Latest / Locatora Radio [A Radiophonic Novela] / Capítulo 091: Once I Was You with Maria Hinojosa

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Capítulo 091: Once I Was You with Maria Hinojosa · Locatora Radio [A Radiophonic Novela]

0:02
Speaker 1: Radio radio Radio Commies, a Myth and Bullshit, a radio
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Speaker 1: phonic novella. Look Radio hosted by Mala Locamore is welcome
0:24
Speaker 1: to season four of Local Radios Wanted for Crimes against
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Speaker 1: and audio boom. Alright, y'all, and we're super excited for this. No,
1:26
Speaker 1: we have a very special guest, an award winning journalist,
1:30
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Speaker 1: in a pandemic and now, honestly, without further ado, we're
3:46
Speaker 1: going to introduce our iconic, legendary interview guests Maria you
3:53
Speaker 1: know JSA, and we're just gonna let the interview do
3:57
Speaker 1: all the talking. We interviewed Maria about her new book
4:02
Speaker 1: Once I Was You. We talk about all kinds of things,
4:05
Speaker 1: talk about motherhood, we talk about sex, we talk about relationships,
4:08
Speaker 1: growing up, we talk about weed and cannabis, and yes,
4:11
Speaker 1: we talk about WOP with Maria Josa. Do you want
4:15
Speaker 1: to tell our listeners a little bit more about Maria's
4:17
Speaker 1: background for those who maybe are not as familiar. Absolutely so.
4:23
Speaker 1: For twenty five years, Maria Yousa has helped tell America's
4:26
Speaker 1: untold stories and brought to light unsung heroes in America
4:30
Speaker 1: and abroad. In April Media Group with the mission to
4:36
Speaker 1: produce multi platform, community based journalism that gives critical voice
4:41
Speaker 1: to the voiceless by harnessing the power of independent media
4:44
Speaker 1: to tell stories that are overlooked or under reported by
4:48
Speaker 1: traditional media. You Know Hossa has one top honors in
4:51
Speaker 1: American journalism. Latino USA won a Peabody Award in April
4:56
Speaker 1: for its episode Gangs, Murder and My Great In Her
5:01
Speaker 1: awards also include four Emmy's John Chancellor Award for Excellence
5:06
Speaker 1: in Journalism and the Robert F. Kennedy Award for Reporting
5:10
Speaker 1: on the Disadvantaged, among many, many many other awards. Throughout
5:16
Speaker 1: her career, you Know Josa has helped to find the
5:18
Speaker 1: conversation about our times and our society with one of
5:21
Speaker 1: the most authentic voices in broadcast. You Know Josa is
5:24
Speaker 1: the author of two books, including A Motherhood memoir raising adventures,
5:29
Speaker 1: raising myself and my son. She was born in Mexico City,
5:33
Speaker 1: raised in Chicago, and received her b a. From Barnard
5:36
Speaker 1: College without further ado. So we're really excited to have
5:46
Speaker 1: you for so many reasons. You know, I think for
5:49
Speaker 1: younger Latina writers and podcasters like you're definitely inspiration for us,
5:55
Speaker 1: and having this memoir in our hands, you know, it's
5:58
Speaker 1: just another tool kit for us. You know, of your
6:01
Speaker 1: journey and how you've you know, just your entire journey
6:05
Speaker 1: from when you arrived in the US, which I like
6:08
Speaker 1: related to not as an immigrant myself. I was born here,
6:10
Speaker 1: but my mother came out five years old from Sila
6:12
Speaker 1: Plats through the BO program. My grandfather was in it,
6:16
Speaker 1: and so reading it, you know, the first couple of
6:18
Speaker 1: chapters was so relatable in that way, and it allowed
6:21
Speaker 1: me to engage with my mom in a different conversations
6:23
Speaker 1: and maybe asking her questions I never had before. And
6:26
Speaker 1: so for that, I want to thank you. Thank you.
6:29
Speaker 1: That's you're the first person who has wow that. You know.
6:34
Speaker 1: The book is just starting to to make its way,
6:36
Speaker 1: so I'm just starting to get like comments, but that's
6:40
Speaker 1: the first comment that I got which I just love,
6:42
Speaker 1: which was it's leading me to have a different kind
6:44
Speaker 1: of conversation with my mom. Oh, thank you. I'm so happy.
6:49
Speaker 1: It made me have a lot of different conversations with
6:51
Speaker 1: my own mom too. Yeah. I think our moms are
6:54
Speaker 1: actually super excited that we're talking to you today too.
6:57
Speaker 1: I'm so excited it. My mom was like, you cannot
7:01
Speaker 1: be late, like make sure that is so you know what.
7:06
Speaker 1: That's also something that's happening, which is a message to
7:10
Speaker 1: um to to Latina's um, which is, uh, don't stop
7:15
Speaker 1: doing what you do because I just never stopped, right
7:19
Speaker 1: and so now I've been doing this for many, many,
7:23
Speaker 1: many years, and so I have multi generational fans and
7:26
Speaker 1: that is just beautiful. I love that. Also, you know,
7:30
Speaker 1: my mom, who is I think Adie gets and she's like,
7:37
Speaker 1: she's of course my biggest fan, but she's like, I
7:39
Speaker 1: love it when you swear. I see, I love it
7:44
Speaker 1: when you swear. Malulis So yes, our mothers live vicariously
7:50
Speaker 1: through us. Sometimes faith they're like, I know, why why
7:55
Speaker 1: would you, But secretly they're like living for it. Yeah,
7:59
Speaker 1: And I think actually one of the things that that
8:04
Speaker 1: came up in the writing of the book was actually
8:07
Speaker 1: I had to make some amends with me Papa because
8:13
Speaker 1: I realized that and this is what it is to
8:16
Speaker 1: be Latin as we all know this, right, which is
8:18
Speaker 1: there's a lot of stuff that we are managing without
8:21
Speaker 1: even understanding why it's happening. Right. So I was oppositional
8:25
Speaker 1: with my father. All teenagers are oppositional, but I was
8:28
Speaker 1: oppositional in a cultural way because I was oppositional against machismo.
8:33
Speaker 1: I was oppositional against patriarchy. I was oppositional against traditional
8:38
Speaker 1: roles and say in me Papa, and and I feel
8:45
Speaker 1: like I don't feel I know, I put him through
8:48
Speaker 1: a particular kind of hell um because I needed to
8:52
Speaker 1: distance myself from being the perfect Mexican girl, right, I
8:55
Speaker 1: was just like no, no, no, no, no no, no,
8:59
Speaker 1: said so I feel like I would hope that there's
9:03
Speaker 1: another generation. For example, my daughter and I have a
9:06
Speaker 1: very different relationship than my mother and I did um.
9:11
Speaker 1: I know claros somos n and so being the youngest
9:17
Speaker 1: of four, I can kind of understand that my mom
9:18
Speaker 1: was like, I don't really have time to hear about
9:22
Speaker 1: your nobio or your friend or so a lot of
9:25
Speaker 1: it was, you know, just figure it out with my daughter.
9:30
Speaker 1: I we talked about this stuff all the time. We
9:32
Speaker 1: figure it out. There's a lot of intimacy. UM. I
9:36
Speaker 1: think she's going through one of those stages. I understand
9:39
Speaker 1: it where she's like, oh my god, Mom stopped talking
9:41
Speaker 1: about sex, like please don't don't just stop it stop stop.
