Fresh Air - Best Of: Tracee Ellis Ross / Racism In Medicine

Episode Date: January 27, 2024

Tracee Ellis Ross co-stars in the new movie American Fiction, which is nominated for five Oscars, including Best Picture. For eight seasons, she starred in the ABC comedy series Black-ish. Ross played the mother, Bow, and she worked with the writers to make sure her character wasn't just what she calls "wife wallpaper." She spoke with Tonya Mosley about those roles. Also, Dr. Uché Blackstock talks about her new book, Legacy: A Black Physician Reckons With Racism In Medicine. Maureen Corrigan reviews the debut novel Martyr! from Iranian American poet Kaveh Akbar.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Support for this podcast and the following message come from the NPR Wine Club, which has generated over $1.75 million to support NPR programming. Whether buying a few bottles or joining the club, you can learn more at nprwineclub.org slash podcast. Must be 21 or older to purchase. From WHYY in Philadelphia, I'm Tanya Mosley with Fresh Air Weekend. Today, Tracee Ellis Ross. She co-stars in the new movie American Fiction, which is nominated for five Oscars, including Best Picture. For eight seasons, she starred in the ABC comedy series Black-ish. Ross played the mother, Bo, and she worked with the writers to make sure her character wasn't just what she calls wife wallpaper. The way sitcoms are done and the expectation of what is there is that the story is told through the man. And the wife becomes the setup or is only there in context to the man.

Also, Dr. Uche Blackstock talks about her new book, Legacy, a Black physician reckons with racism in medicine. And Maureen Corrigan reviews a debut novel from Iranian-American poet Kaveh Akbar. That's coming up on Fresh Air Weekend. Who's claiming power this election? What's happening in battleground states? And why do we still have the Electoral College? All this month, the ThruLine podcast

is asking big questions about our democracy and going back in time to answer them. Listen now to the ThruLine podcast from NPR. This is Fresh Air Weekend. I'm Tanya Mosley. My first guest, Tracee Ellis Ross, co-stars in the new movie American Fiction, which is nominated for five Oscars, including Best Picture. She and the cast are also nominated for a Screen Actors Guild Award for Best Ensemble.

Tracee Ellis Ross plays Lisa, a doctor for Planned Parenthood, and the sister of Thelonious Monk Ellison, played by Jeffrey Wright, a frustrated novelist and professor fed up with the literary world, profiting from stereotypical stories of Black people who are poor and gangs or addicted to drugs. To prove his point, he uses a pen name and writes a book that leans into all of those stereotypes. And he's offered a huge advance, making Monk the very kind of author he despises. Monk is also living in the shadows of his accomplished siblings, his physician sister Lisa, played by Tracee Ellis Ross, and his brother, played by Sterling K. Brown, a successful plastic surgeon. And Monk is trying to figure out how to care for his mother who has Alzheimer's.

In this scene, he's catching up with his sister Lisa and the ways that siblings do, and the two of them are talking about the stresses of their jobs and the purpose behind what they do. I go through a metal detector every day. Well, what you do is important. Oh. Meanwhile, all I do is invent little people in my head and make them have imaginary conversations with each other. Books change people's lives. Has something I've written ever changed your life?

Absolutely. Absolutely. Absolutely. My dining room table was wobbly as hell before your last book came out. It was like perfect. I'm telling you.

Take it back to Logan, please. Logan cannot help you, monk. Oh my God. For eight seasons, Tracee Ellis Ross starred in the ABC comedy series Black-ish, created by Kenya Barris. She currently stars opposite Belle Powley as a cutthroat news reporter in the new movie Cold

Copy, which explores the boundaries of journalistic integrity. Recently, she starred opposite Eddie Murphy in Amazon's holiday movie Candy Cane Lane. Ross has received numerous awards throughout her career, including a Golden Globe and nine NAACP Image Awards. Tracy Ellis Ross, welcome to Fresh Air. Thank you so much for having me. I really enjoyed American Fiction, and I know a lot of people have, too. I'm really proud to be in that movie. Yeah, what got you excited about this screenplay?

There were actually a lot of things. You know, usually when I pick up a script, the first thing I do, like any actor, is you sort of look for your own part. And one of my telltale signs is if I start reading my lines out loud. But when I picked up the script, I got caught up in the story very quickly. I was hooked from that first scene when Monk is, you know, in his teaching experience and the conversation they were having and just the dialogue. And I wanted to know how this man was going to make sense of his journey. And so I was hooked from the beginning. And then the character, I mean, there's so many things.

