a freelance journalist based in North Carolina and the author of The View From Somewhere: Undoing the Myth of Journalistic Objectivity, which is also out as a podcast called The View From Somewhere.

Sonia 00:40

So the audience of this Loitering mini pod maybe a little bit familiar with who you are, but most people probably aren't. And without going into too many details, briefly, could you talk about what led you to write this book and what happened beforehand, who are you really in a little bit more detail, if that's ok?

Lewis 01:03

Sure. So I was a public radio journalist for about five years. I started out at WBEZ in Chicago, coming out of a long background of community-based activism around trans liberation and prison abolition, and then worked as a daily news reporter first at BEZ where I was trained, then at WYSO, and then finally at a national show called Marketplace, which is a business and economics show. Right around the inauguration of Donald Trump in early 2017, I wrote a blog post called "Objectivity is dead, and I'm okay with it," that was criticizing the ideal of journalistic objectivity, and calling for journalists to stand up and take a stance against white supremacy and transphobia, and to kind of clarify and define our values in this political moment. After a short dispute with my employer marketplace, I was fired for refusing to take that blog post down. And that whole sort of fiasco of being fired right after Trump became president led to me writing a book, The View From Somewhere, which is all about the history of journalistic objectivity, and how it has been used to gate-keep and deployed against marginalized and oppressed people.

Sonia 02:21

Okay, so that's like a lot. And I'm wondering, you know, reading your book, I also got the sense, though, that this thing called objectivity was something that you've been researching long before that incident happened. And so I was wondering, what were your main goals with writing this book, aside from really like proving that, you know, your blog post was in the right frame of mind. Can you elaborate on that a little bit?

Lewis 02:49

Sure. So when I got fired, I was contacted by a lot of journalists and former journalists, many of them queer and trans people and people of color, women, who said, "Oh, I've been thinking about this stuff, and I have either, you know, been punished in some way or pushed out of journalism or made to feel that I couldn't be a real journalist because I was committed to standing up for my human rights or standing up for my community." And in that moment, I felt pretty sure that there had to be other examples, other stories like mine, but maybe that hadn't been as well-publicized, of journalists kind of standing up in key political moments, and standing up for their communities and then being punished or pushed out.

And I didn't want to talk about my situation in a vacuum. I wanted to really understand sort of, where did this idea of objectivity come from? Why did it become such a fundamental tenet of journalism? Why is it still around when objectivity has really been debunked in a lot of other fields, and this idea of sort of an outside observer is not as important as it might have been, you know, in the middle of the last century? And so, just trying to understand what the history and purpose was of this ideal, and how it was originally intended, and then how it's been used.

Sonia 04:14

In the beginning of the book, you talk about something called the sphere of legitimate controversy. And it really sets the tone for everything else that you write about. And I'm wondering if you could just talk a little bit about what that actually is, like, what is this sphere? What is considered controversial? Who came up with this sphere of controversy?

Lewis 04:36

So the idea of the sphere of legitimate controversy is a really useful way to talk about objectivity in journalism. This professor named Daniel Hallin wrote a book about the coverage of the Vietnam War, where he coined this term. And so he describes it actually as, essentially three concentric circles

Sonia 04:53

Sorry, concentric meaning what?

Lewis 04:55

Circles inside of each other, like Russian dolls, kind of.

So the circle right in the middle is this sphere of consensus. And so that's ideas or concepts that supposedly, quote unquote, everyone can agree on. And that would be things that are presented in mainstream journalism without question, like, "Patriotism is good," or "Prisons are a solution to social ills." You know, that kind of thing. And then the sphere of legitimate controversy is ideas that can be debated in journalism. And then the third sphere outside of that is this fear of deviance. So, concepts, ideas, arguments that can't or shouldn't be talked about.

So an example that we give in the opening episode of the podcast is — well, there's a few examples. One of them is around women's suffrage. Another one is around slavery. So, currently, in the sphere of consensus is the idea that slavery is bad. Not 150 years ago in the United States, is slavery bad or good was in the sphere of legitimate controversy and being debated. And so a lot of the book looks at how social movements, alternative media, individual reporters based on their experience, push issues from deviance into legitimate controversy, and sometimes into consensus. And that doesn't always move in the direction of progress, right? So something can be a deviant idea, can move into the sphere of legitimate controversy, even if it's a bad idea. Like some of Donald Trump's ideas, you know — "Mexicans are rapists," or "Rape is okay." You know, these are things that we might have thought wouldn't be debated, but now they are being.

Sonia 06:28

So, I'm just going to repeat back to you what I'm hearing and what I read too, just to make sure we're discussing in a way that the audience can really understand. So, in the sphere of legitimate controversy, it's actually kind of like the middle sphere within three different spheres that are within each other. And the sphere of deviance is the outermost ring, the sphere of consensus is the innermost ring. And sometimes, what goes from the outside in is not always what we would call "progress." If these are really, like very deviant ideas that kind of go against human rights and are just like, not true. But sometimes too, the sphere of legitimate controversy — the ideas that would ideally want to be framed in that end up being stuck in this outermost ring where they're considered deviant because they're just coming from such specific perspectives, or maybe what people would call niche perspectives. But of course, niche, as I've been very much thinking lately and discussing with people, it's a word that's used by people in position of power.

Lewis 07:32

Yeah, exactly. So anything that's in the sphere of legitimate controversy can be debated and sort of, quote unquote, both sides journalism. But the reality is that journalists themselves, ourselves, are always shaping that. And so I come at that from the perspective of a transgender person. I came out in the late 90s when the idea of transgender sort of human rights or civil rights was in the sphere of deviance; it wasn't being debated as sort of a legitimate argument. The idea that gender might not be a binary was in the sphere of deviance. You know, it was just men and women and there might be transsexual men and transsexual women as well. But non-binary gender was a sphere of deviance issue. Now that's being debated and people are talking about it.

Sonia 08:18

That's a really great example. I'm wondering because in addition to this word called "objectivity," which even the Society of Professional Journalists has opted not to use anymore, there are other words have kind of come to signify the same thing, even if they're actually different words, whether that's "balanced" or "neutral." I think some people are also favoring this word "transparent," but sometimes it is kind of like filler words to mean I think what people had hoped objective means or objective had meant, and I'm wondering your thoughts about that and like, are there any words that are actually truly appropriate for this time in journalism and in our country today, especially?

Lewis 09:01

You know, I'm not invested in the word so much as I'm invested in the practices, right. So I think there's this idea that journalism can establish itself as credible by maintaining its claims to objectivity. That model has not worked. That's what Jay Rosen, who's a journalism scholar, talks about in terms of a theory of diminishing returns. Like basically, when you first sort of claim objectivity, people might say, okay, you're a fair and balanced news outlet, right and you're objective. But then each time that it's revealed that in fact, the journalists running this news outlet, have a bias or get something wrong, that objectivity claim leading to credibility is sort of diminished and so forth into eternity.

So I don't think that journalists establish credibility by saying "I'm objective. I'm impartial. I'm transparent. I'm fair." I think we establish credibility by checking our facts and doing our best to tell the truth and being transparent about where we're coming from in that process. And that that's an ongoing process that we also need to invest energy in helping the public to understand, invest in, feel involved with, and not just feel sort of talked at, right? Because right now the relationship between mainstream journalism and the quote unquote public is, in some ways very antagonistic. There's this idea that people can't trust journalists, and also that journalists can't trust people.

And so there's my friend, Alicia Bell, who works for Free Press talks about this in terms of actually healing relationships. That journalism is about relationships, and that where harm has been done, for example, in journalistic coverage of black communities, there's healing that needs to happen before journalism can just say, well, we're objective and so we should be credible. And so you should trust us. So trust, to me, is not about what we call it. It's about what we actually do.

Sonia 10:46

Right. And I think that's really interesting, because I think at one point in your book too, if I remember correctly, you talk about being invested in the process of journalism, and that that's where we can actually gather what we're trying to gather when we use words like balance. But, of course too, um. You know, we live in an environment where people want straight answers right away. They don't necessarily have much tolerance for this — this understanding that it is a process, and sometimes we aren't going to necessarily have a very stated claim at the end of the day. And so I was wondering if you can then talk a little bit about what maybe you can see as methods or tools for practicing journalists who, you know, they're very invested in the process, but maybe their audience, or even the editors they work with, don't necessarily have the breathing room or feel that they can make the breathing room, given the current state of journalism and politics and the state of affairs everywhere.

Lewis 11:51

So, that's a pretty complex question. And I think there's a couple of assumptions wrapped up in it that I want to push back on.

Sonia 11:58

Okay, great.

Lewis 11:59

First one is this idea that people want simple answers. I think that Twitter, advertisers, algorithms, Facebook, platforms — those structures benefit from clickbait and simple answers. I don't think that's what people actually want. And people are not being served by the journalism that they're getting when that journalism is focused on sort of the most over simplistic messages getting the highest distribution, right. That's actually eroding, continually eroding the relationship, again, between people and journalists, and the journalism itself. But the problem to me there is not about the people. It's not about the public. It's about the incentive to produce the work that gets the most clicks, right, or the work that gets the most shares, as opposed to the work that is the most helpful to people trying to figure out and give meaning to their lives and their communities. And depending on your community, that might not be the thing that is the most clicked upon, right, or the most shared.

And so there's a gap there between the stated desire for journalism that's about public service and the real sort of economics of the distribution of journalism. That isn't a gap that can be solved by individual journalists changing their practices. I actually think it can, to a certain extent, be solved by communities collectively, as well as journalists collectively saying, "Hey, we need different mediators here. We need to heal this relationship and actually mediate the distribution of journalism differently, and take ownership over that and the community," and there are a lot of efforts to do that.

My focus has been on sort of the ethics and practices of individual journalists, with kind of a recognition that the economic power structures of journalism actually benefit quite a bit, as it stands right now, from having us be distributors of simple answers and clickbait and one liners. But that is not good for people, and it's not good for journalists.

Sonia 14:00

Yeah, I actually really agree with you. But I do get the sense that in addition to there being groups of people who really want to handle this information that is complex and forces them to reckon with their own opinions and views with what's actually happening, there, there are some people who don't like to sit with discomfort. And so, like the economic motivation, the algorithms, the structures that are in place to make it easy for us to kind of produce journalism that is click-baity or one sided, there's also the tolerance levels of different people around the world now. And so, do you have anything to say to that, or like any wisdom as to how we can better equip myself -- equip myself, Freudian slip — or any, um. Yeah, any feedback as to how we can better handle that reality too, and try to get — I mean, we can't maybe necessarily convince everyone that "no, you have to sit with this discomfort," because maybe they have their reasons for why they're like, not ready or unwilling, but yeah. Any thoughts on that?