9:45
Speaker 1: And I completely understand that. But um, but other than that,
9:49
Speaker 1: it's a very open relationship. What I did take from
9:52
Speaker 1: my mom is ca phisica mine e a m make
10:01
Speaker 1: my daughter demands of me time. She's like, you can't,
10:05
Speaker 1: you know, you can't just be on the phone giving
10:07
Speaker 1: time to this person or that person in you know,
10:10
Speaker 1: or that interview. I need it too. Yeah. Wow, this
10:16
Speaker 1: is really refreshing and interesting because I think we talk
10:19
Speaker 1: about UM living with and many of our listeners also
10:23
Speaker 1: experiencing almost the opposite dynamic with with mothers UM and like,
10:30
Speaker 1: you know, not really having conversations so much about sex
10:33
Speaker 1: and sexuality and relationships. UM. Yeah, it's something we talked
10:37
Speaker 1: about a lot on the podcast. So it's interesting to
10:39
Speaker 1: hear how you've um, you know, intentionally sort of entered
10:43
Speaker 1: that space with your own daughter. Well, so that's another
10:46
Speaker 1: thing that kind of came up, and it's nice to
10:48
Speaker 1: be with the both of you and radio because I
10:52
Speaker 1: love the space that you've created. Well, because when I
10:55
Speaker 1: was younger, we didn't have and we had already lived
11:00
Speaker 1: through you know, the sixties and the seventies, so we
11:04
Speaker 1: were supposed to be a feminism was you know, I
11:11
Speaker 1: guess let me let me take it back, like you
11:13
Speaker 1: have to imagine that during the nineteen sixties, so not
11:16
Speaker 1: too far, not too long ago. The the issue of
11:19
Speaker 1: rape it was still was. There was a big question
11:22
Speaker 1: like is it a crime? Is it a crime? First
11:27
Speaker 1: of all, then you know, we got to the point
11:29
Speaker 1: of like yes, and then it was like, you know,
11:32
Speaker 1: marital rape, date rape, those things were not even being
11:36
Speaker 1: discussed at all. And the image that we had of
11:39
Speaker 1: rape was also very racialized, always very racialized, and it
11:45
Speaker 1: was always a stranger with a knife at your nag. Right,
11:48
Speaker 1: So that's how we understood sexual assault rape, and it
11:52
Speaker 1: was a big um. It was a big logirl right
11:56
Speaker 1: to be able to get to the point where again
11:58
Speaker 1: rape was considered an act of violence, um, a criminal
12:02
Speaker 1: act of violence. So um. So what ends up happening
12:07
Speaker 1: in the book is that there's this experience that I
12:09
Speaker 1: have in Mexico when I'm quite young and um, and
12:13
Speaker 1: really all of this kind of like explodes while I'm
12:16
Speaker 1: in the process of processing the writing of this book.
12:20
Speaker 1: It's Kavanaugh, It was my own relationship with my husband.
12:25
Speaker 1: It was an amazing therapist who helped me argentinean therapist,
12:30
Speaker 1: UM who helped me to begin to understand some of
12:33
Speaker 1: my own trauma around sex. And it is the ultimate like,
12:38
Speaker 1: oh ship, no 'escafe weight. I was raped, Like there's
12:43
Speaker 1: no if and or buts, that is what happened, and
12:47
Speaker 1: and just kind of the expression of that. So where
12:51
Speaker 1: does that connect to my daughter? Because I was like,
12:55
Speaker 1: in the process of understanding all of this, I was like, oh,
12:58
Speaker 1: because I will get that question from a lot of people,
13:00
Speaker 1: like why are you so open with your daughter about
13:04
Speaker 1: sex and sexuality and why do you Why did you
13:07
Speaker 1: create that? How did you do it? And I was like,
13:09
Speaker 1: I understood that I created that on purpose because I
13:13
Speaker 1: never wanted her to be raped. I never wanted her
13:18
Speaker 1: to be put into the position of being unsafe and
13:24
Speaker 1: making decisions about, you know, my own life. Again in
13:30
Speaker 1: an opposition because basically, in that moment, I'm in Mexico,
13:33
Speaker 1: and I'm like to my mom and my dad who
13:36
Speaker 1: are proudly showing me off as an independent American woman teenager,
13:40
Speaker 1: I know me, I know Estuvia. You know she doesn't
13:44
Speaker 1: have well I did have boyfriends, but I was very
13:46
Speaker 1: diligent in my school and I was you know, and
13:49
Speaker 1: they really wanted to show like that. But then I
13:51
Speaker 1: was like, I want to go with that that man
13:54
Speaker 1: because I was sixteen and he was twenty four, um
13:59
Speaker 1: and um. And I forced them basically to be like,
14:03
Speaker 1: you can't have me as the perfect independent Mexican daughter
14:07
Speaker 1: because I grew up in the United States, But then
14:10
Speaker 1: when I'm in Mexico, not give me my freedom and
14:13
Speaker 1: respect me. It's an independent woman. Sadly, I think my mother,
14:19
Speaker 1: who was the one who was there at the time,
14:20
Speaker 1: I think she knew she she knew, she had a
14:24
Speaker 1: bad presentimento about what was about to happen, and I
14:28
Speaker 1: couldn't see it, which is the other thing that like,
14:31
Speaker 1: really moms like I know that there were so complicated,
14:35
Speaker 1: believe me. I mean, I we were we have and
14:42
Speaker 1: you know, but also there's you gotta respect your mom's
14:46
Speaker 1: because they do no ship. We do no ship moms,
14:50
Speaker 1: no things, and that's what and this this is part
14:53
Speaker 1: of it too, is like mother, I know that you're right,
14:55
Speaker 1: but part of growing up is allowing me to make
14:59
Speaker 1: the decision except the consequences when I knew it was
15:02
Speaker 1: the wrong decision, but I made it any exactly and
15:05
Speaker 1: and you know what, what what I hope is that
15:07
Speaker 1: and we make those decisions and we fall and we learn.
15:11
Speaker 1: You know, the thing is is that you just don't
15:12
Speaker 1: want them to be like life traumatizing, like like a rape.
15:17
Speaker 1: You know that that is the kind of thing and
15:21
Speaker 1: and you do survive, at least. I hope with my
15:24
Speaker 1: book I'm able to have that conversation so that women
15:28
Speaker 1: older and younger can realize, which is, by the way,
15:33
Speaker 1: I'm really happy to be talking to the both of you.
15:35
Speaker 1: Also because you know the book will likely be pigeonholed
15:38
Speaker 1: as another immigration story, and it is, and there's a
15:42
Speaker 1: lot of that, but it's like it's so much more
15:44
Speaker 1: than that. So we actually had a question about that
15:49
Speaker 1: about create are releasing this memoir, releasing this work, this
15:53
Speaker 1: body of work post American dirt, like in this landscape
15:57
Speaker 1: where Latin X writers, storytellers have been demanding more from
16:03
Speaker 1: the publishing industry. So what has that been like in
16:06
Speaker 1: preparation of releasing this book, this memoir. Well, it feels
16:11
Speaker 1: like you know, another world away because it was that
16:14
Speaker 1: was pre pandemic. Um. We were traveling around. I mean,
16:18
Speaker 1: I was getting ready for a book launch that would
16:21
Speaker 1: have had me traveling to probably you know, fifteen cities, um.
16:25
Speaker 1: In the read up to an election. I had just
16:28
Speaker 1: returned from some very very traumatic experiences of reporting in
16:33
Speaker 1: what Is and then Ina on the Mexican border with
16:38
Speaker 1: and so I come back from I come back from
16:40
Speaker 1: a very on the ground seeing refugees, people suffering, and
16:45
Speaker 1: we you know, come back to this like cultural um. Well,
16:50
Speaker 1: I don't know, I don't, I don't. It was a moment.
16:53
Speaker 1: It was a cultural moment, a literary moment um, and
16:58
Speaker 1: we got you know, completely kind have swept up into
17:00
Speaker 1: it because I had access to all of these people
17:03
Speaker 1: and they said, yes, So it's it's definitely. I mean
17:08
Speaker 1: to tell you that it hasn't had an impact. It has.
17:12
Speaker 1: What happened with American dirt, no doubt has had an
17:15
Speaker 1: impact with how with what things are happening in terms
17:20
Speaker 1: of my book. Now, I have to say that the
17:24
Speaker 1: publisher who is the editor in chief formally who is
17:27
Speaker 1: now the publisher of Simon and Schuster, Jonathan Carp, who
17:32
Speaker 1: is a very powerful person in the world of publishing. Um,
17:39
Speaker 1: he was behind this book way before American Dirt. M.
17:46
Speaker 1: I guess I can say. I mean it's I've never
17:48
Speaker 1: really talked about this, but he was an editor in
17:51
Speaker 1: chief who got on the phone with me and my
17:54
Speaker 1: agent when the original book proposal that we wrote got rejected.
17:58
Speaker 1: Because also people think like, I body, you know, who's that? Ah,
18:01
Speaker 1: it's always like, you know, a celebration. No, we got
18:05
Speaker 1: rejected everywhere everywhere, so we had to go back and
18:12
Speaker 1: rethink and there was there was smart reasons for the rejections. Um.
18:17
Speaker 1: But Jonathan Carp got on the phone with me and
18:21
Speaker 1: for about an hour we talked about different styles of
18:26
Speaker 1: writing books, how the how the book selling works, you know,
18:32
Speaker 1: the kind of story that potentially could be told. UM.
18:38
Speaker 1: And that's why then when we rewrite the proposal and
18:41
Speaker 1: the book goes to auction. So the opposite of getting
18:44
Speaker 1: rejected now we went to auction. UM. It was Michelle
18:48
Speaker 1: and a Mulligan uh Latina editor who had just been
18:52
Speaker 1: hired at Simon and Schuster in a pretty senior role.