And then the opportunity to work with Jeffrey Wright. I mean, the list goes on. The character is so real. But even with success, everything isn't flourishing. I mean, she's struggling because she's the daughter. And so she's holding things down for the family. And the ways that I think many people understand when you think about family dynamics, where the oldest girl sits in the family. And so Jeffrey Wright's character, Monk, he's able to be in that more passive role because of where he is within the lineage of the family.

And sometimes, you know, I wonder, I don't always know if it's the oldest. Is it because you're the sister? But there is always one in the family, you know, that holds things in a different way and with a different weight. And I think that was also one of the things that was so beautiful about the way the story was written and what was so compelling to me watching it and why I feel so proud to be in the film, we rarely get to see black people in quiet movies. So much isn't said that is there. We don't have to expositionally explain our experience in what we say, what was written on the page. There's a sense of cord in this movie, and I do think he fought for this.

Cord Jefferson, the writer. The writer and director, yeah. That he gave our characters, these people that he gave life to on the page, but that we breathed life into, room to be in a way that means you're trusting and have a sense of knowingness around the experience of being a black person. This is Court Jefferson's directorial debut. I know. And I think I've read that you like working with first time directors. What do you like about it?

It's like the smell of fresh cut grass. It's that like, there's something, there's a sense of, it's like a curiosity and a willingness and flexibility. But also, I really believe that my job as an actor when I'm not a producer on a project, which I do as well, is to be of service to the director and to be of service to their vision and what they're creating. And that's not to say I don't bring all of my wealth of opinions because I have a lot of them. It's not to say I don't bring those, but it really is to be a part of that creative experience. And so first-time directors, and I also remember being a first-time director, and there's just something, you're seeing it all new and fresh, and just a joy

for me, a joy. Okay, so Black-ish, which ran for eight seasons. You played Rainbow Johnson, Dr. Rainbow Johnson, known as Bo, an anesthesiologist, wife of Dre, played by Anthony Anderson. And in the show, you're the mother of five children. I want to play a clip from the show. And just to set it up, your husband grew up in Compton in the 80s, and he's still connected to his childhood friends. And one of those friends is a starving artist named Shaw. And he's been staying at your home, sleeping on your couch, not showering, lounging all day. And your character, Bo, cannot stand it. And she really can't stand it when she sees her kids emulating him. Let's listen. Why is Skid Row in my house? We're off the hamster wheel, man. No! Shaw got to you too?

What's the point of playing society's game when it's clear you can hit it big by sleeping all day? There's so much jelly on your neck. Thank you. Zoe, are you tan or are you dirty? Mark Zuckerberg never changes his hoodie. Billionaire tech artist. I'd show you the beautiful art of my dance,

but standing is for sheep. Is it now? You stink. And you know what else? None of you are talented enough to be starving artists. None of you! And I'm your mother. I'm your biggest fan.

And do you know how this is going to play out for you? You're going to fall behind at school. You're going to get stupid. You're going to get skin infections because you don't shower, and then when you turn 18 and your dad and I kick you out you're just gonna roam the streets and you're gonna do really bad things for small amounts of money and chicken nuggets and then you're gonna die in the gutter and people are just gonna step over your little lifeless body on their way to Pinkberry.

Does that sound good? Huh? Sound good to you? You like the way that sounds? I think I'll go do some algebra. Yeah. I'm going to hit the shower. Go hit the shower.

Me first. My areas are disgusting. Me first. And? I was last to the party. I'm going to give this one one more day. What? Give me the carton, little girl. I'll kill it to the party. I'm going to give this one one more day. What? Give me the carton, little girl.

I'll kill it for the family. That was a scene from the series Black-ish, which ran for eight seasons on ABC. I read, Tracy, that you were initially nervous about transitioning to this role of mother on TV. I was. Because you didn't want to be maybe typecast? No, just, you know, Hollywood is limited in its thinking and particularly in its ability to see the elasticity and beauty of black women and all that we can do. And particularly in the limited idea that as you become a mother or sort of transition to that role, you what's the right word, kept my attention on and was mindful of and kept voicing my point of view about was Beau not becoming wife wallpaper. is that the story is told through the man and the wife becomes the setup or is only there as in context to the man. The man's narrative, yeah. Has no real point of view, no real story. You don't know what her life is off camera.