Lewis 15:06

Well, I think that the idea that we can sort of purchase or click our way away from discomfort is a capitalism problem.

Sonia 15:16

Tell me more.

Lewis 15:19

I mean, you know, to me, the question always comes back to like, "Who benefits, right, from that mindset?" And there's never going to be a day for me where I wake up and just sort of give up on people, right, and feel like, "Oh, you know, people don't want better for themselves or their communities or their world." I think the matter of how to move all of us towards a place where we're more comfortable with curiosity and discomfort is a question for educational systems. It's a question for social justice movements. It's a question for journalists. You know, what can we do to sort of invite people into deeper curiosity and more engagement. What is our role as journalists in that conversation?

And just, you know, I feel strongly that the answers or the solutions to these problems are systemic and therefore, collective in nature, not sort of an individual act. But I do think we can each individually be asking ourselves every day like, what am I doing to cultivate curiosity, to be comfortable in my own discomfort, to analyze power structures, to look at my own privilege and the ways in which I might oppress or silence others, to look at my own oppression with nuance. You know, those are questions I think, for all of us that can help us to develop solutions collectively.

Sonia 16:44

I'm wondering, in your book, you have these different case studies. And I was wondering if there was any one case in particular that really stood out to you for one reason or another, something that was completely unexpected, or that you think could really help illuminate what we're facing right now in one way, or maybe something we can pick up on?

Lewis 17:06

Well, over the last 50-60 years, there's been this assumption that in mainstream journalism, that you're either a journalist or an activist, and that activists aren't real journalists, right. And I looked at many examples of journalists who are doing fact-based and meticulous work, who are also activists. But the one that stands out to me is the story of Marvel Cooke. She was a black woman, born in Minnesota. She worked for The Crisis, which was the NAACP paper run by W.E.B Du Bois at the start of her career, and then she worked for the Amsterdam News, which is a more mainstream black paper cover in Harlem. And while she was there in the 30s, she organized one of the first chapters of The Newspaper Guild, and they actually conducted a successful lockout and shut down of Amsterdam News, and ended up later being rehired at the wages that they had asked for in their unionization. effort. And so she organized essentially one of the first successful labor struggles of journalists in the 30s.

She also covered labor. She covered what she called the Bronx slave market, which was black women day laborers doing domestic work in the Bronx for often very little or no money, and they were heavily exploited. And so her investigative journalism was focused on labor, her organizing was focused on labor. She was ultimately called before the McCarthy hearings in the early 50s. And after that happened, and the paper that she'd been working for shut down, she never worked in journalism again. And she lived almost another 50 years. In many ways, her story was pushed out of kind of the canon of journalism.

And so, to me, there's something just deeply important about knowing Marvel Cooke, about knowing that some of our earliest labor leaders in journalism were black women, about knowing that some of our earliest investigative reporters doing first person undercover work were activists and labor organizers, and kind of tying all those threads together. We did a podcast episode about her. And there's a chapter about her in the book as well, that, to me, has just been a chock full of lessons about kind of the costs of erasing black women's work, and the costs of erasing activism and dismissing it as not journalism. And I think there are heavy costs when it comes to the labor rights of journalists.

Sonia 19:29

Yeah, thank you for that. Just to wrap up, I like to ask people I interview if they have any recommendations for things they've been reading or listening or coming across. And I'm just wondering if you have any recommendations, whether or not it has to do with these topics or some other things that you're thinking about these days.

Lewis 19:47

I read a lot of science fiction and fantasy. And so, of all the things that I've read in the last couple of years, I would say, N.K. Jemisin's Broken Earth Trilogy is the best. And you might not think that you're a fan of science fiction or fantasy, but you might become one after reading N.K. Jemisin's Broken Earth Trilogy. So that's my recommendation to people.

Sonia 20:10

Wow, anything in particular that is drawing you to that, or that you think others might be, like, enchanted by?

Lewis 20:17

She builds sort of worlds upon worlds that, for me, helped me to think about kind of the nature of being a human being, the nature of race and genetics, the nature of power, differently. And I think journalists should read fiction, and especially should read, you know, speculative and fantastical fiction because it helps us to ask questions that, in some ways, journalism often assumes can't be asked, right. Like, how else could things be? What else is possible? And, ideally, I want to work in journalism that is also about asking those questions.

Sonia 20:57

Yeah, well, thank you so much. So, that's all we have for today of Loitering, the occasional, but lovable traveling me pod I am currently testing in newsletter format. Thanks for listening and have a great day. Goodbye!

Links to books, podcasts and other writings mentioned in this episode:

The View From Somewhere: Undoing the Myth of Journalistic Objectivity, by Lewis Raven Wallace

The View From Somewhere Podcast, created and hosted by Lewis Raven Wallace, and produced by Ramona Martinez, with editorial help from Carla Murphy, Phyllis Fletcher, and Hideo Higashibaba

"Objectivity is dead, and I'm okay with it," by Lewis Raven Wallace

The Uncensored War: The Media and Vietnam, by Daniel C. Hallin

The Broken Earth Trilogy, by N.K. Jemisin

And if you’re interested in what Sonia has been up to lately, here’s a recent piece she wrote for the Religion News Service.

On Twitter. On Facebook. More stories.

Subscribe at loitering.substack.com

The View from Somewhere: Undoing the Myth of Journalistic Objectivity

The Uncensored War: The Media and Vietnam

View Details

Sonia Paul

Hello, everyone, welcome to Loitering, the occasional but lovable traveling mini pod I am currently testing in newsletter format. And today I am loitering on the phone with a very special guest. Can you please introduce yourself?

Rachel Monroe 00:26

Hi, this is Rachel Monroe. I am a writer and I'm stoked to be talking to you today.

Sonia Paul 00:32

So you're a writer, where are you based?

Rachel Monroe 00:35

I am based in Marfa, Texas. It's a small town of about 2000 people that is in far West Texas. So that means it's about 200 miles east of El Paso and about 70 miles north of the Mexican border. And it gets most of its attention for minimalist art, and it's just a small place in the middle of the desert with a great creative community.

Sonia Paul 00:59

Interesting, and how long have you been living there?

Rachel Monroe 01:02

Since 2012.

Sonia Paul 01:04

Okay, so can you talk a little bit about the kind of writing that you do, the kinds of stories that you pursue?

Rachel Monroe 01:11

Sure. I always have a hard time kind of identifying myself as a journalist, I guess, which is in some ways, like maybe the easiest way to say what I do, I write magazine pictures, mostly. But, you know, I didn't go to journalism school or anything. So I don't know. I just I tend to like writing about people in complicated multi layered situations and can manifest in a lot of different ways. And I write a lot about crime, but not exclusively about it.

Sonia Paul 01:39

Right. Yeah, so you wrote a book recently called Savage Appetites: Four True Stories of Women, Crime and Obsession. Can you talk a little bit about the genesis of that book and where the idea came from?

Rachel Monroe 01:53

Sure. It really started with my own curiosity about myself, actually. I tend think of myself as a pretty friendly, nice, good tempered person, nonviolent. But I've always been really drawn to these true crime stories, stories of just really terrible things that people do to each other, even from a very young age, from a sort of alarmingly young age. And then, over the years as I became a writer and a journalist and did some reporting myself, and wrote some pieces that could be considered true crime. It was interesting to me that that didn't quite fill the fascination. In certain moods, in certain parts of my life, particularly, when I had a hard day, or having just a difficult period, all I would want to do is come home and zone out — it always felt like zoning out — while listening to or watching or reading a story about just like extremely awful human experiences. There's some contrast there between the pleasure and almost relaxation that I got and the content of what I was reading about, just like real human tragedy. There is a disconnect there, that I knew a lot of people felt it. So it seemed to me that there was something to dig into. I wasn't finding anybody at the time who was able to articulate what was going on in a way that satisfies me. So I thought I would have to dig into it myself.

Sonia Paul 03:19

Wow. And what generation are you?

Rachel Monroe 03:24

Haha, I'm an old millennial.

Sonia Paul 03:26

No, the reason I ask is because true crime and like the sort of obsession that we in the US in particular have with it has kind of like really ascending in the last few years, I would say, especially, like, you know, the podcast Serial, or all these other true crime podcasts. I don't know what else you're thinking of. But I remember when I was growing up too though, like I used to watch Unsolved Mysteries with Robert Stack all the time. And I'm wondering then this idea of obsession with true crime. I mean, is it that it's become more common, or has it always been there but all the sudden we're more fascinated with it? And what are the forces that are making us more fascinated with it, you think?

Rachel Monroe 04:11

Yeah, I mean, I think you're right that it is something that has existed. And so they have always drawn an audience from the very beginning of mass media, people were telling murder stories. But, at the same time, I think it's really clear that we're having a cultural boom moment. And these moments, they ebb and they flow. And it's really like clear that something is happening. And also, I think, for different reasons, the crime world, sometimes it's more like a subculture thing. I think when I was growing up, at least that's what I thought about it as. It felt kind of, like an edgy thing for people who are, you know, dressed in black and really gloomy or something -- at least that's the association I had. And I remember when I went to Crime Con, which is essentially a true crime fan convention put on by the TV network Oxygen, a couple years ago, it was so clearly a mainstream audience that they were targeting, or at least that they were attracting. And so I think that idea that this is no longer like fringe culture, alternative culture, but it's like truly, truly mainstream, that's the thing that isn't always the case, that these are the stories at the forefront of our culture.

05:15

And I think there are a lot of things that attribute to that. I mean, in large part I think, just the growth of podcasts as medium is a huge driver, because in many cases, people aren't necessarily breaking new ground with their true crime podcasts. They're telling these old stories, sometimes like real familiar stories in this new format. That gives these stories that have already been told a new kind of life, a new energy, because they're being told in this way. And so, clearly, there's things that go beyond the podcast realm and the realm of cable TV networks, and books and Netflix shows and documentaries, and magazine journalism, and it's everywhere. But the growth of the podcast and the way that these stories, with their drama and their hooks and their sense of an unfolding investigation, really are suited to the podcast world.