18:55
Speaker 1: She she advocated to get this book because I think
19:00
Speaker 1: she understood that with the support of Jonathan carp the
19:03
Speaker 1: editor in chief who is now the publisher, the vision
19:06
Speaker 1: for the book, it was going to be a very
19:08
Speaker 1: supported book. UM. And it was understood I think from
19:12
Speaker 1: the very beginning that it was not. We did not
19:15
Speaker 1: want this to be a light book. It was not, Oh,
19:19
Speaker 1: Marian is going to tell us about her life, you know,
19:21
Speaker 1: which is cool. I mean, like, I think that's there's
19:24
Speaker 1: a lot there. But it was a book that was
19:26
Speaker 1: decided like, this has to be more, and that's what
19:31
Speaker 1: ended up happening. So that's the kind of behind the
19:33
Speaker 1: story and why you know this relationship with my publisher
19:38
Speaker 1: is quite I don't know. I mean, I don't know
19:41
Speaker 1: the relationship between the publisher and Janine Cummins. My whole
19:49
Speaker 1: takeaway from the American Dirt situation, UM, and I have
19:53
Speaker 1: read the book thoroughly, UM, is that it us encapsulate
20:02
Speaker 1: how little we are given the voice to tell our stories,
20:07
Speaker 1: that our stories, UM. With some exceptions, because you know,
20:12
Speaker 1: there is Sario and Umbalo, is it Oscar's journey, Um,
20:22
Speaker 1: it's the book about the movement that the child, the
20:25
Speaker 1: movement of children children leaving Central America. So we've had opportunities.
20:33
Speaker 1: That book is a bestseller. It was extraordinary reporting from
20:36
Speaker 1: when she started at the l A Times. But I
20:39
Speaker 1: could see how this book was written as a thriller.
20:43
Speaker 1: It should have been marketed as a thriller. It should
20:46
Speaker 1: have never been marketed as this is the Grapes of
20:48
Speaker 1: Wrath for Latinos. It should have never been um marketed
20:53
Speaker 1: in that way, and they did. I can also completely
20:57
Speaker 1: understand by the way my one of my dear friends
21:00
Speaker 1: who got swept up in all of this, Sands. I
21:04
Speaker 1: can completely understand how Sand that I would read this
21:07
Speaker 1: book and also feel like there was important storytelling. There
21:11
Speaker 1: was there were human moments in the book, because there were,
21:16
Speaker 1: and she did do hard work, she did do research.
21:21
Speaker 1: But then there's this whole other side that she she
21:24
Speaker 1: should have never written that afterwards. She just like a
21:29
Speaker 1: kind of swept up in this stuff, and it's like, um,
21:33
Speaker 1: so so for me, I think a lot about people
21:40
Speaker 1: out there think that the author has the last say
21:43
Speaker 1: on everything, and in some cases we do. So I'm
21:45
Speaker 1: not going to tell you but there have been Yes,
21:47
Speaker 1: there were moments where I was like, no, that is
21:49
Speaker 1: not going to happen. No, that is not going to
21:51
Speaker 1: be the cover. No that is not the person who's
21:53
Speaker 1: going to be the blurb that is going to be
21:55
Speaker 1: the largest. No, that blurb has got to go below
21:58
Speaker 1: and this one's got to go. So yeah, I was
22:00
Speaker 1: involved in that, and I think I learned from American Dirt, right, um.
22:08
Speaker 1: And I think the differences is that because this is
22:12
Speaker 1: my story and there's factual history, I'm not so worried
22:19
Speaker 1: about that that kind of backlash. I'm not I'm expecting
22:26
Speaker 1: some kind of backlash, but it's not going to be like, oh,
22:28
Speaker 1: she's an impostor, you know, because because what I talked
22:32
Speaker 1: about on every other page is what ladies, I talk about,
22:35
Speaker 1: the impostor syndrome, right, which follows us Latinos and Latinos everywhere.
22:39
Speaker 1: It's um. So I would just say that that in
22:44
Speaker 1: terms of Sombra as the American Dirt, Sombra has definitely
22:48
Speaker 1: for me, I hope in a positive way, so that
22:50
Speaker 1: I learned some really positive lessons. Wow, Maria, thank you
22:54
Speaker 1: so much for sharing all of those different layers with us.
22:59
Speaker 1: There's so much to talk about. And as you know,
23:02
Speaker 1: we're in our twenties, we are born and raised in
23:05
Speaker 1: the US who identify as Latin as as Latin X,
23:08
Speaker 1: and we're in the creative space. We make podcasts and
23:12
Speaker 1: we write, and we have a lot of contemporaries and
23:15
Speaker 1: a megas and home girls who are you know, our
23:18
Speaker 1: age or younger even who are also writing, and our
23:21
Speaker 1: journalists and are in the creative space. And you know,
23:24
Speaker 1: like you're on Twitter, and when these things come out
23:28
Speaker 1: and and these voices of you know, the women that
23:31
Speaker 1: we look up to, like you or Sandracos, and we
23:34
Speaker 1: really um, it's been interesting to kind of just see
23:37
Speaker 1: kind of how the elders have been responding and engaging
23:41
Speaker 1: and talking and then to kind of have that multi
23:44
Speaker 1: generational experience on a platform like Twitter or Instagram where
23:49
Speaker 1: you know, so much can happen on Twitter. And I
23:54
Speaker 1: wanted to ask you about Twitter specifically because we do
23:57
Speaker 1: follow you on Twitter. We love following you on Twitter.
23:58
Speaker 1: We think carey um, so we want to and we
24:02
Speaker 1: spend time on Twitter, and so much of the digital
24:06
Speaker 1: journalism that takes place on the platform can be a
24:11
Speaker 1: incredible and informative, but there's also this kind of discourse
24:14
Speaker 1: that takes place on the platform that can be very rocky. So, um,
24:19
Speaker 1: I just wanted to ask you about Twitter and just
24:23
Speaker 1: whatever you wanted to say about it. Yeah. So, I, Um,
24:27
Speaker 1: every time I use Twitter, I'm like, I feel new,
24:30
Speaker 1: i feel like a perchon. I swear, I'm just like uh,
24:37
Speaker 1: And I use it as you know, very I mean,
24:39
Speaker 1: and some sometimes I'm very engaged. Other times I'm kind
24:42
Speaker 1: of a way. I try not to be that person
24:45
Speaker 1: that is responding to everything at all times, because then
24:48
Speaker 1: I would be married to Twitter and I would literally
24:50
Speaker 1: lose my family for sure. And I could be married
24:53
Speaker 1: to Twitter. Like it's easy to be married to Twitter
24:55
Speaker 1: or to Instagram. It's very easy, it is. Um. So
25:01
Speaker 1: I tried to approach it. IC's like very authentically in
25:05
Speaker 1: many ways. But I have learned my lessons in formas now, Um,
25:14
Speaker 1: black woman Twitter came after me and that was who who?
25:21
Speaker 1: That was really sad for me. I I was just heartbroken. Um,
25:25
Speaker 1: But I listened and and I did not immediately jerk back,
25:34
Speaker 1: which is what happens on Twitter. Right. Somebody says something
25:37
Speaker 1: you're used to it, You're just like, oh what motherfucker.
25:40
Speaker 1: Oh no boom or or you know, just like, oh,
25:42
Speaker 1: you're a troll. Boom, You're you know, you're what's it
25:44
Speaker 1: called it? You're blocked, right, You're blocked. You know it's
25:47
Speaker 1: it's We're very very reactive in that sense. And so
25:51
Speaker 1: what happened in that moment, um it was when um,
25:55
Speaker 1: it was when we heard the cries of the babies
25:59
Speaker 1: in cages, which has been happening since forever. Right, Um,
26:07
Speaker 1: they tried to take me from my mother in the
26:11
Speaker 1: nineties sixties. So was it a cage. I don't know,
26:15
Speaker 1: but they've certainly been taking us for centuries. But we
26:19
Speaker 1: did get that audio and people were talking and Laura
26:22
Speaker 1: Bush tweeted something that was, you know, um emotive, and
26:28
Speaker 1: and Michelle Obama retweeted that and said something like, um,
26:31
Speaker 1: you know, it was very cold. It was like, you know,
26:34
Speaker 1: cold heart facts. And I was very disappointed with Michelle
26:37
Speaker 1: because I'm very disappointed with Barack on this particular issue.