And she really just sets up the jokes of the man. And I had no interest in doing that. And even though on paper this was a woman who was a doctor and had all these things, it doesn't matter. If the writing doesn't continue to push that and open that space, it's not going to be. And so I spent a lot of time, I was known for the actor who would always say, yes, but why? Why am I doing that? Or, hmm, why does Dre come home from work and Beau is at home chopping, cooking dinner? And they're like, oh, well, it doesn't really matter. I'm like, no, but it really does. And they would be like,

oh, here she goes. It's often unconscious. It's not that writers are purposefully attempting to do that. It's that sometimes it just services the story in a more efficient way. And that's fine, but that's not what I'm interested in playing. And I always look at, okay, does this ring true for the character? Does it ring true for the scene? And then how does it look in the larger context of television in general and what we are sharing? You know, you embody the character so well, Beau. I think people might be surprised to know that you had to audition for it.

Yes. It wasn't written for you. It was written for me. Oh. And I had to audition for it. Both. Yes. Isn't that neat?

Well, I think I also read that this is something that you've encountered many times in Hollywood, where people might even say, we want a Tracee Ellis Ross type, but then they don't call for you. Why does something like that happen? No, I actually couldn't get the audition on that one. I don't know. I don't know. Hollywood's weird.

There's no guarantee in this business. So even if Kenya, Kenya did write the role for me. Kenya actually was a writer on Girlfriends. I don't know if people know that. And we were friends and he told me that he had written this role for me. And my agents never submitted me to the point that I sent them the script and they're like, we still don't think this is right for you. Why didn't they think it was right? I have no idea. Maybe for the same reasons that I was afraid to do it. But my experience in my career and in my life is you

take the opportunities and you work begets work. You got to get in the ring. And sometimes the part might not be exactly right, but you turn it into what you want it to be. You breathe life and all the things that you, all your dreams, and you get them in those moments, because when the window is open, you got to get in there. There's a lot of actresses, there's a lot of people who have the same big dreams. And so when you have the opportunity, you got to grab that ring. If you're just joining us, my guest is actress and producer Tracy Ellis Ross. She co-stars in the new satirical movie American Fiction, which is nominated for five Oscars, including Best Picture. Tracee Ellis Ross is also in the new thriller Cold Copy as a cutthroat TV reporter. We'll continue our conversation after a short break.

I'm Tanya Mosley, and this is Fresh Air Weekend. Let's get back to my conversation with Tracee Ellis Ross. She co-stars in the new satirical movie American Fiction and is nominated for a SAG Award for Best Ensemble along with Jeffrey Wright, Sterling K. Brown, and Leslie Uggams. Ross is an award-winning actress, producer, and CEO. For eight seasons, she starred in the award-winning ABC comedy series Black-ish. She's also the daughter of Motown singer and actor Diana Ross and music business manager Robert Ellis Silberstein. Tracy, there's an entire generation who knows your name outside of your mother. I know. It's so nutty. It is nutty. It's quite beautiful, yeah. Is that something that you consciously tried to work towards?

Or it just has happened over time? It just happened. What I consciously tried to work towards is having a sense of who I was outside of my mother's embrace. And I think that that's something that started very young because I felt very uncomfortable with the attention that I got just because I was her child. It didn't feel genuine. And I felt, it felt like, but that's not me. That's what she did. When did you begin to have an awareness of that? Young, very young. I mean, my mother, when I was growing up, my mother was at the height of her fame. You know, it's funny, I was doing some research for something. Funny thing about my

life is I literally can Google, when did my parents get divorced? When did I start Dalton School? When did, like, I can Google that stuff, which is really bizarre, but kind of fun. To jog your own memory. Yeah, kind of fun. What year did my grandmother die? Things like that. So I was looking at the year my grandmother had passed away, just trying to remember what else was happening and remembering how my mom in my life has never said, I don't have time or not now. And how, you know, the woman that the world knows as Diana Ross, like, doesn't hold a candle to my mom. Like, who my mom is, is like a mother. It's just a fraction of who she is. It's like a fraction. The Diana Ross, like, the mom

that I have is like, that lady is stellar. And just the way she parents, it's just, it's, it's a, you can see it in how close me and my siblings are. I will tell you there's not a day that goes by that I don't think about something I heard you say about your mother, that she was always there for dinner. Oh, yes. And she always put you guys to bed. Yeah.