Sonia Paul 06:04

Interesting. And you mentioned when you went to this Crime Con convention, it was sponsored by Oxygen, which is this women's network. And if I remember correctly from reading the book, it was mostly women who were attending that conference, right?

Rachel Monroe 06:19

Oh, yeah, like overwhelmingly like 80-90% women, for sure.

Sonia Paul 06:23

So what is it about women and crime that you started to probe and that you kind of figured out through the course of your reporting and writing this book?

Rachel Monroe 06:32

It's interesting, right? Because when we look at crime, statistically, you would think that it would be something that would just be a field that draws like a primarily male audience, because most murderers are men. Most who are are victims are also men. The people who are working in this world as homicide detectives, as defense attorneys, all those professions are primarily male. Sometimes overwhelmingly so. But you're right that the audience for these stories is really disproportionately female, and I think there are a lot of reasons contributing to that, you know, every now and then you'll find somebody who wants to give one small pat answer to why women are so drawn to true crime. And those answers never feel satisfying. It's a multi-layered thing.

But I think, I guess the simplest way that I could put it would be that women have a really fraught and complex relationship with our own vulnerability. We, I think, are socialized to be really aware of our vulnerability in the world. And some of that comes from culture, you know, the fact that our culture is also really preoccupied with female vulnerability, and, and not in a universal way, right, like the vulnerability of attractive middle class white women, often young white women, is something that you see so many shows or plot points revolving around. The writer Alice Bolin wrote a great book called Dead Girls, and she talks about how much of our pop culture, the jumping off point is the discovery of this, you know, beautiful blonde woman, dead body. And that's, that's kind of the role for her and like, how could this happen and that sets off of the plot points that follow.

And so I think growing up in a culture with this heightened awareness of vulnerability, both in our daily lives and in the culture that we consume gives women, people socialized as women really, complex feelings. And true crime is a way to, I think, kind of dip a toe into those waters, splash around, think about it, but not think about it necessarily too hard. It acknowledges that anxiety and the risk of violence out there in the world, but at the same time, it has this proving function, particularly the more formulaic kinds of true crime where the viewer or listener is given that kind of reassuring message, you know, where you stand, you can easily identify the bad guy. Often the bad guy -- it's one singular person, right? It's not like a systemic issue. It's, it's one bad person. And then if you remove the one bad person, order is restored. So it both acknowledges these anxieties and fears about vulnerability. And then assuages them, at least a little bit, even if it's not fully a complete or honest or satisfying way. I think that's what a lot of the appeal comes from.

Sonia Paul 09:25

Yeah. Wow. That actually brings me to another question I had. So the way you structured your book was to divide it into different sections. The detective, the victim, the defender, and the killer. And I actually wanted to talk to you more about the persona of the victim and this idea of victimhood, because you do note that most victims tend to be women, but also bad when a woman is a victim, it is kind of the only true way she can have a voice or at least speak with a voice that has an authority. And just like, before you answer that question, I wanted to read a couple of excerpts from your book where you talk about this. Because there were some passages that really, that really like stood out to me.

So this one is on page 78. "The victim is in some ways, the central character of any true crime account. Without her there would be no story, but she also has the disadvantage of being dead. In many cases, though, hers is the only major role available to women." And then you continue on to write, "So even as some victims are blamed or debased, others are afforded a kind of wounded authority, or an authority rooted in their wounds." Can you talk a little bit more about this "wounded authority"?

Rachel Monroe 10:53

Sure, and I just wanted to note something that you said earlier, most murder victims are not women. Most murder victims are men. Most murder victims are like, young black men.

Sonia Paul 11:04

Yes!

Rachel Monroe 11:05

You know, but those are not the victims that our culture considers as victims, or talks about or like, it's just like so. And we have such a distorted picture of who is the victim of violence in our culture.

Sonia Paul 11:17

Totally. The victim in a story though, especially like a novel, I feel like I've read a little bit about this, though, that it does tend to be like women, predominantly white women.

Rachel Monroe 11:27

Totally. Exactly. So yeah, there's that huge — just wanted to like mark that disconnect.

Sonia Paul 11:31

Yeah.

Rachel Monroe 11:31

I mean, especially we're talking about something that, a genre that describes itself as "true," right? Noting, like calling attention to that disconnect seems really important. And also that women of color, Native women, have like much higher rates of victimization than white women, but again, like are not, not the ones who are at the forefront, usually, of our narrative.

11:53

And so, thinking about that wounded authority. It's — it is really tricky to work my way through this idea of the trope of the victim in true crime narrative because that's a role that cuts both ways, right? Being a victim is of course, a role that's defined by some level of harm that's been done to that person. Harm, it's defined by vulnerability. And at the same time, the victim is allowed to speak. In some cases, the victim is like allowed a kind of authority to speak to say what happened to her. I mean, I think we have seen this a lot in recent areas when — this is not always the case, but that victims voices are kind of held up or uplifted or given a pride of place. But of course, part of what I was trying to get at is that it's only certain victims who are given, afforded that kind of authority. And I talk a lot in that section about this rhetorical category of the "innocent victim," which is a phrase that comes up a lot during the victim's rights era, during the Reagan era, when a lot of these laws which later lead to mass incarceration are passed, and they're often passed under this banner of protecting victims. But again, it's not protecting all victims or most victims, it's protecting this special category of the "innocent victim." And I guess the innocent victim is supposed to be someone who is, you know, assaulted in some way, preyed upon by a stranger, did nothing wrong, and just had this terrible fate imposed on them. But of course, this is sort of an imaginary category that we have made up. There's like such little resemblance to the way that people are actually victimized in the real world. Victims and perpetrators often know each other, have some form of relationship, or victims and perpetrators tend to be from the same communities. There's a huge amount of overlap there. And there's also of course, like so much coded language in that idea of who does our culture, who does our society see as innocent? Who do we assume is innocent and who? I mean, I guess the corollary of the "innocent victim" right, is like the "guilty victim," or the victim who is somehow to blame? And there's so much like racial and class and other kinds of coding that feed into who is allowed to occupy those roles.

I was on a panel with a great writer the other day. We were talking about this very issue, like who is afforded that status of victim and how it is at once like kind of dignity to have your victimization recognized? Because like, we're saying, like, so many people are not seen as a victim. But then at the same time, there's also like the stigma of victimization. And so it's such a hard thing to write about, because there are those dual functions going on at all times. But I think it's really important to pay attention to both sides of that. Both the dignity and stigma of being recognized as a victim.

Sonia Paul

Yeah, and it's also like striking to me, because I also feel that at the same time there is a dignity and a stigma to being a victim, there's also often a reframing that comes from maybe the victim themselves, of being a "survivor." And so what does it necessarily mean to then take on the label of "survivor" as opposed to "victim"? Especially since sometimes I think like, you know, we can offhandedly say to people who are kind of like, you know, like lingering in their sadness, like, "Oh, stop playing the role of the victim," or like, it's like, "victimization mentality." I mean, it's like, it's a negative connotation when we say those things. So yeah. Do you have any thoughts on that?

Rachel Monroe 15:38

Yeah, that's something that you hear a lot is people wanting to kind of shift that identifier, I guess, away from the act that was perpetrated against them to their own...what happens afterwards, right? Like the victim versus survivor, you've got these different connotations of strength, of moving on, of kind of looking forward? And that's something that different people feel different attachments to. What is right language to use, what is the best, most empowering language to use, whether calling somebody a survivor is, is it minimizing? Is it empowering? There's like, I think more debate in the community. And so, because I was writing so much about the political ripples of the victims rights movement, it seems to me it's important to kind of dig into that idea of the language and the connotations around the idea of "victim" as a word.

Sonia Paul 16:36

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I feel like this really coincided with a cultural moment too. I mean, like true crime aside, I mean, with the whole Me Too movement and the fact that women have been victims of sexual violence for years on end, and this is only finally getting recognized now. I mean, there's a lot to say.

Rachel Monroe 16:58

I think that's certainly another reason that people — particularly women are drawn to true crime — is that it brings up these questions of power and exploitation and harm, and often in this very extreme context of, you know, like serial killers and kidnappers and murderers. But it is acknowledging the power differentials, often ones that don't benefit women. And so I think that at this time when we're having all these conversations about less, maybe like less overt or less violent or less, you know, deadly harms perpetrated against women, these stories really show things in this harsh, intense light — can have a sort of satisfaction, you know? I mean, it's funny, I remember listening to a really terrible YouTube videos. I mean, the YouTube videos are fine but the content is what's terrible. These two men and now I'm going to forget their names. Fortunately. They were serial killers, they worked as a pair they killed lots of women and you can hear some of their interrogation. But, after they were caught —

Sonia Paul 18:03

Wait, wait. Sorry, this was their own YouTube channel video?

Rachel Monroe 18:10

Somebody, whoever the investigator was, interviewing them, and then it later got released. I don't know, through open records act or — I don't remember the provenance. But the way that they talk about their victims is like so awful and disgusting and demeaning and debasing. And then I was wondering, I was like, why am I watching this? Like, what satisfaction am I getting out of this? And the best explanation I could find for myself, at least was, there was a kind of perverse satisfaction in hearing misogyny, so overtly displayed, if that makes sense. I was like, "Yeah, see, like, that's what it is. I know it out there in the world. I feel it in these kind of fainter, shadowy sorts of ways." Most people are like better at hiding it. Maybe don't feel it as virulently. But hearing these men talk about how much they hate women. I was like, "Yeah, see, I knew it. I knew it." Yeah, I mean, all I can describe it as is like the total perverse satisfaction, almost like a kind of confirmation. And I wonder if that's part of what is driving particularly women right now to these stories.

Sonia Paul 19:16

Yeah, like the satisfaction of hearing your own experiences and what you've observed for so long being actualized by others, who are not necessarily women.

Rachel Monroe 19:27

And in this completely extreme way. You know, it was very far from my own experience, but I could see these echoes. So it's just fascinating.

Sonia Paul 19:38

Yeah, I think in one point of your book too, you also remark your own experience of this idea of feeling "close to the victim" to the extent that you could imagine yourself as the victim and how that was alluring and its own way, even though of course, you know, no one really wants to be a victim, do they?