26:42
Speaker 1: I'm disappointed that he never gave me an interview, um,
26:45
Speaker 1: to to look at me eye to eye because I
26:47
Speaker 1: went to school with this guy, like I know him, UM,
26:52
Speaker 1: and they they said, look, you cannot you know, you
26:56
Speaker 1: need to understand that that you cannot hold Michelle Obama
27:00
Speaker 1: responsible for everything at every moment. And I had to
27:04
Speaker 1: take a pause. At that point, I was doing therapy
27:09
Speaker 1: UM around a couple of issues. By the way, ego
27:12
Speaker 1: is a really complicated one because as Latinas we need huge,
27:17
Speaker 1: huge egos. We do, and we also need to be
27:23
Speaker 1: incredibly humble. So it is a it is a dance, um.
27:29
Speaker 1: It is a constant dance UM. And so I had
27:33
Speaker 1: to really pause and I listened. There were some people
27:37
Speaker 1: who deemed me and they said, you don't know how
27:39
Speaker 1: hurt so many of us feel. And then I was
27:42
Speaker 1: kind of like I didn't realize I had a following,
27:44
Speaker 1: and that was beautiful to realize, like, wow, there are
27:47
Speaker 1: many black women who who care about what I think.
27:52
Speaker 1: In that moment, I was like okay, no, and I apologized.
27:55
Speaker 1: I went straight up and I was like, listen, I
27:57
Speaker 1: am sorry, I'm learning. And that is where I feel like, again,
28:03
Speaker 1: there are places where you can maybe get us a
28:05
Speaker 1: little bit of a smoothness. Smooth smoothness on Twitter, I
28:11
Speaker 1: am hyper aware of cancel culture. I think American Dirt
28:17
Speaker 1: was the experience was really hard. What happened to santrac
28:20
Speaker 1: Nero's was it was horrible. Um. So I appreciate the
28:25
Speaker 1: conversation around elders and sabsky uh elders as you as
28:31
Speaker 1: it were. I hate thinking that I am one, but okay,
28:36
Speaker 1: we make mistakes, were not perfect. I'm not going to
28:40
Speaker 1: speak for Sandra, um, but so I I wish and
28:45
Speaker 1: I've said this to Sandra that we had done the
28:48
Speaker 1: interview the next morning, A yes, taba infirma and um
28:55
Speaker 1: and and the emotions were raw. Um. And like I said,
29:02
Speaker 1: I can completely understand how someone can read American dirt
29:05
Speaker 1: and say like it humanized. It humanized moments. I can
29:11
Speaker 1: also understand it went over to you know, trauma porn
29:17
Speaker 1: too much. It was too simplistic. There were things that
29:20
Speaker 1: were you know, didn't make logical sense, but they make
29:23
Speaker 1: sense if you're writing a thriller, a thriller which was
29:26
Speaker 1: a page turner. Um. So I've been the Twitter experience
29:33
Speaker 1: has been like I could not lose lose my friendship
29:37
Speaker 1: because of Twitter, Like that's some bullshit, you know. Um.
29:42
Speaker 1: And I'm I don't don't participate or want to be
29:47
Speaker 1: part of cancel culture. UM. I'm against fascism. I'm against racism,
29:56
Speaker 1: I'm against anti Semitism, I'm again anti Mexican is M's,
30:03
Speaker 1: I'm against anti Latin X, anti lgbt Q, my trans family.
30:09
Speaker 1: So if you do that on my Twitter, fuck you.
30:12
Speaker 1: You are canceled back. But it's another thing. And I know,
30:20
Speaker 1: I don't know if you guys know this, but actually
30:22
Speaker 1: I don't get a lot of hate on Twitter. It's interesting.
30:26
Speaker 1: I'm not one of those people that people are like.
30:29
Speaker 1: I know, I can see the trolls. I can see
30:32
Speaker 1: where they're troll farming, and they're very good. They are
30:35
Speaker 1: very well educated people. They know how to get under
30:38
Speaker 1: your skin, the trolls. But I'm just like boom blocked blocked,
30:42
Speaker 1: block block block. But other than that, um, I I
30:46
Speaker 1: don't know why it is that I don't get a
30:48
Speaker 1: whole whole amount of hatred on Twitter. Um But it
30:53
Speaker 1: is a thing, and it is and I'm a baby
30:56
Speaker 1: on Twitter. You know, I don't have that that many followers,
30:58
Speaker 1: so I'm still a baby. Um And and there's parts
31:03
Speaker 1: of it that I love, but parts of it that
31:05
Speaker 1: I really hate too. Or Cara Belly ros and and
31:12
Speaker 1: and and and and and and and and and and
31:20
Speaker 1: and and and and and and send bell rang back
31:28
Speaker 1: and and send that rang back and and and and
31:36
Speaker 1: and um um um um um um um um um
31:46
Speaker 1: um um um of it and little ship um. It's fascinating.
31:57
Speaker 1: I saw a tweet not too long and go where
32:00
Speaker 1: there was this comparison made between cancel culture and sort
32:04
Speaker 1: of decades in our like news media of of truly
32:09
Speaker 1: canceling people, right and saying so and so is just
32:13
Speaker 1: done right, like Tiger Woods is done, and it's it's
32:17
Speaker 1: in the headlines and it's on TV, and it's in
32:19
Speaker 1: printed newspapers and you know, there's and sort of bringing
32:22
Speaker 1: up there has been a cancel culture. There has been
32:27
Speaker 1: a um and we can name other people. You know,
32:29
Speaker 1: Britney Spears was horrifically canceled racist and Twitter. Twitter didn't
32:34
Speaker 1: need to exist for that to happen to Britney Spears, right,
32:37
Speaker 1: And we can list on and on celebrities mostly right.
32:40
Speaker 1: So I I just wonder too about the magnitude of
32:44
Speaker 1: the cancel culture because we can look at you know,
32:47
Speaker 1: if NBC says somebody is canceled, or if the l
32:49
Speaker 1: A Time says someone's canceled, um or if a million
32:53
Speaker 1: people on Twitter come after Jennine Cummings. But I also
32:57
Speaker 1: don't know that Jenny lost us her like stuff. No no, no, no, no, no,
33:03
Speaker 1: no no no, I'm sorry. There's a dog in the background.
33:06
Speaker 1: So I just I just I found that it's a
33:08
Speaker 1: best seller. It remains it remains a best seller, right,
33:12
Speaker 1: So I thought that was fascinating, right, And like, like,
33:15
Speaker 1: do we do we recognize that this this tendency to
33:20
Speaker 1: cut people because of mistakes big, humongous or or or small? Um?
33:27
Speaker 1: Do we recognize that it's something that we've been exposed
33:30
Speaker 1: to for many, many many years? Right? Um? Yeah, you
33:34
Speaker 1: know you know what you know who's been canceled? And
33:39
Speaker 1: exactly right right right right right, Like to me, that's
33:45
Speaker 1: what once I was you is about, Like if there's
33:48
Speaker 1: something it's it's it's the fact that, man, we've been invisible,
33:52
Speaker 1: like we've actually been visible, but you make us invisible again.
33:56
Speaker 1: It's like it stumblest you know. I think at one
33:58
Speaker 1: point in the book, I'm like, you know how many
34:00
Speaker 1: times as Time Magazine put us, and it's like the
34:03
Speaker 1: decade of the Hispanics or the decade of Latinos or
34:05
Speaker 1: Mexico or Mexico or whatever, like we've been on the cover.
34:10
Speaker 1: You know, Time used to be a hugely influential magazine.
34:15
Speaker 1: But where are we? Um? And and you know, being invisible,
34:21
Speaker 1: so cancel culture is about making something invisible. Being invisible
34:25
Speaker 1: is actually really bad for your mental health. So that's
34:30
Speaker 1: why I'm so proud of the work that you all
34:31
Speaker 1: are doing that because you all were like, well, we
34:34
Speaker 1: don't even care, like we're gonna do it no matter
34:37
Speaker 1: what we're gonna we're gonna take up this space we're
34:39
Speaker 1: gonna make or we're gonna make ourselves visible to your invisibility.
34:42
Speaker 1: We're gonna help you a notch and that's what we
34:44
Speaker 1: need there, I mean, yeah, ideally, you know, we own
34:51
Speaker 1: you know, mega studios, and we're making movies for the
34:55
Speaker 1: one out of every four Latinos that go used to
34:58
Speaker 1: buy movie tickets. You know, one day we will go
35:00
Speaker 1: back to the movies again, because one day we we must,
35:03
Speaker 1: I hope one day, um, you know, one out of
35:07
Speaker 1: four movie ticket sales is bought by a Latino or
35:09
Speaker 1: Latino so come up where they say the gay you
35:13
Speaker 1: know in all and my daughter is a filmmaker, we
35:16
Speaker 1: would go to the movies all the time. That's what
35:17
Speaker 1: we did, and that films about latinos or latinos or
35:20
Speaker 1: that started you know nada, I mean yes here or there.