And listen, I'm a very busy lady. I don't have children. And I'm like, how did she do this? So my mom would record at night after she put us down for bed. And then she would wake us up in the morning when she got back from the studio. And then she would go to sleep. She would sit with us at breakfast. She never left us for longer than a week. So she would commute out to go and do her shows. In the 10-year span, I can't remember the time frame right now, but it was pivotal years for me as a child. If I were to go through, like if you look at Wikipedia that just goes through, she did an album a year, two movies, Central Park, her mother passed away. If you look at the amount of things that occurred, like it seems not humanly possible. And the reason I looked at all of that is because in those years, I had a completely present, available mother who planned

birthday parties, who if she was gone would call at bedtime and in the morning to wake us up. So I come from a very unique experience where Andy Warhol painted and drew us, where, you know, Michael Jackson and Marvin Gaye and like, you know, all of these very extraordinary things, went to school in Switzerland and Paris and went for Christmases in Samaritz and, you know, all these things. But the foundation of that was I was a wanted child who my mother made space for and was present for, and I had siblings that I did it all with, you know. And so I come from an abundance of love in a way that I feel beyond grateful for because it gave me a foundation and a sense of how to show up in my life for other people and for myself. I mean, I remember being in fights with my sister, like, when she's trying to go on stage and her never going, like, I can't do this right now. Like, her, like like sorting through a fight between me and my sister. Right before she's about to go perform. Do you know what I mean?

Like probably like Royal Albert Hall or something. Like I'm going on at Radio City Music Hall and you guys are fighting because Rhonda took your doll. I mean. When you were growing up in this world, you know, Michael Jackson calling on the phone, Marvin Gaye calling on the phone. What were you imagining for yourself as an adult? What was in your mind's eye as you were thinking about? About who I was my mom be a woman full of agency, who was not saying, look at me, but this is me. I saw a woman who was full of power and wielding it with grace and love as the anchor. And I wanted that. In 2020, you played a singer.

I did. A legendary singer named Grace Davis. Oh, my gosh. Who was in beautiful sparkly dresses on a stage, by the way. Yes, yes, she was. She was in the latter prime of her career, and the movie is called High Note. And in it, you sing. I sing. I want to play a clip of it. The song we're going to play is called Love Myself. Let's listen. I forget when I was younger it was easy

Now I'm stressed I'd always have to have the TV on Watching memories fade to grey and winding slowly Makes me uneasy uneasy Making me crazy But is it fake love? If I'm lying to myself Trying to fake the way I feel Am I a stranger? If I don't recognize myself

Trying to fix up something real I don't really care. I don't want to keep my head down. Got nothing to share. Maybe I should put my phone down. I don't really care if everybody likes me. I just want to love myself. Love myself.

That was Tracee Ellis Ross singing Love Myself in the movie High Note. What drew you to this role? Oh, everything you just said. I know. Sparkly dress, singing. You know, we came out, we were the second movie to come out during the pandemic. Didn't have a premiere, didn't have anything. It was such a heartbreaking

moment. But in comparison to what was happening, it was nothing. The opportunity to sing, to record songs. I went into the studio and recorded songs. I ended up on like music billboard charts. She was a really wonderful character, a wonderful woman. I loved that she wore eyelashes. I never wear fake eyelashes. That was one thing that really got me into Grace Davis and her hair. It was like facing the scariest imaginary monster of your nightmares. I came home on some days from the studio convinced that I was going to be obliterated by choosing to do this role, that I was going to be compared to my mother, which is the reason I didn't sing growing up. When I was 22, my mother said to me, it's time for you to record an album. I sang all through high school. And it was just too scary for me. It was the idea that people were going to compare me to my mom felt untenable to me. And then you allow that scary thought to just grow and grow and grow and get hidden in a room. And by the time you turn

44, is that how old I was? 47. I don't know how old I was when I did it, but whatever. You're definitely an adult. That monster becomes pretty real. And so I, you know, no one on the outside could see what I was facing, but those I shared with knew that I was facing one of my scariest, like, things to jump over. And I got to experience and open something. And one of the things that I realized is by cutting off a part of although I wouldn't mind. But I opened up Lifeways and it just opened something up for me. You could feel it, right. It was a joy, a joy and a terrifying joy to jump into. It sounds like your mother has always been very supportive of anything that you've ever wanted to do. Absolutely. Did you guys ever talk about this particular role and you singing? Yeah. I didn't bring a lot to her at all until I recorded the song and felt the first song, Love Myself, and felt good about it.

