Good Life Project - Love in the Age of Difference | Mira Jacob

Episode Date: December 23, 2019

Mira Jacob is an author, illustrator, contributor to The New York Times, Vogue, BuzzFeed, Shondaland and many others, and writing professor at The New School and Randolph College. Her latest book, Good Talk: A Memoir in Conversations, takes you on a funny, wise, provocative and profoundly eye-opening journey about her life growing up with Indian parents in New Mexico, marrying a white, Jewish man and raising a biracial son in a world where love, fear, rage, and identity often dance together in deeply complicated ways.You can find Mira Jacob at: Instagram | Website | Facebook-------------Have you discovered your Sparketype yet? Take the Sparketype Assessment™ now. IT’S FREE (https://sparketype.com/) and takes about 7-minutes to complete. At a minimum, it’ll open your eyes in a big way. It also just might change your life.If you enjoyed the show, please share it with a friend. Thank you to our super cool brand partners. If you like the show, please support them - they help make the podcast possible. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

My guest today, Mira Jacob, is the author and illustrator of a really moving, funny, provocative new graphic memoir called Good Talk, a memoir in conversations, which is the follow-up to her also critically acclaimed novel, The Sleepwalker's Guide to Dancing. Mira's writings and drawings have also appeared everywhere from the New York Times, Guernica, Vogue, so many others. She's even drawn a column on Shondaland. And while living in Brooklyn now, Mira grew up in New Mexico. The daughter of first-generation immigrants from India, she learned to fly a single-engine Cessna with her physician dad as a young child, and also learned at a young age that the color of her skin had a very real effect on the way that people saw and treated her and also the assumptions that people made about her.

This became ever more apparent when years later, as a writer living in New York City, she witnessed the events of 9-11 up close and found herself not just a New Yorker who was grieving alongside everyone else, but also an instant subject of suspicion. In her new memoir, Good Talk, Mira drops back into this conversation around race, color of her skin, the assumptions that people make years down the road, starting with a question from her son, actually, who wanted to know if some white people hate brown people and daddy is white, does he hate me? We dive into not only Mira's powerful answer

and her personal story, but also her upbringing, the beautiful relationships with her parents, and also the importance of staying curious and in the conversation in today's culture and how she weaves all of these issues into this really moving new book, even when clear answers are nowhere to be found and mess seems not only inevitable, but perpetual. So excited to share this important conversation with you. I'm Jonathan Fields, and this is Good Life Project. The Apple Watch Series 10 is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever,

making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest-nest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest-charging Apple Watch, getting you eight hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series X. Available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone Xs are later required.

Charge time and actual results will vary. Mayday, mayday. We've been compromised. The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were going to be fun. On January 24th. Tell me how to fly this thing. Mark Wahlberg. You know what the difference between me and you is?

You're going to die. Don't shoot him, we need him. Y'all need a pilot? Flight risk. We're both New Yorkers, which is kind of fun. You grew up in New Mexico, though. Yeah. And your parents were first generation from India into New Mexico.

Somewhere along the line, I've also read when you were a little kid, your dad flew planes, like small planes, or taught you how to fly. Yeah, he did. He did. What's that like? So I started flying with my dad. So the funny thing is, so my dad grew up in India where his reference point for planes, he grew up in a small enough town where planes were literally just the things that flew overhead very occasionally to the point that when he heard one coming, he would run out of his house. It's that kind of

thing. And so when he moved to America, first, he moved to the, you know, New Mexico, where it's just a very different, you know, you can live at a different price point. First of all, it's a very different economy over there. And also the idea that you could, you know, have your own plane and fly it. Like, I think he went in on it with four buddies. And so it was a really small Cessna and there was an airfield way out on the edge of the desert there where, where we would fly it into the Coronado airstrip. And by the way, that's become a mall since, but at the time it was just this airstrip in the middle of nowhere on a Mesa. And, and yeah, we started flying when I was five. And I was good then. He always

used to tell me like, you were great when we first started because I couldn't see over the edge of the window. So it was just the instruments. It was just look at the instruments and keep it between here and between here. And he showed me every gauge. This has to stay here. This has to stay here. This has to stay here. And that's how he started flying. And, you know, when I was five, he was always, you know, he always had his hands on the, you know, it has sort of dual steering wheels, basically. And so he always had his hands on them too. And anything that I would do, he would sort of correct. But as I got older, because really he had that plan until I was 14, and we would go probably once a month at least. As I got older, he grew more and more relaxed to the point that when I was 14, I was flying and he had fallen asleep.