Rachel Monroe 20:02

Well, I mean, no, I think that given the choice, you know, most of us would say, "No, we don't want to occupy that role." But, at the same time, thinking about that wounded authority, the way that victims, or certain victims again, become almost superstars in our culture, I think that — what I was recognizing in myself and thinking back on this period of my life, when I became slightly fascinated with, obsessed with a girl, a few years younger than me, who had gone missing, was in part — and it's shameful to admit — but it was a desire, maybe for that much attention or for people to be, you know, caring about me or to be held up in this way that we sometimes do to like certain female victims. And at the same time, they are often like, debased. I think this was the word that I used in my book at the same time, you know. As soon as somebody, as soon as like a missing woman or something is put on TV, at the same time you have people digging into her background and digging into her sex life, asking questions about what she wore and who she hung out with. So, it's not uncomplicated. But I do think that there was a part of me that saw this cultural role that she got to occupy, and maybe did want a part of that for myself. Which is strange to consider. But again, it just goes to the complex and contradictory and dark ways that victimhood is expressed in our culture.

Sonia Paul 21:32

Yeah, I mean, a few years ago too, I was doing some reporting in India, and it was around women and crime, although in a totally different light. But one of the things that really stood out that a lot of people I was talking to also kind of repeated back to me is that there are two kinds of women in the world, or there are two ways that most women in the world are framed. She's either a victim or vamp. And I think like, maybe, in like, you know, American culture, like any "powerful woman" might occupy the role of the vamp? Like she's not just sexy, but she inhabits a certain kind of power and authority that her femaleness might actually support rather than take away from, versus a victim. You know. It's the total opposite.

Rachel Monroe 22:19

Yeah. And I think also — just thinking about my own experience — this fascination with this woman Taylor Behl, who was later found to be murdered — was in part of reaction to my own. I, you know, I had a hard time maybe admitting to or acknowledging the ways that I felt vulnerable in my own life, or at risk or just like not well, but it was hard to own up to that. And so in a way, by identifying with this victim, it was sort of a way of amplifying or acknowledging the dangers in my own life which were certainly like, nothing like hers, but I I almost couldn't own them myself. I need to dislike proxy figure to say like, "See, I'm like her, I'm not okay. You know, I'm at risk." Rather than just being able to look at my own life and say that.

Sonia Paul 23:07

Wow. Yeah. Okay, to shift gears a little bit, this is like a really heavy aspect of this Loitering mini pod. No, not at all. I mean, I, I really appreciate thoughtful discussion around these topics. I think there are things that you know, people think about a lot, but it's hard to come up with the words to actually talk about what is they're feeling and your work is definitely supporting those feelings. But yeah, I also wanted to talk a little bit about your professional trajectory as a writer and a journalist, because I first started to hear about you and your work when I came across this story you wrote a couple of years ago for The New Yorker about like, quote unquote, "Van life" and this boho lifestyle, and you know, it's kind of like not true crime at all, but it's also part of like, a cultural zeitgeist, of you know, "the age of the influencer" and catering are lives so that they can be presentable on Instagram. And I was curious because, you know, I kind of felt like, "Oh, there's this writer named Rachel Monroe. She's doing all this cool stuff." And I was wondering if you kind of felt that too, that, you know, the release of that story also coincided with you as a sort of writer with influence. And, you know, I know you talked earlier about like, you have trouble trying to think of yourself as someone like that. But is there a way that maybe that sort of shifted the gears for you and your professional trajectory?

Rachel Monroe 24:34

Hmm. That's interesting to think about. I mean, I think it certainly did. It was, as you said, I wrote, you know, like for a major national publication, and it was one of the New Yorker's 25 most read pieces of the year, which was --

Sonia Paul 24:48

Congrats!

Rachel Monroe 24:48

Thanks, but you know, at the same time, one of the really nice things about being outside the media bubble is that in a lot of ways it didn't change my life at all. I was in Mexico, actually, when that story came out. And I was like thrilled to see people sharing it and reading it. But also at the same time, it's a good reminder that there's like a huge, wide world of many different things that doesn't care about your work at all. I don't know, I find that soothing. Maybe that sounds like overly self-deprecating, but I actually find that really relaxing. And I have built my career slowly over the past seven or eight years, however long I've been doing this, just kind of one piece to the next. That's how it goes as a freelancer. And so in some ways, that piece I guess, sort of felt transformative in that I knew that it reached a lot of people. But I had been writing a lot. I had a bunch of things come up before that, I had a bunch of things come out after that. And because I didn't like continue to write about influencers or Instagram or van people. And because as a freelancer you just always have to be thinking about like, what's the next thing? So I guess what I'm saying is like I felt both transformative and also not.

Sonia Paul 25:56

Well, I think, you know, for me, and I think some other people who may be you have observed your work, it's interesting because even if you're comforted by the fact that no one kind of cares about the work that you do, the work that you're doing is hitting on, like, really strong points in our culture, like true crime obsession. You know, you follow this van life story up with a story about essential oils in the age of our anxiety. And, you know, I think it's interesting because I live in the Bay Area, like there are a lot of people who are just like, you know, they joke about being a witch or being so into astrology or all these other, you know, self-care sort of ingredients that can help them shape their lives, but here you are writing about it for major publications. And I think there is a way that sometimes people can feel that, you know, their interests or proclivities are sort of very niche. But once something comes out in writing and you know, sort of validated in a broader literary context, it it almost becomes more real right?

Rachel Monroe 27:01

Well, I have to tell you like that essential oil story had such a long journey. I was pitching that for like probably two years and nobody would take it, because most of my favorite pieces have come out of just my own preoccupations or things that I see out in the world that kind of confuse me or maybe like, they irritate me, but I don't know why. Or just something that I like see and can't click it out of my head, and I had noticed living in rural Texas, it was very striking to me that I started seeing essential oils everywhere. And they were both among the kind of art hipsters of Marfa, and also like the little rancher ladies in West Texas, and I was like, "That is interesting." In most ways, these people, their consumption habits like do not overlap. And I pitched it around forever. And I don't know if it was like because most of the editors I was pitching to where men, or because everybody lives in New York City and it just like hadn't quite hit New York City in the same way. Certainly not the like multi-level marketing part of essential oils. Nobody quite got it. And I'm sure I also like my pitch — it's taken such a long time to like, figure out how to pitch anything successfully. But it wasn't until after that van life story was successful that people started to come around on that essential oils story. There's so much backstory to all of these things that, you know, you can see them in a magazine or on the internet. And they also have a much more tortured backstory than you would guess.

Sonia Paul 28:24

Yeah. And also, I wanted to talk about your story for The Atlantic, which was about GoFundMe. So was GoFundMe also something that you had been watching for a while, the way you had been like the essential oils and kind of wondering like, "Okay, why is this happening?" And if you would mind just talking a little bit about how that story sort of shaped its way into the world.

Rachel Monroe 28:47

You know, that one was actually an idea that my editors at The Atlantic brought to me. But as soon as they did, I was like, oh, yeah, I definitely want to write about GoFundMe because I had just been noticing it. I mean, like everybody else in the world had been noticing it becomes such a huge part of my social media ecosystem, and how many people that I knew were starting GoFundMes or sharing GoFundMes with such a vast array of needs and asks. I mean, that was the challenge with something like GoFundMe is it's such a huge ecosystem. How do you find a way in and begin to portray what's going on there in a way that feels at all comprehensive? So that was a real challenge.

Sonia Paul 29:28

Yeah, I mean, it's interesting. You sort of centered on this man who had come across this young — I mean, it's a white man, what was it like, Michael White, right? Like I forget.

Rachel Monroe 29:38

Yeah, Matt White.

Sonia Paul 29:39

Matt White. And then, the name of the person he was helping?

Rachel Monroe 29:44

Chauncy Black.

Sonia Paul 29:45

Yes, Chauncy Black, and you sort of dip into this white savior complex that I think many people who might support GoFundMe do have, maybe, I don't know, I mean, it's hard, you know, to like pass judgment on the emotional intentions behind certain people, but you kind of get into this territory. And I'm wondering like, how did you feel the response to that story matched up with any expectations you had?

Rachel Monroe 30:15

Oh, well, I try not to have expectations about like, what response will be, but people sent me kind of interesting anecdotes and stories about their own GoFundMe experiences. Everything from people who had successful fundraisers, getting contacted by what sounds like pretty sketchy like consultants, who are going around finding people offered to consult on crowdfunding sites to help people raise more money. So that's like a kind of a niche business that has emerged as the crowdfunding industry has grown.

30:46

But yeah, hearing how people themselves have negotiated with GoFundMe, and I, you know, what I was trying to do, like you said, it's so many people with a lot of good intentions and not necessarily wanting to say that actually they're bad or their intentions are bad. But just calling into question some of the rhetoric and tropes and systems that have popped up around something like GoFundMe, and how often -- I mean, you see this in traditional nonprofits too, the idea of, "Oh, well, we're doing something good. Therefore, we shouldn't be questioned or critiqued," which I just respectfully disagree with that as a position. It's like no, particularly when you have something like GoFundMe, which is a for-profit company. They're trying to present a very positivity centric version of what they do. Of this kind of individual person to person help, which certainly can be beneficial, but it just leaves a lot out. I mean, that, that idea of GoFundMe as a model for how healthcare and other kinds of care and support happen going forward, you know, as our social safety net gets hauled out, I think that's like really alarming. It's not just this positive story of strangers helping strangers or people helping their community but it's also — again, kind of like the victim narratives you were talking about. Certain people, certain stories are held up as deserving of help. And other people — because of what they look like or what their circumstances are or how they're able to present themselves online -- are not. Just like, don't fit in that category of deserving. And it has to do with race and geography and education level and class, and a million other things. And I just think that's alarming and like certainly worth critiquing, or just looking at how, how these things actually play out beyond the kind of surface level viral feel good story.

Sonia Paul 32:35

Yeah. And I'm wondering, I mean, you've alluded to this, you've done a lot of interviews lately, especially to promote your book and just talk about your career. What is something that you always expect or kind of want people ask you that they don't actually ask you?

Rachel Monroe 32:52

Haha, that's a really good question. Um, well, you know, this is not necessarily a question that I want anybody to ask me, but I guess in some ways I was steeling myself for people to ask me to dig into or to try to uncover some sort of personal trauma that's the root of my interest in violence stories. And that's certainly something that you see a lot of, in some of the figures that I write about, particularly the sort of more famous or historical figures — people who are like, "Oh, what what happened in her past that made her want to go into forensic science, for example." This idea that there is some originary trauma, and that this interest is like an adaptive or maybe like maladaptive response to a violation.