And I went over to her house and like people, my brother sings and records Evan and everyone I know in the music people I know, they're like, the car, the car is always the place. It sounds so good in the car because you've got the surround sound and you're enclosed. So I called my mom and I was like, I'm coming over and we got to get in the car. She was like, what? And I was like, I've got the song. So we got, she came out of the house, got in my car. We sat in the car and I turned it up and she was sitting next to me. And we were holding hands on the, whatever that thing is in between, holding hands.

And I finished, finished playing. And she turned to me with like tears streaming down her face, and she said, finally. And then she said, play it again. That album I wanted you to do at 22. 22, yeah. Better late than never. Finally, finally, my girl is singing. Well, Tracy Ellis Ross, thank you so much for this conversation.

This has been such a treat. Well, I appreciate you. I really appreciate the conversation. Tracy Ellis Ross co-stars in the new satirical movie American Fiction and the new thriller Cold Copy. Kaveh Akbar is an Iranian-American poet whose work has appeared in The New Yorker and The Paris Review. He's written Portrait of the Alcoholic and now a debut novel called Martyr. Our book critic Maureen Corrigan has a review. A young man lies on a mattress in a room that smelled like piss and Febreze and asks God for a sign. He's asked this many times before, but this time, the light bulb on the ceiling does something for a split second. It blinks or gets brighter. The young man, whose name is Cyrus Shams, asks for a divine do-over. He thinks to himself that he wants confirmation, like typing your password in twice

to a web browser. Nothing. Nevertheless, Cyrus resolves to embark on a pilgrimage of sorts. After all, throughout centuries, faith has been grounded on less than the possible flickering of a light bulb. That opening set piece in Kaveh Akbar's debut novel Martyr reveals a lot about the artfully jumbled tone of the narrative to come, as does the jaunty exclamation point in the novel's title. Martyr! is wry, blasphemous, grim, grimy, and moving, among other things. Akbar is a celebrated Iranian-American poet who's chronicled his own battles with addiction. Like many debut novelists, he's fashioned his anti-hero Cyrus in something of his own image. Cyrus, too, is a poet, a recovering addict, and an Iranian-American. But as this novel progresses, we readers are beguiled into worlds far removed from the reach of Akbar's own lived experience. Cyrus, we quickly learn, struggles with a legacy of violent, meaningless death. As a newborn, Cyrus lost his mother. She was a passenger on Iran Air Flight 655, an actual plane that was mistakenly shot down in 1988 by an actual Navy ship, the USS Vincennes. All 290 passengers on board that plane were killed.

The Vincennes incident is one of those real-life tragedies that prompt many of us of a certain age to think, oh yeah, the Vincennes incident, what was that again? But for Cyrus, a fictional inheritor of this disaster, his mother's death has shaped his entire life. It's at the center of his lifelong depression, or as he calls it, the big pathological sad. It's like a giant bowling ball on the bed, everything just kind of rolls into it. Cyrus needs to resolve the age-old question of whether life, especially in the face of such random annihilation, has any meaning. Hence the importance of that possible light bulb message from God. Because he's a poet, Cyrus's search for meaning involves writing a book of poems about martyrs, figures like the IRA hunger striker Bobby Sands and the Tiananmen tank man and Malcolm X.

Those poems are strewn throughout Martyr, along with a richly imagined mix of stories within stories narrated by a variety of characters. Among them are Cyrus's Polish-Egyptian roommate and occasional lover, Zee Novak, and his father, Ali, who emigrated to Indiana with baby Cyrus and spent his life working on an industrial chicken farm. Cyrus's pilgrimage ultimately takes him to New York, where he seeks out a dying Iranian-American visual artist named Orchiday. Her installation at the Brooklyn Museum is called Death Speak. Orchiday is living at the museum, where visitors are encouraged to line up and talk with her in the final weeks and days of her life. Martyr is so much its own creation that comparisons don't help. Maybe you could think of it as something of an Iranian-American spin on John Kennedy Toole's comic picaresque A Confederacy of Dunces, wedded to Donna Tartt's The Goldfinch,