35:25
Speaker 1: So ideally, yeah, you know we we we become mega producers.
35:30
Speaker 1: Like my small company, Fudo Media is growing. I believe
35:34
Speaker 1: somebody told me stop calling it a small company. I'm like, okay,
35:37
Speaker 1: we've been around for a decade. You know, we're a
35:39
Speaker 1: multimillion dollar company. We're a nonprofit. We are launching a
35:43
Speaker 1: for profit side. We're growing. We need more of that,
35:47
Speaker 1: more of what you're doing, because Alfina Liquin does. What
35:50
Speaker 1: we are doing is we're using our voices and our power,
35:54
Speaker 1: which is another message of once once I was you.
35:57
Speaker 1: We are using that to answer back, answer back, answer
36:00
Speaker 1: back at all the time, and historically that's all we
36:05
Speaker 1: could do. Like if you read Stamped, the beautiful book
36:09
Speaker 1: by Abram X. Kendy, who also wrote the book How
36:12
Speaker 1: to Be an Anti Racist Stamped from the beginning, what
36:16
Speaker 1: you understand, it was so beautiful when he just said
36:20
Speaker 1: the only thing that we've had to respond to the
36:24
Speaker 1: narrative that they have created about us is to create
36:27
Speaker 1: our own narrative in response and many of us do
36:30
Speaker 1: it through art, right, whether it's through art, whether it's
36:33
Speaker 1: through dance, whether through music or drumming. And you know
36:36
Speaker 1: Frederick Douglas, you know, my my, my Badino did it
36:39
Speaker 1: by creating a newspaper. Um. Yes, I know he's criticized
36:43
Speaker 1: for being something of an app assimilationist if you really
36:46
Speaker 1: want to get to it. But still he is my
36:49
Speaker 1: constant inspiration because this is what it looks like. It
36:53
Speaker 1: is Jovita, you know, whom ran a newspaper out of
36:57
Speaker 1: it Baso in the early nineteen hundreds and was tried
37:01
Speaker 1: to be shut down by the Texas Rangers. And she
37:03
Speaker 1: stood there and said Macrusoncruson, So we are having to
37:08
Speaker 1: always take back the narrative. And that is apart from
37:12
Speaker 1: the political power, the people power, the organizing the narrative,
37:18
Speaker 1: the storytelling, how things are handed down, the manipulation of this,
37:22
Speaker 1: the image that is created of us. So everything that
37:25
Speaker 1: we do that you do, that I do purposefully, it's
37:29
Speaker 1: to create another image. Yes, I'm a fifty something year
37:34
Speaker 1: old boxer, that's right, that's what I do. And I
37:39
Speaker 1: talk about sex. I don't have a problem with that
37:42
Speaker 1: because that's that's how I'm going to change the image
37:46
Speaker 1: I talk about, you know, being an entrepreneur. I talked
37:49
Speaker 1: about that because that's the image that you need to
37:51
Speaker 1: have of what a Mexican woman from the South Side
37:53
Speaker 1: of Chicago who's married to a Dominican man living in Harlem.
37:57
Speaker 1: That's what we look like. That's how we do. That's
37:59
Speaker 1: how we do. Are based in Los Angeles, and the
38:01
Speaker 1: Latin x journalists at the l A times have been
38:04
Speaker 1: very vocal I'm watching, Yeah, you're watching right, so that
38:07
Speaker 1: that conversation is going on and we're watching and it's
38:10
Speaker 1: it's huge. And one of the reasons why we love
38:13
Speaker 1: you also so much is because of your foot Futal
38:15
Speaker 1: Media group and the podcasting that you're doing and the
38:19
Speaker 1: way you're taking up space in the podcast world, and
38:21
Speaker 1: we are trying to do the same thing. Right. We're
38:24
Speaker 1: a small podcast production company ourselves look at that our productions,
38:28
Speaker 1: and we don't see a ton of the US Latin
38:33
Speaker 1: x UM podcasting outside of like what you're doing and
38:39
Speaker 1: what kind of the folks in our communities have been
38:42
Speaker 1: working on. There's a podcaster that we know who is
38:46
Speaker 1: Latina Um who's based in London and she has her
38:49
Speaker 1: Centa Press, not in London, in Paris and she has
38:52
Speaker 1: her O Centa Press studios and so they do trilingual programming.
38:56
Speaker 1: And yeah, so like you know there's Latin there's Latina
39:01
Speaker 1: specifically Mohetz who are like creating podcast networks, whether it's
39:05
Speaker 1: like in l A, like US and you in New
39:07
Speaker 1: York and you know Laurie in Paris, and I just
39:10
Speaker 1: think it's really cool and I wanted to ask about
39:12
Speaker 1: Latinas and podcasting specifically and and why you love the
39:16
Speaker 1: space and why you like podcasting. So my career started
39:21
Speaker 1: in radio, like um, I mean there were no Latinas
39:27
Speaker 1: on television doing journalism, so and just even thinking I
39:31
Speaker 1: could be a journalist wasn't really something that I thought
39:33
Speaker 1: because I never saw it. So invisibility really has consequences,
39:37
Speaker 1: you know, it has a ripple effect. But I started
39:40
Speaker 1: doing radio at the college radio station here at at
39:44
Speaker 1: Columbia University. I was at Barnard, the Women's College, and
39:48
Speaker 1: it was actually Twitter before Twitter. It was like that Twitter.
39:52
Speaker 1: And I think in many places still is that. Yes,
39:56
Speaker 1: I don't know l A enough, but I know that
39:58
Speaker 1: obviously our radio stations get It's just like media, right,
40:04
Speaker 1: it's like really really tight, right. We love radio and
40:08
Speaker 1: actually Latinos and Latinos are committed to radio. So I
40:11
Speaker 1: wish that we I wish that we had more people
40:14
Speaker 1: who understood like the business potential UM and that saw
40:20
Speaker 1: us as partners as opposed to UM, I don't know
40:24
Speaker 1: locals UM. So radio has always been like it's where
40:32
Speaker 1: I learned how to do my journalism. It's I understood
40:37
Speaker 1: my voice. I understood the power of voice and sound.
40:40
Speaker 1: I mean, first I just was a disc jockey at DJ.
40:43
Speaker 1: I played protest music, mus all the protest music from
40:48
Speaker 1: the you know, sixties and seventies and eighties. It was
40:51
Speaker 1: all protest music in Latin America in but then when
40:55
Speaker 1: I started to create radio with Scott's Timon at at NPR,
41:02
Speaker 1: we were doing long form radio. So it was all
41:05
Speaker 1: about the sound, all about oh no, no, you're gonna
41:09
Speaker 1: I mean, I would go into mixes and I would
41:11
Speaker 1: have like, I mean, people are gonna be like ideas,
41:14
Speaker 1: what you know? I would I would walk in with
41:16
Speaker 1: like eight reels, eight or nine reels. We have eight
41:19
Speaker 1: or nine reels going, and you guys are like, what
41:21
Speaker 1: are reels? Well, okay, whatever, look it up on the Internet.
41:25
Speaker 1: So it was all about creating sound using moments of
41:30
Speaker 1: people's voices when you would hear them tremble or or
41:34
Speaker 1: the pause right before they started to cry, or the
41:37
Speaker 1: joy and so I always understood radio as a way
41:42
Speaker 1: to get into people's hearts really through their ears and um.
41:47
Speaker 1: And then I ended up doing a lot of television,
41:49
Speaker 1: which also, if you're doing long form television, it's really cool.
41:51
Speaker 1: If you're doing live television at CNN, it's really cool.
41:54
Speaker 1: It's really fun. But this is something that stays. And
41:57
Speaker 1: when I created Media, I'm trying to drop the group.
42:00
Speaker 1: I think it's better just futuro media. But when I
42:03
Speaker 1: created futuro Media, I was going to focus on podcasting
42:08
Speaker 1: and public television. And people are like, are you crazy,
42:10
Speaker 1: Like nobody's listening to the radio, nobody's looking at public television.