I'd be like, Dad, is this okay? And it was sort of evening and we were flying And I hated going under clouds Because if you're in a little plane like that It just sort of rattles you a lot And so I was sort of gently avoiding the clouds And I think he must have been asleep for all of like 15 minutes But when he woke up he was like Oh my god, where are we?

And I was sort of like Well, I mean, I've been flying And he's like, Mira, we're not where we're supposed to be. And I was like, that's probably true. And I was like, I just was avoiding the clouds. And he's like, oh, my God. And the thing is, is because we were over the New Mexican desert. And so, but the light was fading.

So it wasn't like you could just look and be like, okay, those are those mountains. That's what that is. And he's like, okay, we just have to wait for the sun to set. And I was like, how is that going to be helpful? And he's like, you'll see. And it was true. The sun set, and then there was this weird yellow glow that came only from the cities far away.

And he's like, well, that, you know, he's like, thank God. And then we flew toward that light, and that ended up being Albuquerque. And we kind of barely made it back. You know, it was one of those things where he was like, well, you almost killed us. And I was like, you're the one that fell asleep. I mean, but what an amazing just thing to be able to do with your dad. Yeah. And I wonder if you experienced it this way, because from the outside looking in, it's like, here's a father who is giving like a really an incredible amount of trust and control to a young kid.

Yes. To do something that was potentially like you do something wrong and it's life threatening. Yes. This is, I mean, my brother and I always talk about this with my dad. It was definitely, it was really a situation of being like raised by wolves with my dad. He just was really like, you can do it. I mean, the joke in my family is that when I was two, he literally did throw me into the pool. You know, it was just like, go swim and threw me in.

And I actually did. You know, I feel like he was one of those parents that was sort of like, you will figure it out if you just try it. Which you're right, you know, I haven't really thought about that. I mean, I've thought about all the other great things that I got from him as a father. Like, he really listened to me when I was growing up, when I was, you know, in my teenage years. And of all the weird things that you get growing up being a brown, young woman in the world, one of them is to make yourself as small as possible in most rooms. But the way that he listened to me definitely worked against that. Tell me more. There was just a way that he was very curious about me.

It was like sometimes when we talked, it was like we were strangers who were just meeting. He would sort of be like, tell me more about that. What was that like? As though I wasn't his kid and we didn't live together. He didn't see me every we didn't, you know, live together. He didn't see me every day. And something about that, I don't know quite how to quantify, but I remember when I was a teenager and seeing my friends, you know, I did too, you sort of slip in and out of

different relationships and sometimes you slip into an abusive one. But I remember in the sort of abusive relationships that I kind of skated around the edges of, I remember having this really silly, but kind of wild alarm in my head, which was, he doesn't listen to you. He's not curious. He's not curious about who you are. You don't need to be in the room with this person. And just having that weird, that weird boundary that I think saved me a lot of pain. Yeah. So it's like the bar was set so high by your dad in terms of genuine interest and openness and listening. Yeah. And in this kind of, you know, like it was very easy in a way to tell the difference between somebody that wanted you on their arm because it told them something about themselves

versus somebody that wanted you near so they could talk to you. I mean, what an incredible experience to have at such a young age for anybody. But then, as a young girl of color, growing up in Albuquerque, to have that sense of, you know, like I'm worth somebody's attention and heart and ears and mind. Yeah, I think about that a lot. Yeah. I think about that so much, especially I was visiting

Stuyvesant High School yesterday where a lot of the, they had this class where they read my book and then some of them responded by drawing pieces of their own. Oh, wow. So moving to see these pieces. And a lot of them were immigrant kids. A lot of them were girls of color who came up to me afterward and basically held my hand and sort of willed me, were sort of like, thank you, thank you, thank you.

Thank you for saying this story. But one of them said, I didn't even know that any part of my story was important until I read your book. And I was like, God, yeah, man. Like, that's so real when you are surrounded by a world in which, like, your story is absolutely nowhere. Just the idea that it might be valuable to anyone anywhere is beyond comprehension, you know, but my dad definitely worked against that. Yeah. You've written about, I mean, part in Good Talk and also spoken about growing up and you're just referencing it also and how people perceived you. It's interesting because in your different writings, including the last book, Good Talk,

you talk about this interesting blend of how white people perceived you, how people of color perceived you, how Indian people, and how across all spectrums, there's no one group that doesn't see color. There are different cultural assumptions and built into, well, what do we do when we see this? And how do we judge people based on what we see? Yeah.