another meditation on a missing mother and the unpredictable power of art. Occasionally, the sheer antic abundance of Akbar's storylines makes them read as though they were created primarily for the sake of contrivance rather than conviction. But his own poetic language never exhausts its appeal. Early in the novel, Cyrus articulates for the first time his need to understand his mother's death. We're told that the words as they came out of his mouth gave shape to something that had long been formless within him, flower thrown on a ghost. What a startling way to describe the power of words,

including so many of the words that Akbar himself throws onto the page with such precision in Martyr. Maureen Corrigan is a professor of literature at Georgetown University. She reviewed Martyr by Kaveh Akbar. Coming up, Dr. Uche Blackstock talks about her new book, Legacy, a Black Physician Reckons with Racism in Medicine. I'm Tanya Mosley, and this is Fresh Air Weekend. When physician Uche Blackstock was a medical student at Harvard, she had a near-death experience that gave her a sobering outlook on the state of medical care in our country. Suffering from excruciating stomach pain, Blackstock took herself to the ER, and after hours of waiting, she was told she had a stomach bug and sent home. But as the days went on, she felt worse, and it would take two more ER visits before she was diagnosed with appendicitis.

And because it took so long for the diagnosis, her appendix ruptured, requiring emergency surgery, followed by a painful recovery that sent her back to the hospital. This experience for Dr. Blackstock took her back to watching her mother, at 47 years old, die of leukemia. Blackstock's mother was also a doctor, and while she had access to quality health care, Blackstock wonders whether her mother's childhood experiences with poverty and poor medical care, coupled with stress as a Black woman, may have contributed to her early death. Dr. Uche Blackstock explores systemic inequities in her new book,

Legacy, A Black Physician Reckons with Racism in Medicine. Dr. Blackstock is the founder and CEO of Advancing Health Equity. She's held several titles at the New York University School of Medicine, serving as former associate professor, an emergency physician, and former faculty director of recruitment, retention, and inclusion in the Office of Diversity Affairs. Dr. Blackstock's twin sister, Oney, is also a physician, making the two, along with their mother, the first Black mother-daughter legacy to graduate from Harvard Medical School. Dr. Uche Blackstock, welcome to Fresh Air. Thank you so much for having me. I'm very excited to speak with you today.

Yes, well, you basically grew up in the medical field. Your mother, Dale Blackstock, was a nephrologist, and you knew through her work in your schooling the disparities, but it was actually that experience with your appendix that allowed you to see firsthand the fractures within healthcare. What was it about that experience that really shifted your focus? So that was the first experience that I was a patient. And I was in a really vulnerable state. I was in a lot of discomfort and I actually had to go to the ER three times before I got the correct diagnosis.

And as you mentioned, I ended up having complications. And I think at the time, you know, I felt something felt wrong to me. You know, I said, you know, would I have ended up in this position if I wasn't Black? But it really took a few years of processing what had happened for me to recognize that it may have been because I was a young Black woman that this diagnosis got missed. Right. You always wonder, and you're not quite sure, you know, I think you wrote in the book, the attending physician felt like he was dismissive. Your twin sister said to you as the physician was leaving, maybe it's appendicitis, but you want to respect your doctor. You don't want to question their authority, but you felt like maybe they weren't listening to you. Exactly. So even as a medical student, I still felt like that. I still felt like I'm going to put all of my faith into this team that's taking care of me. So even if my own twin sister, who's

also a medical student, thinks that this could be appendicitis, I'm just going to go with what this team is saying. Uche, I want to talk a little bit more about your childhood and your parents' influence, because we mentioned that your mother was a nephrologist and that your dad was an accountant and that you all lived in Crown Heights. The Crown Heights is basically a neighborhood within Brooklyn. How would you describe it during those childhood years? So my parents bought the house in 1977, and it was a formerly redlined neighborhood. I actually found out relatively recently, but in the 80s, it really was the place where the crack epidemic was just going like fire. We would find crack files in our front yard. I've seen shootings, but I will say that it was a very tight-knit community. Our neighbors, we looked out for each other. If there