33:35

And also, I think maybe I was expecting on some level to be challenged, like have people to say, "Okay, if you haven't been the victim of a major violent crime, how dare you write about it?" I worried that somebody would challenge me on that. And that hasn't happened,

Sonia Paul 33:54

Like questioning your own authority in some invisible woundedness we might not know about.

Rachel Monroe 34:00

Totally. And that hasn't happened. And I don't know. That's probably something I should talk about with my therapist. But that was certainly something that was on my mind before going on the book tour.

Sonia Paul 34:11

Oh, interesting. I wonder, do you think it has to do with maybe people sort of assume that about you, but they just don't feel it's appropriate to ask you about?

Rachel Monroe 34:20

Yeah, I mean, I guess that would be a really inappropriate question to ask. But I also think it maybe has to do with my own, my own insecure, wobbly sense of authority, and that what makes a woman allowed to talk about, work with violence, or stories of violence is having been violated herself. And I think that's actually a pretty messed up trope. So it's interesting that I was kind of applying it to myself.

Sonia Paul 34:47

Yeah.

Rachel Monroe 34:48

Plenty to think about there.

Sonia Paul 34:50

Okay. Well, thank you. This has been a really illuminating and interesting discussion. To wrap up. I was wondering, do you have any recommendation for books, articles, podcasts, things you've been consuming that you think might be of interest to this Loitering audience.

Rachel Monroe 35:09

Haha. There's so much good work out there in the world. In terms of true crime, I think there's like a lot of really good books. I'm a big fan of Mikal Gilmore, who is a great journalist and writer for Rolling Stone. He was also the brother of Gary Gilmore, who's the murderer who Normal Mailer wrote The Executioner's Song about. His memoir, about growing up with this brother is super fascinating. There's a book called After the Eclipse, by Sarah Perry. That's another true crime book kind of written from within, not from without in the way that I did.

Sonia Paul 35:43

What do you mean, “written from within, not from without,” sorry?

Rachel Monroe 35:47

Her mother was murdered when she was a young girl. And she writes about just kind of the experience of that. She like, kind of witnessed it. And so, again, like rather than the rule of the investigator sort of coming in and wanting to look at a crime that didn't personally affect you. These are the stories — both the Mikal Gilmore and the Sarah Perry book are people reckoning with something that happens in their own family. So it's just like a slightly different perspective, but I think one that's really worth it. And I love the podcast In the dark. I love the podcast Running With COPS. Do you listen to that one, that's like another kind of meta true crime.

Sonia Paul 36:24

Running With COPS? No.

Rachel Monroe 36:27

Or maybe it's called Running From COPS. It's dissecting the TV show COPS.

Sonia Paul 36:32

Oh haha, really?

Rachel Monroe 36:33

Yeah. Which is just this incredibly, like, profitable, long running — it's still on — show that, since the 90s, has shaped a lot of people's sense of law enforcement and danger and policing. And it just shows how much the producers kind of had an effect on on that. It's like, super fascinating for anybody who's into kind of dissecting true crime and the effect that it has on our brains and our sense of reality.

Sonia Paul 37:00

Yeah, wow. Well, thank you so much. This has been really wonderful. So, that's all we have for today of Loitering, the occasional but lovable traveling mini pot I am currently testing in newsletter format. You can catch the links to the stories and the books mentioned in this mini pod at the end of this newsletter. Thank you for listening and have a great day. Goodbye!

Links to books, stories and podcasts mentioned in this episode:

Savage Appetites: Four True Stories of Women, Crime, and Obsession, by Rachel Monroe

Vanlife, the Bohemian Social-Media Movement, by Rachel Monroe

How Essential Oils Became the Cure for Our Age of Anxiety, by Rachel Monroe

When GoFundMe Gets Ugly, by Rachel Monroe

Dead Girls: Essays on Surviving an American Obsession, by Alice Bolin

Shot in the Heart, by Mikal Gilmore

The Executioner’s Song, by Norman Mailer

After the Eclipse, by Sarah Perry

In the Dark

Running From COPS

A few more links to things you might want to read and listen to:

“Nobody Saw Me,” by Nick Pachelli

How The CIA Overthrew Iran’s Democracy in 4 Days, from the podcast Throughline

My Decade in Google Searches, by Vauhini Vara

Happy New Year!

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Savage Appetites: Four True Stories of Women, Crime, and Obsession

Dead Girls: Essays on Surviving an American Obsession

After the Eclipse: A Mother's Murder, a Daughter's Search

View Details

Hello everyone, welcome to Loitering, the occasional but lovable traveling mini pod I am currently testing in newsletter format. And today, we are loitering by the river with a very special guest, or rather, two very special guests. Can you please introduce yourself?

Liz Flock — 0:27 : I am Liz Flock, a writer and journalist. I write about gender and justice, and I wrote a book about love and marriage in India called The Heart is a Shifting Sea.

Sonia Paul — 0:39 : Cool, and can you please introduce our other special guest on her behalf?

Liz — 0:44 : And we're also here with Zora, my pup, who's chewing a stick to shreds by the river.

Sonia — 0:50 : Okay, and so where's this river that we're in right now? Can you please situate us, Liz?

Liz — 0:55 : We are in Taos, New Mexico, which for those who don't know is far northern New Mexico, about 45 minutes from the border with Colorado, and about two hours north of Santa Fe.

Sonia : And so how long have you been in Taos? What brought you here?

Liz : I came to Taos after a year on the road. I've worked in DC and New York most of my life and lived in big cities all of my life. And left working at PBS NewsHour, about a year and a half ago, was on the road for a full year trying to do investigative journalism out of a van. That promptly showed that it didn't really work out when, you know, my investigative documents were flying out of the van doors, and at some point, I was sort of like, it's time to get rooted. And along my journeys had passed through New Mexico, which I think is the most beautiful state in America, and probably the most underrepresented in many ways, and got interested in Taos, which is a place with a lot of really rich community of different kinds of people, a lot of creative people, a long history of that, and just a really beautiful place.

Sonia — 2:00 : So, you mentioned something that I wanted to touch on, this idea of being rooted. And so for you, what is being rooted? What does that mean? What does it feel like? What is it supposed to feel like?

Liz — 2:12 : I think in this time in history, so many of us are not rooted. You know, if you think about the baby boomers, our parents' generation, a lot of them stayed in one spot, maybe work the same job for 40 years. And so many of us now are on the move, on the go for our work, or not really able to get settled, searching for the place that is our place. Me, I grew up between different houses, and I feel like I've always been on the move. And that's been what's comfortable to me, but getting older, I think there's more of a sense of like, okay, rooting down would be a good thing to like, plug into a community and give back to that community, but also for journalism and writing, I think, deep thinking and being able to like, really sit with yourself is so important for that work. And in order to be able to do that, I think you really need to root down to one spot. I just think that's really key.

Sonia — 3:05 : This idea of rooting down to one spot and being with yourself. I mean, your experience working out of Taos versus working out of DC or these other cities, how big of a role do you think does the actual environment play into all of this, versus a person's own mental, emotional, maybe one could also say spiritual, state of mind?

Liz — 3:25 : I actually think it plays a big role. I think people are really shaped by places. Like, you know, you often hear people say, like, where are you from? And people identify so much with the place they were born. And I think, to different levels, people are always shaped by the places they're in. Working in DC and New York and Mumbai, I feel like my work was always driven by adrenaline. It was all about productivity, getting things out the door, trying to move up the ladder, how much can I accomplish, who do I know, how can I get myself out there, and it was all just sort of, you know, typical city, go, go, go, culture. And I wanted to really force myself to slow down because I felt like I was missing a lot, especially when it came to looking at our political situation, but also just writing. I mean, someone said once that like the best condition for writing is being bored, and I couldn't agree more. Like when your mind is at rest is when the good stuff comes out. So, I felt like I wasn't able to do that in those cities, and also that I was like, developing this very East Coast perspective on the world, which can be a really narrow one.

Sonia — 4:29 : What is it about Taos, you think, that's maybe helping your adrenaline to adjust, and just being able to sit with yourself? I mean, maybe, it might be worth it to illuminate Taos a little bit more. Like, what kind of place is this, what kind of people are here? Is it mostly locals, transplants? How big is the population, if you know?

Liz — 4:47 : Yeah, so, where we're sitting right now is in the middle of the Rio Grande gorge, next to the Rio Grande River, which was formed by volcanoes millions of years ago and was once an ocean. So, obviously, a really deep, long history, and you feel it in this place. Taos itself is in part like a ski town, where people come, ski on the mountain, but it's also a place that's really diverse. It's one third indigenous, one third Latino, one third white, people of all different ages and backgrounds and transient people, people who have lived here forever. It's kind of hard to pin down like, what exactly Taos is. And I think in the popular imagination, people think of Taos as super creative because they think of like, Georgia O'Keeffe coming through here and doing her work here, DH Lawrence had a ranch here, all kinds of movies have been filmed here.

Sonia — 5:37 : Oh really, like which movies?

Liz — 5:38 : Okay, the famous movie that I'm now forgetting the name is two guys riding through America, Dennis Hopper and someone else, and it's like a symbol of freedom. And they're driving their motorcycles, and they're actually seeing small town America and reacting to it, and finding the ways that it's racist and bigoted and all these things, and trying desperately to find a place that isn't that. And the movie goes totally into these dark places, and I can't remember what it's called. But it's filmed a lot in Taos because Dennis Hopper also, like spent a long time in Taos doing drugs and being a wild man.

Sonia — 6:07 : Oh, wow. Okay.

Liz — 6:08 : So, there's a lot, you know, it's a lot to uncover and a deep history of indigenous revolts. So there's also like a very strong spirit of rebellion, and a really tight knit community too.

Sonia — 6:21 : And so, how would you describe the pace of life here?

Liz — 6:24 : So to your question about coming down from adrenaline, I think it's impossible to have adrenaline here. Like, New Mexico time is really slow. When I first got here, we were trying to find a car, and every time I would make an appointment to go see someone, they wouldn't show up, or they'd come like, three hours later. It's like, there's no such thing as coming on time to anything. And people laugh in your face when you try to be like, that person who's like, I want this now, like, standing in line for a coffee, like, don't think that you're going to just get things right away. Like, that's not the culture here. It's very much like, things unfold as they do. You and I just went to a bookshop, and you have conversations with the owner. You might think you'll be there for five minutes, you might be there for two hours, who knows? But you'll learn a lot about all of the books on his bookshelf. And I think just being so part of the land here, so immersed with nature. I live, as you know, on the mesa.