I mean, that was one of the things that was most important for me to get to in this book because I feel like so often when we talk about people of color,

the default kind of thought is, as experienced by whiteness. And it's just such an exhausting rut of a conversation because it's as though no one else exists. I mean, there's a funny line in there where my husband says to me after he finds out that my family thought I was too dark and therefore unmarriageable, or they actively worried about who would possibly marry me with my dark Indian skin? And my husband says to me, well, I never thought you were too dark.

And I'm like, Judd. And he says, what? And I'm like, you're not doing that white guy thing where you think this is about you being enlightened instead of you just never realizing that people of color see color too. And he's like, oh yeah, right. Nope, not doing that. Nope, never. Right. Sure. But of course he was doing that. And so part of this book was to kind of say like, no, there's complexities at every end. Everyone has a different way of dealing with a body that looks like mine, as I too have a different way of dealing with bodies that don't look like mine, right? Like we're all kind of in this constant mix and thrum of trying to figure it out and trying to parse through information the outside world has given us about a body and what it may or may not hold and information that we're actually getting from that individual person.

Yeah. Nobody's immune. Nobody's immune, yeah. And I want to circle back to that in a lot of different ways, I think, also. Fairly early, I mean, we're talking about your kid, your relationship with your dad. Your mom also seems, your mom's still with us, right? Yeah. And she seems like a really, had a really strong, very strong personality, but a strong sense of almost like a feminist presence and ideal from a very young age also.

So my mom came here in 1968. And she came to the desert. She went from her father's house where she came home one day from college and her parents said, well, you need to get married. Here are the options. And she chose my father after they met and spoke. Didn't really know him. Actually, the first time they spoke was after the wedding, but they spoke in a group before. And then moved to New Mexico.

And this is, you know, the time when we would have to, I remember this in my very early childhood, you would have to wait for a long distance call to come through. Like on a Saturday, it would be like, the call is coming today. And some member of the family would stay around the phone so that they could say to everybody else, like, the call has come, you know. So she didn't really, she wasn't in connection with anybody from her previous life. She moved out to a place with zero friends. And I think she very quickly met these other women that were living in an apartment complex, but also it was such an interesting time in America. And I think a lot of what happened with her was the kind of understanding of like, oh, this is feminism. This is what that means. And sort of her

burgeoning independence happened in a moment when American women were also kind of breaking away from these traditionally domestic roles. So I think, you know, she very much took to it right away. I know my father later, I mean, my poor father, you know, he tried to get it, but sometimes he would come up to a party when he would see us talking to somebody and probably making them uncomfortable with our political opinions. And he would put his arm around us and say, I see you've met my two feminists. And I was like, oh, dad, stop talking. It was the other side of the listening carefully. It was like, we're not your feminists. But my mother definitely had a kind of strong idea of what it would mean for me to have a life that was independent of needing to please a man. Yeah. I mean, what's interesting to me also is that it seems like she holds this very strong lens on feminism and on you and what you'll do and go out into the world. And at the same time, it doesn't seem like she had any sense of, there's no cognitive dissonance with also the idea of arranged marriage. None. It was just like this, the two go together.

And I think there's this American lens that looks at that and is just like, how could that be possible? Right, because the American lens says that you choose the person you love, right? And in that choice, that's how you exert your own sense of freedom and individuality. The Indian sense is like, sure, America, but that's a disaster.

You guys choose really poorly half the time. And as my father said, like, you know, Americans, they always, because, you know, my dad was really easy to talk to. So, in fact, he was a good listener. So the nurses was always talk to him, too. And he said that they would say to him, you know, so-and-so has changed. And he's like, I tell them, you know, if you have an Indian marriage, you don't worry about all that. Why? Because you never know who you married in the first place. So, but there was something really sweet about that. And that actually did play out in my parents' marriage. They were many different people over the course of the 40 years

they were married. And I don't feel like either of them ever came back to the other with like, you've changed. I think the expectation is you're going to change. Like what we have, what we have committed to is staying together. We have not committed to, you will be this kind of a person and I will be that kind of a person. Yeah. I mean, it was a contract based on a different set of assumptions going into it. Totally. Yeah. And I do think that within that, you know, my mom was also really, she sort of worked in a traditional wife role. She was absolutely the person who made all of the meals and took care of all the household duties and did all of the accounting. And, you know, like she was the person that ran the show while my father was the person that went to work every day.

And if I look at that balance now, I feel crazy. I could not imagine if my husband came to me and was like, so the thing I'm going to do is I'm going to go to work. And what you're going to do is every other thankless thing that doesn't count as quote unquote work. And my mother did, you know, she had a job, she was an accountant, but it was never with the same, you know, later on in life, she was a real estate agent. And that was when it was sort of like, okay, she has the capital J job in the family. But for many years, she didn't. So, which is just to say, I feel like they allowed themselves to become who they wanted to be sort of bit by bit. Yeah.