was a snowstorm, we knew that our front yard would be shoveled. It was mostly Black American, Caribbean American community, and it was the only place I lived up until I went off to college. And so I still consider it home. You mentioned witnessing a shooting. You were hanging out at a block party with your twin sister. You heard gunshots and you saw your neighbor fall to the ground. That is a devastating thing to see as a young child. And I experienced something similar as a teenager, and I know how it's impacted my work and my view

of the world. I'm just wondering, have you put together how experiencing that has impacted the work that you do? Yeah, you know, it's interesting because I think that when people hear about someone being shot, you know, on the news, it's kind of very, it's depersonalizing. But to see it happen to someone you've seen around the neighborhood or you've said hello to and to see someone's life snuffed out in front of you, but then also feeling fear in that moment and running away, I will never forget it. But I also, it helped me understand that, you know, people like to say that they're good people and bad people. And I think, you know, we're all good-ish, right? We're all trying to be better people. No one deserves to be treated like that. No one deserves to have their life snuffed away like that. And so I think that, you know, it's helped me understand as I got older how, you know, what I was seeing in that moment

wasn't just an interaction between two people, but really reflected larger systemic issues. Your mother was such a strong and powerful presence for you and your twin sister, Oni. Some of your first memories you write about are of the two of you playing around in her medical bag. Had you ever considered being anything else growing up? Never. This is what happens when you have just, you know, the most loving mother who is also incredibly well-respected by her patients and by her colleagues. So it was sort of like, I think both Oney and I looked at her and said, you know what, we want to be just like her.

We also want to be a doctor. And I think also, you know, we were surrounded by Black women physicians. You know, our pediatrician, all of my mother's friends, you know, on our block we had other Black women physicians. So it was a reality to me. It had to be completely devastating for the entire community, for this entire system that you're talking about of fellow Black physicians and community members when your mother passed. Yes. I still personally am grieving her death, and I grieve it for our community. You know, my mom was friends with everyone at the hospital. Everyone knew who she was. People came to her for help. You know, she never put on airs. And I think it's because she grew up in that neighborhood. She grew

up in the same neighborhood that she practiced in. And while she, you know, you said in the opening that she was really doing a lot of work on the community level. And during a time when we weren't talking about health inequity or health equity or racial health inequities. We didn't have language for it, but I feel like my mother and her colleagues were doing the work that we do now in terms of, you know, diabetes screenings, high blood pressure screenings, connecting people in the neighborhood with the resources that they needed. And so I always say that my mother was providing what's called structurally competent, culturally responsive care. She was really thinking about the social and political context in which her patients lived, worked, prayed, and, you know, treating them with respect to those factors. So yes, so when she died, I feel like it's still such a profound loss for our community, and she was only 47.

She died of a rare form of leukemia, and doctors told you her cells indicated that she had been exposed to unusually high levels of radiation. Where do you think she could have been exposed? Yes, yes. So when she, after she was diagnosed, we went to Dana-Farber Institute. It was, you know, up in Boston while my sister and I were in college there. And yeah, they looked at her, they looked at her chromosomes. They said, wow, it looks like you've been exposed to radiation. And so, you know, looking back and talking to her, you know, she lived near Superfund sites where we know, you know, toxic radioactive materials had been dumped. So it's very likely we know that, you know, black neighborhoods that are lower income are more likely to be sites of environmental toxins. And so it is entirely possible that that was one of the reasons that my mother ended up developing leukemia later on in life, that she may have been exposed

as a child living in her neighborhood. You also wonder about the stress she endured and how that might have contributed to her health. Yes. There's so much that we know and that we don't know about the chronic stress of living in poverty and living under systemic racism. You know, I talked about the weathering process, that chronic wear and tear. And while we know that being black or we know that race is a social construct, we do know that chronic stress can increase our cortisol levels. So that's a stress hormone. And our bodies are not used to having that cortisol level constantly high. It actually has detrimental impact on our body. We know that it could actually, the chronic stress can change how genes are expressed in our body as well. And so I think that, I think in the future, we're going to see how the stress,

the chronic stress of living with everyday racism, how it has these multiple, multiple impacts on our bodies in ways that we have not even conceived. As you entered your 40s, did you consciously think about stress and how it might be impacting you and your body? And how have you thought about this as you move through this work? Yes. You know, when my mom was sick, we had many phone calls. I was a sophomore in college, and I remember one call she said, I want to make sure that you take care of yourself.