42:14
Speaker 1: Public television sadly they lost us because they did not
42:17
Speaker 1: renew their grants with us. So that's a thing. That's
42:23
Speaker 1: that's the thing. I'm not happy about it. I should
42:26
Speaker 1: be on public television. I should have a primetime show
42:30
Speaker 1: on public television. Bill I should I should out I
42:35
Speaker 1: don't know, you know, but or whatever. Um, But people
42:39
Speaker 1: were like, NA, radio, it's gonna keep And I think
42:45
Speaker 1: that for Latinos and Latinas and in general black indigenous
42:51
Speaker 1: people of color, uh, in general, podcasting is still an
42:55
Speaker 1: open market. So I know again, I keep on telling
42:58
Speaker 1: you how proud I am of you because you're doing
43:00
Speaker 1: in this younger. It took me many years to get
43:02
Speaker 1: to that point, So keep going, don't give up. I mean,
43:05
Speaker 1: I I learned um by talking to every single Latino
43:12
Speaker 1: entrepreneur who I could meet, and I would ask them,
43:15
Speaker 1: how do you do it? Because this is really terrifying,
43:18
Speaker 1: like when you have staff and you have payroll, Holy
43:21
Speaker 1: Jesus Christ, you know, and it's like whoa And they
43:25
Speaker 1: would just say you. Just one of them is a
43:27
Speaker 1: triathlonist and she said, you just keep on breathing, like
43:30
Speaker 1: when you're swimming swimming her scuba diving. You just never
43:34
Speaker 1: stopped breathing. And I was like, that is the stupidest
43:36
Speaker 1: piece of advice. You gotta be kidding me, Yes, you know,
43:44
Speaker 1: you just do. You have to be like, Okay, here
43:47
Speaker 1: we go. Here, it's this whole other situation. We're gonna
43:50
Speaker 1: have to figure out how to move through it. And
43:53
Speaker 1: and I hope that you just don't give up. That's
43:56
Speaker 1: my message to all of the Latinos and Latinas who
44:00
Speaker 1: are thinking about moving into this space. It is hard,
44:03
Speaker 1: it is scary. One of the things that I would
44:06
Speaker 1: say to myself when it was really hard, as I'd say,
44:09
Speaker 1: I would say, Okay, who else is having a really
44:12
Speaker 1: fucked up day in the media space? Who else is
44:16
Speaker 1: having real challenges? I would be like mm hmm, oprah
44:20
Speaker 1: m hmmm. Because at that point Oprah had launched her channel,
44:24
Speaker 1: she had borrowed you know whatever. I think it was
44:26
Speaker 1: five hundred million or seven hundred million. It wasn't her money.
44:29
Speaker 1: You know, the ratings were tanking. She hadn't found her groove.
44:33
Speaker 1: And I'm like, okay, she's having a bad day and
44:35
Speaker 1: look at so I can you know, so we can
44:38
Speaker 1: do this perspective. Yeah, I feel like we just got
44:42
Speaker 1: like our podcast, Like, yes, I feel glass well, I'm
44:57
Speaker 1: trying no, no, actually it's very interesting. You know, we're
44:59
Speaker 1: trying to sell of the book. So um, you know,
45:03
Speaker 1: it's all well and good. But until once I was
45:07
Speaker 1: you is a bestseller, I am not going to rest. Um.
45:12
Speaker 1: You know, this morning I woke up and I was
45:14
Speaker 1: like are you anxious? And I was like, no, you
45:15
Speaker 1: were anxious many years ago when you had like real
45:19
Speaker 1: you know, your friend was dying of cancer, your dad
45:22
Speaker 1: was dying of Alzheimer's, your marriage was at a tipping point,
45:26
Speaker 1: like anxiety. I'm much calmer now. But but then I
45:32
Speaker 1: said to myself, but i'll be really calm when once
45:35
Speaker 1: I was. You is on the best seller list, and
45:37
Speaker 1: I'm like, how horrible? But I really do. We're we're
45:40
Speaker 1: trying to find ways to sell the book, to promote
45:42
Speaker 1: the book too, you know. So so like you know,
45:46
Speaker 1: benicion is like, do is that the way I gotta get? Like,
45:49
Speaker 1: if you buy the book, you know you'll get an
45:53
Speaker 1: individual Ben, So I need you needs Latin a seidas
45:58
Speaker 1: to help me figure out give me idea is for
46:00
Speaker 1: what to do. I was just gonna say, I was
46:03
Speaker 1: gonna say this, Um, I think there is definitely a
46:07
Speaker 1: desire for podcast Madrina's out there. So if you wanted
46:11
Speaker 1: to become everyone's podcast Madrina and uh you know mentor
46:16
Speaker 1: the younger generation, I think we would sign up a sap.
46:20
Speaker 1: Absolutely just saying but I had a question, Yeah, I
46:24
Speaker 1: had a question. Um, going back, you know in the
46:27
Speaker 1: beginning of our conversation, you said that you had a
46:30
Speaker 1: feeling Once I Was You was going to be pigeonholed
46:33
Speaker 1: as an immigration story or immigration novel. What is your
46:37
Speaker 1: vision for Once I Was You? What do you want
46:41
Speaker 1: the public to take away from it? So, um, my
46:48
Speaker 1: vision is that that Once I Was You becomes one
46:52
Speaker 1: of the important intersectional books written by a Latino and
46:56
Speaker 1: the United States of America. Because to me, Once I
47:00
Speaker 1: As You is really an intersectional book. M who is
47:04
Speaker 1: my best friend Madrina who keeps me straight? Is an
47:09
Speaker 1: African American woman named Sandy Ratley who is, um, you know,
47:14
Speaker 1: my my my wisdom guide, and my ramanna and and
47:19
Speaker 1: my colleague. Actually we worked together and she's a best
47:22
Speaker 1: friend of my husband. I mean we're very tight. She's
47:24
Speaker 1: she's a black woman who has taught me so much
47:28
Speaker 1: about understanding my power because she is a black woman. Um,
47:32
Speaker 1: you know, there is the intersectionality of of me being
47:38
Speaker 1: a part of the civil rights era. So it is
47:42
Speaker 1: a feminist book. In my view. It is a it
47:44
Speaker 1: is a feminism from a woman of colors perspective. Right um.
47:50
Speaker 1: It is a history book, right um. And its history
47:53
Speaker 1: in the sense of taking back our history and therefore
47:56
Speaker 1: giving us information UM to empower us to have the dialogue. UM,
48:01
Speaker 1: I hope I don't know, I can't remember now, but
48:04
Speaker 1: I hope that my my connection to them, to the
48:08
Speaker 1: queer specifically l g B, t Q and and and
48:12
Speaker 1: to the trans community. I'm not so sure it comes
48:15
Speaker 1: out in this book or I can't remember, but UM,
48:19
Speaker 1: they're a very important part of kind of my experience.
48:21
Speaker 1: And I hope that you know, I've been told by um,
48:25
Speaker 1: by Gabi Ribera, who you know, whose handle is Quirky Weekend,
48:29
Speaker 1: that I'm like, uh, thea. You know, I'm the queer
48:32
Speaker 1: people's queer Latin X tier. Yeah, you know that people
48:36
Speaker 1: see themselves in me, and they saw Madame Mucho. You know.
48:39
Speaker 1: I love that. So I would hope that it's that yes,
48:45
Speaker 1: for Latinos and Latinas, that we you are going to
48:48
Speaker 1: have a very particular relationship to it. And I'm so
48:54
Speaker 1: happy about that because we need that desperately. What we're
48:57
Speaker 1: being made invisible and reduced to, you know, being criminals
49:01
Speaker 1: by this administration, every single one of us. So we
49:04
Speaker 1: need that, we need that connection to our souls. But
49:10
Speaker 1: I am a product of the south side of Chicago,
49:13
Speaker 1: Martin Luther King for me. Yeah, I know, yeah, he's
49:17
Speaker 1: like an old and you know, but but he was
49:20
Speaker 1: actually somebody who I saw and spoke to me like
49:23
Speaker 1: he made me think like damn, if he can be
49:26
Speaker 1: a leader and he's black, then like maybe I can.
49:29
Speaker 1: You know, um, I know, crazy, but we needed that
49:34
Speaker 1: because we were so invisible. Um you know, the feminism,
49:37
Speaker 1: the being a survivor of sexual sexual assault, of rape.
49:41
Speaker 1: I would hope that you know, my cannabis community by
49:46
Speaker 1: the way, um you know my cannabis community, that I
49:51
Speaker 1: hope that they understand right that that um you know,
49:56
Speaker 1: I I really, I mean, you know, I was not
50:01
Speaker 1: that post nine eleven with PTSD. My husband was the
50:06
Speaker 1: one and I was like, no, no, I don't think,
50:07
Speaker 1: I can I think and then to fucking calm down. Yeah. Right.
50:14
Speaker 1: So I'm dying for this book to be part received
50:18
Speaker 1: in the I mean it's a throwaway line. It was
50:20
Speaker 1: a bigger part of the book. They led it to
50:22
Speaker 1: be just like throw it. But I'm like, I am
50:24
Speaker 1: a kind of public person and I am revealing that
50:26
Speaker 1: I consume cannabis and there's very little of that. Like
50:30
Speaker 1: Latina marijuana representation and I love it. I'm here for it.