And you describe a moment also becoming aware like, what, 20, 30 years down the road of the fact that at some point they actually do fall in, quote, American love. Oh my God, they totally fell in American love and it was so harrowing. When you've been raised on this idea that the great thing about Indian love is that it lasts and that Americans sort of get rid of each other as quickly as they change T-shirts, which is definitely a thing I was raised with. Like, you don't fall in American love. Who knows what they want? So, yeah, they, you know, I think my brother and I left the house, and then as I described in the book, we came back, and I came back to see them, and they were basically playing footsie. And I was like, what are you doing?

What is happening? Why is that thing? Why is that a thing that you're doing? And I think they just got super into each other. You know, I think they just, I think we were gone for one, but I think they just, they had survived so much together. And I think it's really a joy when you have survived that much with a partner to be able to kind of be like, and I still like you. Like, who knew? You know? Yeah.

Well, I've heard described the four different types of love. I think it's like, I mean, romantic love is what pops into everybody's head when they think about love. But then there was companionate love, which is like deep friendship, compassionate love, like the feeling empathy for and wanting to relieve suffering. And then the fourth is attachment, which is that thing that I think develops when you agree to be in something together for a long window of time, no matter what. And there's this thread that just, that unites you in a way. I think for some people ends up potentially keeping them together for a really long time when maybe that's not a great idea. But for others, it keeps them together long enough where they kind of circle back to this place

where more of those other three really start to kind of emerge organically. Yeah, I think you're really right about that. You know, there's also something that I read once that I think about a lot, which is that the part of the brain that is devoted to criticism in long-lasting love relationships,

when they measure that brain activity around a person's partner, when they're kind of thinking of their partner, that part of the brain is underperforming, which is really interesting to me because I do think that there's a certain amount of letting go of stuff that I do with my husband because I feel like I understand so many of his other strengths. And I'm not going to look at him like some critical outsider. I'm looking at him as the person who shows up every

day, who is an incredible father to my son, who, you know what I mean? Like has these kind of, has this weird limitless patience for, I can be so emotional and you know, I can be like really a top spinning and he's very kind of steady on. And I don't know how to quantify that for somebody else. And I also just feel like I't know how to quantify that for somebody else. And I also just feel like I'm not going to quantify that for somebody else. It's really interesting to me that this kind of partnership emerges. We've been together for 20 years. Yeah.

Mayday, mayday. We've been compromised. The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were going to be fun. On January 24th. Tell me how to fly this thing. Mark Wahlberg. You know what the difference between me and you is? You're going to die. Don knew you were going to be fun. On January 24th. Tell me how to fly this thing. Mark Wahlberg. You know what the difference between me and you is?

You're going to die. Don't shoot him. We need him. Y'all need a pilot. Flight risk. The Apple Watch Series 10 is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever,

making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest charging Apple Watch, getting you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest-charging Apple Watch, getting you eight hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series X, available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone Xs are later required. Charge time and actual results will vary.

We had Julie and John Gottman on the podcast, I guess earlier this year maybe, who, they're a married couple. They've also been researching love in different ways. She had a clinical practice, psychology with relationships, and he, a lot of the, you know, like for 40 years researching in a lab. And they ran this thing together called the Love Lab. So that's what became known as what they said. And they looked at trying to identify, can we figure out what keeps people together for really, really long-term relationships? And one of the things that they really keyed in on was this idea of all day, every day, we're all bidding for attention and affection. And they were able to predict, after something like a 15-minute viewing of interactions

between couples in their very early marriage, who would still be married like five or ten years down the road, with something like a 95% accuracy. And what they were looking at was, a solid chunk of it was, how aware people were of the other person's bids for attention. And that there was a specific ratio. Oh, wow. If you fell under it, then it was kind awareness of another person's bid that was so important.

Just acknowledging that I see that you want to be present, that you want something from me, even if it's a quick hey, whatever it may be. Yeah. Even if you didn't respond the way the person wanted you to, it was simply the awareness that you were looking to be seen. Wow. That was so important in the relationship. That makes so much sense, doesn't it? Yeah. I mean, it's funny because we talk about all this tonight and I realize now when I'm

talking to you that if I say I've been with my partner for 20 years, it just sounds like this unimaginable amount of time in a way, because I know that 20 years ago, like the idea of somebody that could stay together for 20 years was like, that's crazy. Who knows? You know, like this is, who knows what will happen in the future? And I think there's a certain amount that I do take that forward, meaning we're together. I'm so relieved we're together. I also feel like nothing can ever be taken for granted. Do you know what I mean? Like there's a part of it where it's like, I know I see couples that do this that are like, oh yeah, we're together. We're going to be together forever. And it's like, I know I see couples that do this that are like, oh, yeah, we're together.