Even once you have your babies, make sure you take care of yourself. And I feel like that was her reminder to me that, you know, maybe there were times that she had not done that, where she had put us first. She had put other people first, everyone before her. And I think especially as Black women, that's something, you know, that we do very, very often. So, yes, you know, I had my children in my late 30s. I was juggling a career as well. Then I started my own company. And then 2020 happened.

And I've tried to be very intentional about taking care of myself. But I also recognize that there are a lot of things out of my control as well. So I'm going to do my best. Your mother's battle with leukemia, it taught you so much about a lot of things as you're sharing with us. But it also taught you about bedside manner and the care beyond the medical, what's needed from a physician when someone is dealing with end of life. Because as you write, it's one of the most vulnerable experiences you can have as a human being. Yes, one of the most vulnerable. Yeah, I just remember being in her room on the weekends. We would come down from Boston and sleep in the hospital room with her.

And I remember the team would come in and surround her, ask her questions. And sometimes it felt so, so formal and impersonal. And I was like, that's my mom there. You know, like, can they just like maybe sit down and, you know, at least at her eye level and talk to her. And it was almost like she was a specimen. So those are lessons that I took with me into medical school and beyond that I just, I try when I have interactions with my patients that they actually feel seen, heard, and appreciated. And as an emergency medicine doctor, that is more

difficult because we don't have a lot of time with our patients. But there are things that you can do in the moment to make your patients feel appreciated. Yeah, one of the things you talk about in the book that I had never thought about before is just being eye level with your patient. Yes, that makes a huge difference because when you are standing up over your patient, just sort of that high dynamic, it also feels like you're trying to leave the room, like you are not really settled in, that you almost don't even really want to be there. And so I would always ask patients, can I pull up a chair next to your bed, or can I just sit at the foot of your bed just to make them feel a little bit more comfortable?

But I would also always ask first. I'm so struck, Uche, by, I don't know why it's so, you know why it's a challenge for me is because I think about your mother and I think about so many black women I know who never made it to 50. Like your mother isn't the only one you know. No. In your life, I imagine. me if I think about, you know, when I hit my 40s, if I started thinking about taking care of myself and my mortality, I think about it all the time because I say I was only 19 years old when my mother died. Like, even though I wasn't a child, I was still young and I still needed to be mothered. So I think about what a loss it was for my sister and me, for our community. And

then I think about all the other Black women that died prematurely. So like the one thing that I did want to mention is, you know, when we think about health care, like the U.S. overall is not doing well. Our life expectancy for all racial demographic groups continues to decline. And, you know, that happened when the pandemic started, but our peer nations' life expectancy has bumped back up, but not for the U.S. And of course, you know, Black people, Indigenous people, we have the worst life expectancy. And then I think about, you know, all of that potentially, all those lost years and potential when we die prematurely. It really is something to grieve about. I think about the parties that could have happened, the reunions, the family reunions, all of the good times that are lost because we cannot lead full, long lives. Your mother really guides you in this work, doesn't she? She does.

And I'm getting a little emotional, but this book is also an opportunity to give her a voice to people who may not have heard of her or have met her. I always say that when people meet Oni and me, that they're meeting our mother, because this woman literally poured blood, sweat, and tears into us. I think because she had grown up in poverty, because she was the first to go to college and med school, she wanted a very different life for us than she had for herself. And sometimes I worry. I remember when we turned 18, she said, you know, I'm so tired. And I don't know if, you know, she was, she may have been in the early stages of her illness then, but she said, I am so tired. I put so much into you both.

Well, I know she would be proud of this book and look at both you and Oni. Yes, no, she definitely would be proud. Dr. Uche Blackstock, thank you so much for this conversation. Tanya, it has been an absolute pleasure. Dr. Uche Blackstock is the author of the new book, Legacy, A Black Physician Reckons with Racism in Medicine. Fresh Air Weekend is produced by Teresa Madden. Fresh Air's executive producer is Danny Miller.

Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham. Weekend is produced by Teresa Madden. Fresh Air's executive producer is Danny Miller. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham. Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Amy Sallet, Phyllis Myers, Roberta Shorrock, Sam Brigger, Lauren Krenzel, Heidi Saman, Anne-Marie Baldonado, Thea Chaloner, Seth Kelly, and Susan Nyakundi. Our digital media producer is Molly C.V. Nesper. For Terry Gross, I'm Tanya Mosley.