50:36
Speaker 1: Oh hell yes, because nois not alone. Nois It's another
50:41
Speaker 1: one of those things that were made, you know, when
50:43
Speaker 1: I realized that, like I will eat us in Mexico
50:47
Speaker 1: City growing, having growing leaves and taking the leaves and
50:55
Speaker 1: making because they put into alcohol and then they use it.
50:59
Speaker 1: So I'm like, come on, now, come on now. Na
51:03
Speaker 1: once brought me like a tincture from Mexico and it
51:07
Speaker 1: was cannabis and peyote oil. Good stuff, very good stuff.
51:15
Speaker 1: So that would be my hope is that the different communities. Oh,
51:19
Speaker 1: I have a dream that the Vietnamese community, Asian community
51:24
Speaker 1: writ large. But of course, you know, to take it
51:27
Speaker 1: apart a little bit more, I write a lot about
51:30
Speaker 1: the experience of the Vietnamese community because they are blanketed
51:35
Speaker 1: again kind of you know, with a big swath. And
51:39
Speaker 1: as a journalist, I'm like, I'm not going to do that.
51:41
Speaker 1: So I'm hopeful that like it gets into the hands
51:44
Speaker 1: of Vietnamese writers and authors and journalists and that they
51:48
Speaker 1: supported and so that's my dream. That's really my dream
51:51
Speaker 1: is that it um it is that the home is
51:54
Speaker 1: with Latinos and Latinos, but that we are intersectional, so
51:59
Speaker 1: then it grows. There's a piece in your book as
52:03
Speaker 1: well where you talk about like walking away from CBS
52:08
Speaker 1: or like a major contract and the benefits and the stability.
52:12
Speaker 1: And I know for us as entrepreneurs, as creatives, and
52:16
Speaker 1: also our listeners ask us all the time about becoming
52:19
Speaker 1: small business owners because so many Latinas are small business
52:22
Speaker 1: owners and have hustles or want to go into business
52:26
Speaker 1: on their own full time. So I wanted to ask
52:28
Speaker 1: about that, that piece of the story and that piece
52:31
Speaker 1: of the book, and how do you decide right to
52:34
Speaker 1: walk away from stability when it's something that is so
52:37
Speaker 1: emphasized for us, get a good job, be diligent. One
52:41
Speaker 1: of the makers of success for immigrants and immigrant children,
52:45
Speaker 1: you know, is like the stability, the paycheck, the nine
52:48
Speaker 1: to five, the health. Yeah, here's the thing I realized.
52:56
Speaker 1: I realized that I could stay at a place like CBS.
53:00
Speaker 1: I was being told all over the place, stay, stay, stay.
53:04
Speaker 1: But I think part of what was happening was that
53:06
Speaker 1: something inside of me was dying and and it was
53:11
Speaker 1: in fact the creative, the artistic, the rebel um And
53:17
Speaker 1: that is where we as Latinas. We really have to
53:21
Speaker 1: stay in touch with that that rebel, creative, inspirational. It's
53:29
Speaker 1: going to save us. I have I know many Latinas
53:34
Speaker 1: who have made decisions about working in those high powered companies,
53:39
Speaker 1: and I worry about their souls. I do, I do,
53:45
Speaker 1: and I love you know, I know them. I love them,
53:47
Speaker 1: but I worry about their souls because it's been a
53:52
Speaker 1: long time since I've been in those very white, male
53:54
Speaker 1: dominated spaces. I don't have those platos anymore. What what
54:01
Speaker 1: did happen was that following that kind of independent street
54:05
Speaker 1: allowed me to make the best decision that I made,
54:07
Speaker 1: one of the best decisions I made in my life,
54:09
Speaker 1: which was to marry my husband. Herman Bed is an
54:11
Speaker 1: artist independent from the Dominican Republic. Afro Latino Indigenous daino
54:18
Speaker 1: um and he has such an independent streak because he
54:23
Speaker 1: was an artist and always teased and mental spcio, because
54:28
Speaker 1: the Dominican Republic can be hard for a sensitive artistic
54:31
Speaker 1: man um and so he's the one who was just
54:35
Speaker 1: like your your route, and that's why the kind of
54:38
Speaker 1: independence he fostered, that which leads to surround yourself with
54:44
Speaker 1: people who are going to support you and there are
54:49
Speaker 1: a lot of people, as you know, who are even
54:53
Speaker 1: going to be close to you, who will find a
54:57
Speaker 1: one Herman calls them being a globos. You know you're
55:03
Speaker 1: gonna do what. You're gonna start your own company. I know,
55:05
Speaker 1: stan Loca. I love that, Stan Locas. I think you're
55:09
Speaker 1: gonna do what must not. So, yeah, we have to
55:16
Speaker 1: listen to that voice and trusted right. Thank you for
55:21
Speaker 1: sharing that. UM. I wanted to ask you a question
55:24
Speaker 1: about because we get this a lot, you know. I
55:26
Speaker 1: think we're in the era of self care and we're
55:29
Speaker 1: talking about it and especially the way you know, women
55:32
Speaker 1: of color practice self care. And so during this pandemic,
55:36
Speaker 1: our self care has had to shift, evolved change. For instance,
55:40
Speaker 1: for me, my self care was getting my nails done.
55:43
Speaker 1: Not doing that anymore, you know. And so my question
55:46
Speaker 1: is for you, like, what is your self care look
55:48
Speaker 1: like during this pandemic in general? Has it shifted at
55:52
Speaker 1: all from the before times too? Now? So I think
55:56
Speaker 1: you know that I'm a survivor of COVID, Yes, yes, so, Um,
56:00
Speaker 1: you know, from March to um basically the beginning of May,
56:07
Speaker 1: it was a really challenging time and I was not
56:10
Speaker 1: strong and I was having a real time because I'm
56:14
Speaker 1: one of those people who was out of the house,
56:16
Speaker 1: you know, six thirty I was boxing in the gym,
56:18
Speaker 1: you know, etcetera, etcetera, And so I had to there
56:21
Speaker 1: was a whole recalibration which was just you know, there
56:24
Speaker 1: was I had fever for about thirty days, so there
56:27
Speaker 1: was times when I just barely could not move. Now
56:32
Speaker 1: that I'm fully healed and now that New York has
56:36
Speaker 1: opened up a bit more, um, I have. Self care
56:41
Speaker 1: is super important. So it starts in the morning. The
56:44
Speaker 1: very first thing I do, well, I'll be honest, The
56:46
Speaker 1: first thing I do is I do check social media.
56:49
Speaker 1: It's bad. I start, you know, I'm I try to
56:54
Speaker 1: do it for about just two or three minutes, just
57:00
Speaker 1: and then I'll put in my meditation app and I'll
57:04
Speaker 1: go into a meditative state for about an hour. Sometimes,
57:10
Speaker 1: when I need it more, I'll just lay in bed,
57:11
Speaker 1: won't do anything, just for ten minutes, just just that.
57:15
Speaker 1: But other times I'm meditating, I'm chanting mantras, I'm doing
57:21
Speaker 1: sound therapy, I'm and I'm moving slowly. I'm taking care
57:27
Speaker 1: of me. In that moment, I left out my lemons
57:30
Speaker 1: from the night before, I left out my decaf already
57:33
Speaker 1: ready and set. I'm watering my plants. I'm spending some
57:37
Speaker 1: time at the altar. I'm getting ready for the day.
57:43
Speaker 1: Um and now that I was able to connect with
57:46
Speaker 1: a badass group of people. By seven o'clock in the morning,
57:49
Speaker 1: I'm boxing in the park. So I'm in the park.
57:52
Speaker 1: I'm connected to nature. I'm seeing wildlife, you know. I mean,
57:56
Speaker 1: I walk into my Harlem park, I might see a raccoon,
57:59
Speaker 1: an egrit an eagle, a hawk, um, a blue juh woodpecker.