Sonia — 7:13 : What is the mesa for people who are not familiar?

Liz — 7:16 : The mesa is... it can be a lot of different things. But in the high desert, which we're in, our property is just surrounded by a rolling field of sage. So it's Sage as far as the eye can see.

Sonia — 7:28 : It's like an ocean of sage.

Liz — 7:29 : It is, it could be an ocean. It has that same feeling of like, meditative, mesmerizing, looking out in it.

Sonia — 7:36 : By the way, that's Zora with a stick right here.

Liz — 7:39 : What she does is she gathers sticks from the water and then just choose them until she gets splinters in her teeth.

So, Taos forces you to slow down, and I think, one way that that happens is because there are different wildflowers that pop up all the time. And they're there for just, like, a week. And I remember in cities, I used to like, notice time passing because I would order The New Yorker. And every week it would come and I still hadn't read it. And I was like, f**k, another week has passed. I haven't read anything I'm supposed to be reading, I haven't done what I'm supposed to do. I'm dying, I'm facing, like, you know, facing your own mortality of how quickly time is passing in here. It's like, this month, the sunflowers are up, and next month, it'll be purple thistles, and the month before that it was strawberry cacti. And, it just forces you to pay attention, because the things that appear disappear so quickly, and are so beautiful. And your energy is much lower. And so you are paying attention, I think.

Sonia — 8:33 : So it sounds like Taos is giving you a lesson or an education in paying attention.

Liz — 8:39 : Yes, yeah. And it was interesting. I did a writing workshop here the other day, and we read poems by Mary Oliver, which so many of her poems are about paying attention, and they're really about —

Sonia — 8:49 : Really.

Liz — 8:49 : Yeah! And they're all about attention and nature. And I think those things are really intertwined. So much of our modern culture sort of like, keeps us away from paying attention. Like, our minds are on our screens, our faces are in our phones. And we are trying to, like, produce, produce, produce. Like, you could walk by something and yet not even see it, because your face is your phone, you know. And here, we can't even get service where we're sitting right now, like, our faces couldn't be in our phones, really, if we want it to be. And I think paying attention is like, more important than ever. As like, we are facing like, these horrible climate crises. Like, we should pay attention to like, the things that aren't the way they used to be. Like, the river that you can no longer swim in. Like, are you noticing that? Like, are you noticing trees that are like, dying? Like, all of this stuff. I think, it's probably paying attention is like the thing our culture needs the most.

Sonia — 9:35 : How has it been for you to sell that idea to people you used to work with or network with, be around in DC or New York?

Liz — 9:45 : Not easy, because I think back to how I was then. And I was sort of like, people who do things slowly annoy me. Like, I hated when people would walk slowly in front of me. And I would like, try to pass them. Like, even in the office, walking from like, my desk to the canteen, like, I would run in front of them because I was so annoyed. And I'm like, they're wasting my time right now by walking slowly. So you can imagine that a person in that state of mind, when like, told to like, look at the wildflowers, it's like, what the hell are you talking about? Like, I have things to do. You know, and it is a privilege to like, slow down, and like, consider things and pay attention, if you're able to. But yeah, I mean, I have friends visit who are journalists from other cities, and they're kind of like, well, can you not order food at one in the morning? Like, what do you mean, I don't have phone service here. That's like a thing that would like, elicit horror. So, I don't know.

Sonia — 10:34 : Yeah, well, I also think there have been like, some books that have come out recently, like, Deep Work or How to do Nothing. Jenny Odell and Cal Newport. I haven't read either of them, but I've listened to one too many podcasts featuring their authors.

Liz — 10:47 : Right.

Sonia — 10:47 : But I feel like there's a certain kind of interest in these ideas, if not even fetishization.

Liz — 10:53 : Yeah.

Sonia — 10:54 : So, how do you think we should respond to these different forces at play at the same time?

Liz — 10:59 : Yeah, and probably there's an interest in that because humans want to slow down. We're not made only to work. Like, we're not just meant to be like, cogs in a wheel. So like, obviously people are feeling the crunch of that. And like, no we're not meant to like, go from an office where we work for like, five hours and then go get our like, chopped salad, as Jia Tolentino would say, and like, eat as fast as humanly possible. And then go back to our work and then go to our workout class, and then go home and go to bed, and watch a TV show, go to sleep, and start over again. No. So, I think like, there's a reason people are like, reading all these books about deep thinking, and all of that, but. I mean, until we like, dismantle the like, the destructiveness of capitalism, it doesn't seem like that will like, probably change, because that's like, larger structural forces at work that are demanding that of us, right? Like, there's a reason people have to work so hard.

Sonia — 11:46 : Yeah.

Liz — 11:47 : That's intense for your podcast.

Sonia — 11:48 : No, no, I embrace intensity. I like it.

Liz — 11:51 : Ok.

Sonia — 11:51 : I've been called intense.

Liz — 11:52 : Sonia is an intense person.

Sonia — 11:53 : Yeah. And I'm like, what? What are you talking about?

Liz — 11:56 : What do you mean? Intense people never know they're intense.

Sonia — 11:59 : Interesting. So how long do you think you'll stay in Taos?

Liz — 12:03 : Indefinitely. There's a saying about Taos. I mean, that everyone sort of comes for one month, and then they come for two months, then 25 years have passed. And I know quite a lot of people here who that has happened with already. So, who knows? Maybe I'll be here forever, if I could make it work.

Sonia — 12:22 : Wow. To wrap up, Liz, do you have any recommendations for any books, podcasts, articles, things, you know of that you think are worth sharing for this Loitering audience?

Liz — 12:34 : Yeah, well, I just finished a book by the woman who was at the center of the Stanford rape case. She was anonymous throughout the case, and is revealing her name in this memoir. And it's one of the most intense and beautiful things I've ever read. It's an indictment of criminal justice system and the way it treats rape victims or survivors. It's indictment of the media and the way that they portrayed her perpetrator as like, an all star swimmer with a high GPA, and her is like, nameless, faceless nobody.

Sonia — 13:05 : What year did this take place again? Do you remember?

Liz — 13:08 : 2016 was the trial. And I think it happened in 2015. So it was right before Me Too. But like, at this time, there weren't as many of those stories coming out. But this really captured the popular imagination because it was like, a sexual assault at a frat party. And he was caught by two Swedish international students who saw it happening and called the police and intervened. Anyways, it's just a really, a really powerful book that I think is going to sort of change how people talk about sexual assault, because it's so well done. And it so precisely critiques all these different things that are kind of brought up by Me Too, but we're not like, really talking about in a deeper way. And she kind of hammers home all of those different things in an amazing way. So I'd recommend that a lot.

Sonia — 13:52 : Do you know what the title is?

Liz — 13:54 : It's called Know My Name.

Sonia — 13:57 : Wow. Because I was just about to say, like, I know the name of that guy, Brock Turner, right?

Liz — 14:02 : Right. So you remember his name, you can remember his face. We know so much about him. And then like, most people who have dealt with sexual assault, they're like a statistic or anonymous. You know, she was known as Emily Doe. But like, even at the time, she wrote a statement that went viral. It was read 11 million times. And it's because she has this incredible ability to like, articulate, and as she said, like, take her pain and turn it into ideas, and like, be a pair of eyes of what she's seeing. So, pretty amazing.

Sonia — 14:29 : Wow. Thank you so much for that recommendation, Liz. So, that's all we have for today — oh my gosh. Yeah, Zora has gone to town. So, that's all we have for today of Loitering, the occasional, but lovable, traveling mini pod I am currently testing in newsletter format. Thanks for listening, and have a great day. Goodbye!

Post script : So, if you're interested, we have links to the books that we mentioned during this mini pod. And we also have a link to Liz's book review of Know My Name in The Washington Post. Speaking of the Post, I also had a story that I co-reported come out there just a couple of days ago. It's about an American woman from California, who is currently under arrest in India on a visa violation. And I'd love to have your feedback on that, if you're interested. So, thank you for listening and have a great day. Goodbye!

Links:

The Heart is a Shifting Sea, by Elizabeth Flock

Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World, by Cal Newport

How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy, by Jenny Odell

Know My Name: A Memoir, by Chanel Miller

Stanford assault victim Chanel Miller’s new book indicts her attacker — and the system, by Elizabeth Flock, for The Washington Post

American woman ‘desperate’ after being jailed for months in India on visa violation, by Joanna Slater and Sonia Paul, for The Washington Post

Subscribe at loitering.substack.com

Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World

How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy

The Heart Is a Shifting Sea: Love and Marriage in Mumbai

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Hello, everyone, welcome to Loitering, the occasional but lovable traveling mini pod I am currently testing in newsletter format. And today I am loitering on the couch with a very special guest. Can you please introduce yourself?

Monica — 0:26 : Hi, my name is Monica Villavicencio, and I met Sonia when I was living in San Francisco, and now she's here with me on my couch in Atlanta, Georgia, where I moved two months ago.

Sonia — 0:38 : Okay, so we're here in Atlanta. But Monica, aside from San Francisco, you've lived in a lot of different places.

Monica — 0:45 : Yeah, I've lived in a ton of places. Aside from Atlanta and San Francisco, I've lived in Washington, DC, New York, Tokyo, London, and LA, and with shorter stints in the Philippines, and Chicago.

Sonia — 1:02 : Wow, that is quite a number. First question is, where do you consider home?

Monica — 1:09 : That's a complicated question. And something I have wrestled with a lot. And I feel like if you'd asked me even two years ago, I would have had a different answer. But right now, right now I'm in a, like, in a phase of feeling like home is just wherever I am, wherever I live. So I guess, home is here in Atlanta, although it still feels like a new place. And I don't know that many people yet. But that's basically how I feel these days.

Sonia — 1:40 : Wow. And so where would you consider your roots, though? Like, the, the roots that made you consider what home first might be?

Monica — 1:49 : Yeah, that's also a complicated question, because my parents live in Virginia, just outside of DC. So when people ask me, where are you from, I always say, Virginia, just because I don't really know how to answer otherwise. And that's where I went to high school. But it's also really interesting, because I just came off of almost seven years in California. And I also spent my first nine years in California and LA. So it's like, the West Coast -- I feel like I have strong roots in San Francisco and where I was born, and LA, and also on the East Coast, in like the Washington DC area. And all I can say about that is kind of for the first time in a long time, I feel pretty comfortable saying that my roots extend from one side of the country to another. And that feels like that's the only narrative that's going to make sense for me.