58:05
Speaker 1: Just in the time that I walked out of my house,
58:08
Speaker 1: and a block too where we're working out. So I
58:12
Speaker 1: spend an hour working out the workout. Now I found
58:15
Speaker 1: this great group of people where we're dancing, kickboxing, boxing, um,
58:21
Speaker 1: and and dancing and just having a great time. Um
58:26
Speaker 1: and then uh and then you know, when it's not
58:32
Speaker 1: the summer. I often take a lot of baths, a
58:34
Speaker 1: lot of epps and salt baths. That's something that I
58:37
Speaker 1: do with me eat us and self care also looks
58:42
Speaker 1: like healing. So, for example, I developed tendonitis because I
58:46
Speaker 1: had stopped working out for so long because of COVID,
58:48
Speaker 1: and then I developed tendonitis, so you know, going to
58:51
Speaker 1: the physical therapist, devoting myself to that, you know, our
58:55
Speaker 1: and more than you know ninety minutes. That's a big
58:58
Speaker 1: chunk at my day to doing that, doing the acupuncture,
59:02
Speaker 1: doing the stretching. So there's there's there is quite a
59:06
Speaker 1: bit of self care, um, and and also being trying
59:09
Speaker 1: to be gentle with myself, um, focusing on abundance, on gratitude.
59:17
Speaker 1: I mean, you, guys, I hate to say you guys.
59:20
Speaker 1: You is know it that right now, this is a
59:23
Speaker 1: really scary time as a journalist who's very public, you
59:28
Speaker 1: know I do. And I'm just like, be thankful. Look,
59:34
Speaker 1: your husband is here, You're still married, you love him,
59:38
Speaker 1: he loves you. You have children who they are frustrated
59:42
Speaker 1: with you, but they love you, you know, because we're
59:46
Speaker 1: we're living on top of each other straight up. Um.
59:50
Speaker 1: So then I'm just like gratitude, gratitude, gratitude, gratitude, gratitude.
59:56
Speaker 1: Another light one song of the summer for you? What
59:59
Speaker 1: are you listening to? What are you loving? What gets
1:00:01
Speaker 1: you moving? What gets you happy? What's your summer anthem?
1:00:06
Speaker 1: I can't give you the name of any one song
1:00:08
Speaker 1: because I'm really bad with songs like like I'll know
1:00:12
Speaker 1: it and I'll be like, oh, that's my and then
1:00:13
Speaker 1: my daughter will be like that's that person. I'm like,
1:00:15
Speaker 1: how do you know that? Because I don't know? And
1:00:17
Speaker 1: this So actually, what what my anthem is is, I
1:00:23
Speaker 1: created a gratitude playlist. Actually, I went on Twitter and
1:00:27
Speaker 1: I said, people, I'm starting a gratitude playlist. Help me
1:00:31
Speaker 1: with you know, with things that I can listen to.
1:00:34
Speaker 1: And so it's a gratitude playlist with a lot of
1:00:37
Speaker 1: rhythm um. And so right now, to be honest with you,
1:00:41
Speaker 1: like when we're working out what we're my my trainer
1:00:44
Speaker 1: is from Senegal, and so it's all African music with
1:00:48
Speaker 1: a serious, serious rhythm. So I'm just doing a lot
1:00:51
Speaker 1: of Senegalese African dancing and rhythm um. Anything that has
1:00:55
Speaker 1: a rhythm um. You know, anything that is school salts me.
1:01:01
Speaker 1: I'm there for it, whether it's one Louis Guerra quatro
1:01:04
Speaker 1: cinta or you know actor level or you know, like
1:01:09
Speaker 1: old school you know, human blades, it's blades, by the way,
1:01:13
Speaker 1: it's not I I know I did too. And then
1:01:20
Speaker 1: we finally sat down and I was like, what up
1:01:23
Speaker 1: and He's like, it's blades, it's I know, so so
1:01:30
Speaker 1: I you know whether sometimes it will be Los Banchos,
1:01:35
Speaker 1: which is super old school, you know. Um, I also
1:01:39
Speaker 1: will just put on the radio and so whatever, so
1:01:42
Speaker 1: you know that one, she's a that one. See, I
1:01:50
Speaker 1: can't even tell oh, I mean what I am listening
1:01:53
Speaker 1: to right now? For sure, I can't even yes yes
1:01:59
Speaker 1: for listeners. The new Cardi B megan the stallium clap
1:02:04
Speaker 1: that we're all bumping, we're except there's here's the thing,
1:02:09
Speaker 1: tell us, tell us, tell us. By the way, I
1:02:12
Speaker 1: love Cardi B. That's the one interview that I'm still
1:02:16
Speaker 1: waiting to get when people ask me, what the who's
1:02:18
Speaker 1: the person? And I want to talk politics with Cardi B. Politics,
1:02:21
Speaker 1: I want to talk sleep with Cardi B. Because I
1:02:23
Speaker 1: don't understand how she doesn't sleep because she's a four
1:02:26
Speaker 1: in the morning. I'm just like, hi, um so what okay,
1:02:33
Speaker 1: wet ass pussy, Yes, okay, so yes, yes, but you
1:02:40
Speaker 1: know what, somebody's gotta make that happen. So I my
1:02:47
Speaker 1: critique of that is that, A I I want a
1:02:54
Speaker 1: little bit more recognition that for some of us, Yes,
1:02:58
Speaker 1: if we're lucky and thank god, I'm still you know, Yes,
1:03:01
Speaker 1: I'm lucky in that way, even though yes, as you
1:03:03
Speaker 1: get older, things change. But the person work, the person
1:03:15
Speaker 1: has to put in work, right, whether it's yourself, because
1:03:20
Speaker 1: you're gonna go into your own self, okay, then you
1:03:22
Speaker 1: gotta do your own work, or whether you're gonna be
1:03:24
Speaker 1: pleasuring with somebody else, then there's gotta be So it
1:03:27
Speaker 1: can't just be like, oh man, we're walking around hot
1:03:29
Speaker 1: all the time. No, we're walking around with We're walking
1:03:32
Speaker 1: around with a lot of stuff that we're taking care of. Right,
1:03:34
Speaker 1: Cardi B's walking around with a lot of worries. She's
1:03:37
Speaker 1: worrying about her business. She's worrying about how she's gonna
1:03:39
Speaker 1: pay all these people. She's worrying. She's worrying about a
1:03:41
Speaker 1: lot of things. So, yes, I love that there are
1:03:44
Speaker 1: so many sex positive especially Latinas and Afro Latinas who
1:03:48
Speaker 1: are we're super sex positive. Luna has been very inspirational
1:03:52
Speaker 1: for me, um, But again, it's like you, you have
1:03:56
Speaker 1: to bring out that desire in me. You have to
1:03:59
Speaker 1: bring out that desire. I have to be willing to
1:04:02
Speaker 1: connect with my ocean and open up. Absolutely, I have to,
1:04:06
Speaker 1: you know, the Goddess of pleasure. I have to open
1:04:09
Speaker 1: up to her. So that's the only thing my critique
1:04:17
Speaker 1: of now that now that you guys have it is
1:04:21
Speaker 1: they needed to recognize at the work that the other
1:04:24
Speaker 1: partner needs to put it that I agree with. Yes,
1:04:27
Speaker 1: I just would like to point out that this is
1:04:30
Speaker 1: the exclusive that shared She's Got a Whop and look
1:04:34
Speaker 1: a thought. Our radio friends heard it here first. This
1:04:38
Speaker 1: is the exclusive Mariasa Award winning journalists author of Once
1:04:43
Speaker 1: I Was You, a memoir of love and hate in
1:04:45
Speaker 1: a tourn America. Thank you so much for being with
1:04:48
Speaker 1: us today. Where can our listeners pick up Once I
1:04:51
Speaker 1: Was You and get to reading. Well, I think it's
1:04:54
Speaker 1: on the Simon and Schuster website. You can pre order
1:04:57
Speaker 1: right now. It comes out September. Um. So yeah, if
1:05:01
Speaker 1: you go to any of my social media Instagram, Twitter,
1:05:05
Speaker 1: or on Facebook, um, you can find the link there. Um.
1:05:08
Speaker 1: I'm I'm really desperate to try to get the pre
1:05:11
Speaker 1: orders up because we have to show strong numbers and
1:05:14
Speaker 1: it takes like five times of mentioning the book to
1:05:16
Speaker 1: people before they decide to actually do it. Um. But yeah,
1:05:20
Speaker 1: so it's out there. Take a picture of yourself with
1:05:22
Speaker 1: the book when you have it. Yes, screen you know
1:05:25
Speaker 1: tag me were but yes, I love speaking with the
1:05:28
Speaker 1: both of you. That's why I want to come back,
1:05:30
Speaker 1: because I I just love everything about what you're doing,
1:05:36
Speaker 1: absolutely everything, and I love your bedrooms too. Thank you,
1:05:40
Speaker 1: thank you, thank you so much, thank you. Thank you.
1:05:48
Speaker 1: Radio Radio with and Bullshit, a radiophonic novella local to
1:06:04
Speaker 1: a radio hosted by Mala Munos and Diosafem