Sonia — 2:44 : What was the tipping point that made you realize that you could say that you're from these two places across the country?

Monica — 2:52 : I think a big part of it was the decision to move here and the process of moving here, because I went to San Francisco with this idea of, I needed to build a home, and I needed to build roots of my own. Roots of my own that were my choice, and not just wherever my parents happened to be. And it was a good home for a while. But when I realized it wasn't fitting me anymore, and it wasn't fitting with how I wanted my life to develop, the decision to move across the country to a city I actually had never really spent any time in made me realize like, maybe my idea that I'm going to one day find a home and just stay there. And that decision to make a place my home will slowly like, allow roots to sprout. That's not how it's going to look for me. So it was I think the process of trying to pick one home and realizing I didn't need to do that.

Sonia — 3:47 : Okay, so if I'm following this correctly, what you're saying you figured out for yourself is that you once had this vision that you would make a home somewhere, wherever you happen to be, and you would plant roots. But now you're kind of letting go of that idea?

Monica — 4:05 : I think by moving I didn't sort of pick a new home, I just let go of the idea of one place becoming home. I think it's still possible that might happen. It's possible that you come back here 20 years from now, and I'll still be here -- or not. I don't know. But I think I used to feel this pressure to pick a place. Well I would get questions from like, old friends or family. Questions like "Oh, are you there for good?" Like this, just this concept of "for good," is just like, how can anyone answer? I mean, some people think they can. But I don't think any of us really can. So...

Sonia — 4:42 : Oh, yeah, I know what you mean.

Monica — 4:43 : Yeah.

Sonia — 4:44 : And what about then like this idea of community around these different homes or, quote unquote, "homes?" Because, you know, every so often I'll be on the internet, and I'll like, come across an article, like "millennials lack community," or "Americans, by and large, are so lonely." So, what do you think this idea or reality of community has to do with this desire, or even relinquishment of like a quote unquote, permanent home?

Monica — 5:15 : Yeah, that's a tricky thing. Because community really does take time to build. I mean, I felt like it took me about a year in San Francisco before I felt like I had a few friends that I could call at any time, and maybe not even, maybe more than a year. And that, all of that takes time. And that's the tricky thing about moving locations. On the other hand, I've noticed since I've been here, I've definitely tried to keep in touch with my friends on the west coast. And, I should also say that I'm a little bit lucky because Arvin is here with me.

Sonia — 5:46 : And who is this guy, Arvin?

Monica — 5:48 : That's my boyfriend. And also, my friend and business partner also moved from San Francisco around the same time.

Sonia — 5:56 : Oh, so Arvin, is not a business partner, but you have another —

Monica — 5:59 : I have another friend, Stephanie. And we all live very close to each other. So I kind of came here with a little tiny community, and slowly extending out. And, I mean, it is lonely or when you don't have friends that you've known for a long time here, and you have to rebuild that. But, sometimes even when you stay in the same place, you still have to do that. I lived in DC for a while. And DC is so transient that I remember there was a group of people that I hung out with every weekend for like, two years. And then it's like, one day, it just seemed like they were all gone. And everyone had moved on to other things. So, it's also like our way of life here that people are always moving for opportunities. And yeah.

Sonia — 6:45 : Yeah, this makes me think. A couple days ago, we were talking about this idea of what it means to move for opportunity, versus stay for other reasons. Do you remember what exactly we talked about? Because I I'd like to get back into that.

Monica — 7:01 : I do. Well, what I remember is, we kind of talked about the difference between, there are places that people tend to go for the opportunities. And so what pulls them there is opportunities to further themselves, whether that's professionally or creatively or financially. Notably, Washington, DC, is one. New York is often one, but you do find a lot of New Yorkers who are just there and all their family is there. Even San Francisco these days has that feel, because there's so much tech opportunity there that it's a destination for people with a certain amount of education and ambition. And when a city is the kind of place people go for opportunity, and tend to leave when something else comes along, there's like a transient quality, and possibly when people are less invested in what they can give to their communities and more -- more interested in what this place can give to them. What they can get from the place. So it might be even a little extractive, although that sounds kind of harsh, but I don't know.

Sonia — 8:03 : Yeah. Do you think that will always be the case, because so much professional, creative, and financial --that often all falls under the umbrella category of professional or quote unquote, "adult" opportunity comes by flocking to these destinations, do you think we're going to see a paradigm shift at any point, though? Or is that going to always be the case just because of how competitive things are?

Monica — 8:31 : I... I mean, I can't say for sure. But I think that they're studies around wealth and the strengthening versus weakening of social connections. And dare I say that if there's some other economic crisis, that we might then turn to our community bonds, our bonds of friendship and family, because we're going to need them more, you know, is not going to be sort of the Gold Rush where we just seek out, seek out opportunities for ourselves. So it's always possible that there are things that are going to happen that will remind us that we're not sort of lone wolves building our castles, but I hope so. I mean, I don't, I don't want us to all kind of fall on hard times or anything. But, I hope that there are things that will continue to remind us that our communities and connections are important.

Sonia — 9:26 : Well, thank you for that. Is there anything else that you'd like to add?

Monica — 9:30 : Just that if anyone is looking for a new home. Check out Atlanta. It's kind of a cool place.

Sonia — 9:38 : Yeah, it's pretty chill if you don't mind humidity, which I personally don't. But now as we wrap up, Monica, for this newsletter, I'm sort of testing like, recommendations. Things you've maybe read or listened to, that you think a reader or listener of this podcast newsletter might be interested in. And I was wondering if you had any recs you'd like to offer up?

Monica — 10:01 : So I've been listening to the Otherppl podcast with Brad Listi lately. And —

Sonia — 10:08 : What is this podcast? Other people? Who, who are these other people?

Monica — 10:13 : So he interviews people in his -- I want to say it's his garage — out in LA. And he interviews a lot of writers, predominantly fiction writers, like short story writers and novelists, and sometimes like non-fiction writers as well. And I've just learned a lot from listening to the interviews because I also write fiction, and especially about how these people work, like literally the nuts and bolts, the mechanics of how they make the things that they make. And also, kind of, I really enjoy the meandering conversations. So if anyone is a writer or loves fiction, that's a recommendation I have.

Sonia — 10:50 : Cool. So that's all we have for today of Loitering, the occasional but lovable traveling mini pod I am currently testing in newsletter format. And if you're interested in what I've been up to lately, there are a couple of links at the bottom of this podcast newsletter. The first link is a story I reported recently out in Houston on the Howdy! Modi rally that Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and President Donald Trump appeared at together with 50,000 members of the Indian diaspora. And the second link is an interview I did with a podcast called the Grand Tamasha, and it's about that very rally I reported at. The Grand Tamasha is a podcast that comes out of the Carnegie Endowment Center for Peace, which is a think tank based in Washington, DC. Thanks for listening and have a great day. Goodbye!

Links:

Otherppl podcast with Brad Listi

‘Howdy, Modi!’ Was a Display of Indian Americans’ Political Power, for The Atlantic

Deep in the Heart of Texas: Inside “Howdy, Modi,” for The Grand Tamasha podcast

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Hello everyone, welcome to Loitering, the occasional but lovable traveling mini pod I am currently testing in newsletter format. And today, we are doing a throwback to the original Loitering and taking you to a location with a very special guest. Right now we're at Stinson Beach, and our guest — can you please introduce yourself?

Laura: Hi, I'm Laura Rena Murray. I have been working as a longform investigative journalist for the last decade. I usually cover topics relating to homelessness and housing, the LGBT community, public health, specifically HIV/AIDS, yeah.

Sonia (0:39): Can you, uh, talk a little bit about one of the stories you've done in the past that you're most proud of, or is most memorable or special to you?

Laura (0:48): I spent a fair amount of time reporting on reservations in the Midwest, specifically reporting on the Indian Child Welfare Act.

Sonia (0:55): Uh, for those who don't know what that is, can you just explain a little bit what that is?

Laura (1:00): So, it's a law that was created in the late 70s, to sort of combat the practice of removing Native children from their families and communities, and placing them in non-Native foster homes or systems. And part of the reason was because you have all of these communities who were systematically losing their children for many reasons, but it all sort of boiled down to inherent racism, and what we've done to Native American communities across this country. So, it was an important step to try and preserve those communities. And it was something that I wanted to see if it was working or not. So I took a few months, and hit the road, and went to many reservations reporting on what was happening.

Sonia (1:44): And what do you think was the outcome of your story, or what's the takeaway for those who ought to be intrigued to read it to understand further?

Laura (1:54): I think it helps to illuminate what is happening to a community in the present day. You know, a lot of people, if they've never been to a reservation, they're not thinking about it. There are a lot of stereotypes people have about who native families are, and sort of how they rear their children. And I think the stories that came out of that reporting trip helped educate a lot of people who are non-Native, but also offered a platform to families who are struggling to get their children back, and caught up in systems where they didn't have a chance. There were some places I'd go, and the family would have less than 30 seconds or they wouldn't be allowed to speak at all in a courtroom. And it would just be the social workers speaking directly to a judge, recommending to remove the child. And, often children are removed because their families were poor. Like, that's what it boiled down to. It wasn't anything else about the child being in danger, but I think it was some, like insane percentage of children were removed for neglect, which was basically a code word for poverty.

Sonia (2:56): Well, for those of you who are listening and reading, we're going to have a link to that story in the newsletter. So please reference that below. And so Laura, you've been working as a freelance investigative journalist for over a decade, but your day to day job right now is a little bit different. Can you tell us what you're doing in your day to day these days?

Laura (3:18): So, a few years ago, I started training to become a motorcycle technician. I love riding motorcycles. And I bought my first motorcycle probably five or six years ago. And a few months ago, I got a job working in a motorcycle shop. I work at the BMW shop in San Francisco. And it's great. It's entirely unlike journalism, in that it offers a little more stability. And also, there's something really lovely about being able to fix a problem in a day. Which is just not something that you get from a lot of other jobs. And how marvelous is that?

Sonia (3:56): So Laura, I'm just kind of wondering like, how do you think about that in relation to the way you think about yourself as a journalist or writer? Are you still the same two Laura Rena Murrays, or is there one, newer version of you that's emerging now?

Laura (4:14): That's a hard question. I think that our industry —

Sonia (4:18): Meaning the journalism industry?

Laura (4:20): Yes. I mean, I've been doing it for a decade now. And just seeing the changes in the industry, like we're trying to adjust to layoffs and publications shutting down. And, you know, there are some stories I've worked on where I've like gone through multiple editors who have been laid off during the course of reporting the story, and it feels unstable. It's difficult to make it work. Even though at the core of me, I feel journalism is the perfect job. I love immersion into communities, and learning about power structures and where they fail, and what the consequences are and who's responsible for that. And I love writing. It's, I think, it's something that I was always meant to do.

(5:09)

But, it is hard to do that when you aren't supported, when we can't pay our rent. Literally, that's what's happening. And that's something that really makes me pause when I think about sustainability and how we live our lives. And you know, we work in journalism because we are the observers, the note takers. We record history as it happens. We think it's important for everyone to know what's happening, whether or not you have access to the institutions of power that run our country and our world. So yeah, I think I'm a little bit torn right now in terms of, you know, wanting some stability in my life and wanting to sort of do the job that I know I was born to do.

Sonia (5:52): Do you think the tension about stability comes from journalism writ large or the nature of freelance reporting?

Laura (6:01): I think both go hand in hand. I think most people don't actually understand how much the institution of journalism is supported by freelance journalists who sacrifice a great deal in order to report the stories that really, make a huge difference.

Sonia (6:20): So, do you have any ideas or recommendations for what we ought to do to think about moving forward?

Laura (6:29): So, I — I don't know that I know the answer. But, I do think that there are many things about this world that require a more comprehensive understanding of what's going on. More background and history, like you need the context in order to know what's happening, unless you live in a community and you are consuming the news daily. And so I think that longform journalism, I think investigative journalism, really, actually, every piece that is produced, is sort of a testament to the sacrifice that was made by the journalists who worked on that story.

(7:05)

And as freelance journalists, we both know how much you sacrifice in order to work on the story. You know, you get nominal grants to sort of cover the expenses of reporting — if you're lucky — you know, but the story where I was reporting on reservations for months at a time, I was sleeping in my car, and you know, drinking lots of coffee and not eating very much, just in order to stretch the small grant that I had gotten to cover the story. So that's tough. I don't, I don't know what the answer is to change that. But my hat goes off to every journalist who persists in producing quality work because we need it.

Sonia (7:46): Yeah, and I'm, I'm curious, because for a long time now, you've been working on a book. And I'm wondering if you would be open to talking a little bit about that, and if you're imagining a different version of its lifespan, given the sort of restructuring of the work that you are doing right now to make your personal life work, and professional life work?

Laura (8:09): Right. Yeah, writing a book takes a lot. And I think it requires a lot of support. It requires, like the financial ability to actually do the work. The book that I started working on now a few years ago, is looking really at the child welfare system in the city where I grew up, Philadelphia. And there is so much that is wrong with that system — with the shelter system, with how child abuse investigations are handled, and so many children slip through the cracks and have terrible things happen to them. And so, I was interested in writing this book that was, as I was calling it at the time, I reported memoir of my own experiences of going through that system, and becoming an emancipated minor in order to get out of that system before I turned 18.

(8:58)

And trying to write a book in your spare time is difficult. It's been on hold for a little bit, in part because there is a part of me that wants to stabilize and not just eat ramen five days a week.

Sonia (9:11): Well, we just ate some delicious ice cream, by the way, um.

Laura (9:15): Shout out to Stinson Beach ice cream.

Sonia (9:17): Mint chocolate chip and Dutch chocolate, FYI.

(9:21)

I wanted to wrap up with some recommendations for any books, podcasts, articles. Do you have any, Laura?

Laura (9:29): Well, we were talking while we were waiting in line for ice cream about some that you have been listening to lately or reading, and I thought that you had some amazing ideas.

Sonia (9:40): Well, I'm in the middle of like, multiple books. And I listen to a lot of podcasts. One podcast series — it's not its own show, but it was a sort of mini series on the show On the Media. It's called The Scarlet E. And it's actually based on this book that we actually both have and will hopefully have a book club about soon. It's based on this book called Evicted. And, it's basically about housing, and what it means to afford a life in modern day USA.

And another book I'm in the middle of reading that I need to finish up for another virtual book club I'm doing with a couple of friends is Nomadland, which is written by Jessica Bruder. It's about retirees who are living in campers and working as, like, security guards at national parks or in Amazon warehouses, and trying to make a life that they could afford and enjoy at a later stage in life.

Laura (10:39): Yes.

Sonia (10:39): Yeah.

Laura (10:40): I'm excited to read both.

Sonia (10:41): Okay, yeah, we're gonna have another book club.

So, thank you for reading and listening. That's all we have for today's episode of Loitering, the occasional but lovable traveling mini pod I am currently testing in newsletter format. And, in case you forgot, you know, the sound of the ocean is behind us. That's because we are loitering at Stinson Beach right now. Thanks for listening and have a great day. Goodbye!

Links to Laura’s stories on Native reservations:

The Standing Rock Sioux fight to get their children back, for Al Jazeera America

'We get the kids back': Native American grandmother fights to preserve families, for The Guardian

“It’s Like A Set Up To Get Rid Of Indians”, for Bright Magazine

Links related to Laura’s book-on-pause:

Minor Cords, for The New Inquiry

Laura speaking at the Lambda Literary Foundation

Philly’s Invisible Youth, for Al Jazeera America

Laura is on Twitter, but she’s mostly offline with birds and motorcycles.

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Nomadland: Surviving America in the Twenty-First Century

Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City

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Hello, everyone! Welcome to Loitering, the occasional, but lovable traveling minipod I am currently testing in newsletter format. And today, I am loitering at my dining room table in Oakland, California.

If you’re getting this, that means that at some point or another, you’ve expressed interest in my reporting and encouraged me to keep you in the loop on future stories and my whereabouts, and what I am generally up to.

Some of you may remember the original Loitering mini podcast. That went on hiatus first when the app I used to start it shut down (which of course was not unexpected given the nature of startups). And then after I relaunched it, it went on hiatus again when I got really busy. And I also started to wonder whether the new app I was trying out was really worth it.

Meanwhile, some of you have literally told me to do what I am doing right now, which is make use of an email newsletter.

While it’s taken me a long time to do it, I actually started this one a few months ago and have started others in the past. And the reason I am partial to this platform, at least for now, is that it offers the capacity for podcasting at the same time you can send a traditional newsletter. And…I like that. The podcasting function is currently in beta, so it may have some hiccups at times, but I’m down to try it out. And I hope that now that I’m actually sending this minipod newsletter out, that I will make myself more accountable to this, and that the people who read it and listen to it hold me accountable too.

So. Now that that’s out of the way, onto what Loitering will cover in this message and in the future. And the truth is, I am not sure what its exact identity will be. I do hope to incorporate more location-based interviews, as I did before. But I’m also hoping — and this is a little bit different from before — to use Loitering as way to talk about and distribute current stories I’m working on.

That said, I want to talk about one in particular that published last week on a new site for untold South Asian stories called The Juggernaut. The story builds off of reporting I’ve been pursuing for several years, and is a story that’s occupied much of my headspace for the last couple of months. The news hook is India’s election for its next prime minister, which is currently taking place in a multi-stage voting process. The story I wrote is a broader piece about what nationalism looks like for the Indian diaspora in the U.S., and what their political significance could be both here and in India.

So basically, this is the kind of story that might only come from a person like me. And it’s the kind of story that I found, over the course of pitching it and discussing it with others, piques a lot of interests — and not just from people who are really into India. My gut feeling and observation is that the current conversation around white nationalism and global nationalism contributes to that. Nationalism has become almost a trigger word for some people, even though others do see it as akin to, say, patriotism. And so some people do have a more positive, rather than negative, identification with the word. But what are the fine lines between nationalism as patriotism, versus nationalism as something that’s more exclusionary and something to be afraid of? That’s what my story explores.

So, if you’re reading this newsletter, I’m posting the link to it. It’s called, “Where Politics in India and California Collide.” You can also Google it if you’re listening to this. Just an fyi, it is behind a paywall, but you can try a free weeklong subscription to the site to test it out and read my story. The subscription model is a popular model for news outlets these days… just as a newsletter is a popular model for journalists! Whatever you think about either, please remember that trying to keep good reporting and storytelling sustainable is at the heart of both project… and that whatever support we could get is truly appreciated.

So, before I log off, I want to share a few stories I’ve read and listened to recently that I think might stir a lot of thinking.

The first is a piece I actually just read last night. It was my bedtime story. It’s a piece by Wil S. Hylton, and it’s in the New York Times Magazine. The title is, “My Cousin Was My Hero. Until the Day He Tried to Kill Me.” So, as you can imagine, with a title like that, this personal essay is not for the faint of heart. But I found it captivating, both for its eloquence, as well for the ideas it put forward around topics like masculinity, gender norms, mental illness, how others influence our own behaviors — all of which are things that aren’t necessarily easy to discuss.

The second is an episode I listened to about a month ago from the producers at NPR’s Code Switch podcast called, “Why Is It So Hard to Talk About Israel?” And if you’re like me and interested in topics like diaspora and nationalism, and how we can distinguish between feeling “targeted” versus inhabiting a certain kind of “fragility,” then this episode delves into all of that. I also think there are a lot parallels between Jewish politics and Indian politics, so if you know me because of my India-oriented reporting, this episode might be intriguing for that reason as well.

The third is another New York Times piece called “Women Did Everything Right. Then Work Got ‘Greedy.’” And this is not just about women’s work but the nature of work in general in the United States, and how it influences both our gender roles and our lives. And that’s by Claire Cain Miller.

The last piece I’m recommending is something I read a couple of months ago now, and has stayed in my memory in part because not long after I read it, I met up with a friend who had similarly just read it! And we found ourselves talking a lot about it outside a tea lounge in Union City… It’s called, “The only metric of success that really matters is the one we ignore,” and it’s by Jenny Anderson.

And that wraps up today’s edition of Loitering, the occasional, but lovable traveling minipod I am currently testing in newsletter format. As I mentioned, this minipod newsletter is a work in progress! I’d love your tips and feedback. Thanks for listening and reading, and have a great day. Goodbye! :)

XOXO,

Sonia

P.S. Feel free to share this with those you think may be interested. I may do a more formal “announcement” about this minipod newsletter down the line, but for now, it’s nice to slowly build a community. :)

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Loitering: Recent Episodes

Sonia Paul

Vanlife, the Bohemian Social-Media Movement, by Rachel Monroe