We're going to be together forever. And I'm like, how do you know that? Because I both want that desperately and I get super nervous about it all the time because I'm just like, let's just keep going. Like it's been really good so far. Please don't anyone mess this up. You know? Yeah. No, I agree.

I think there's a, yeah, I think sometimes people just assume like, you know, that the way things have been and the way things will always be. But I don't believe in sideways in any part of life, whether it's exerting effort, and that's not a bad thing to continue to elevate or deepen into something, or barring that, you know, life applies friction, which slows you. So there's either a downward trajectory or an upward trajectory, a deepening trajectory or a shallowing trajectory. But there's no, I don't believe, I've never seen just somebody who can kind of set it and forget it and coast. Right. It just doesn't, but we hold on to this illusion that maybe that's possible. Well, so this is the thing that I always think about specifically with having an interracial relationship is that so much of the work that we do is like work. It's like work. It's really work. It's not, there is never set it and forget it because so much of what we do is kind of

unpacking what is happening and how it's playing out, especially in the last five years. I would say that work has ramped up to kind of an astronomical level because of what's happening and because it's happening so quickly and because we have a mixed race sun. And there's never a point at which it's like, okay, great. We can just relax now. And I do wonder sometimes it's interesting to hear you say that because sometimes I have kind of, I feel like I peek over the fence every once in a while. I'm like, would it it have been easier for me if I had married an Indian man? Would one, just one level of this, and then I know all the other things would come in, right? Like still dealing, if you're still, if you were getting married to a man, you're still dealing with the man-woman divide. If you get married to a woman, you're still dealing with like who makes the most money? How are your parents' relationship? You know what I mean? There's so many different ways power comes into a

relationship. But I am really aware of the particular weight of the power of race right now in a relationship. Yeah. And I mean, that has, I mean, barring the fact that you have been living as a brown woman for your entire life, like as you said, the last five years, there's been this really startling shift, I think, for a lot of people. It seems like a lot of, I mean, for you also, you were in New York when 9-11 happened. Yeah. Which was now like way longer than the last five years. And even in that moment, while, and I'm a longtime New Yorker also, so I was here. So my experience of what happened both on that day, and in the days, weeks, months, and years after that, as much as you and I could relate on certain levels to certain feelings of trauma and loss. Your experience was profoundly different. Yeah. Yeah.

And my experience was profoundly different, I think, for a few reasons. But I will say that until that point, I had had the privilege to believe in the America that my parents were sort of sold when they were encouraged to come here in the late 60s. So the immigration laws relaxed, right, in 1965. It allowed a certain number of Asians into the country and it encouraged, they specifically were looking to bring in doctors and engineers to kind of bolster the American middle class. My parents were among those people. So what that means and what I didn't know at the time, and I don't think they really understood at the time as well either, is that they were brought in to succeed. They were brought into a country and given ways to succeed and given,

you know, they worked really hard like every immigrant group does when they come here. Also, they were given loans from banks. They were given a certain level of status. And so all of those things combined gave me a certain idea of the America that I was in. After 9-11, when faces like mine became the enemy, I think until then I'd sort of been like, how's it going to go for us? How's it going to go for Indians? Whenever I would see like a commercial with, you know, a South Asian family of any sort in the background, I would write to all my South Asian friends and be like, did you see that? And it was sort of like, what are they going to make of us? But there was a sort of really bright hope behind that because the idea that we were going to be successful and it could work out well for us, combined also with, I think, just cultural pride that, you know, I think most

communities have. Like, we are the ones who do this. You know, we're the ones, I think, definitely within the Indian community, and I won't speak for South Asians, but specifically within the Indian community, I know that there was definitely like, we're very successful. we're very smart, we're very successful, and we're going to make it. That idea completely kind of shattered in the face of becoming the face of the enemy for an entire country. So it was wild to see how even though, you know, the attacks came from a specific group of brown-skinned people with a specific kind of religious intent behind it, but also just a violence. Like, that violence does not speak for Islam. That violence does not speak for brown-skinned people. That violence spoke for a very specific kind of person.

And suddenly all of us were made to answer for it. And I didn't even know that that was a possibility until I was walking around New York after 9-11, just with my heart shattered for my city and all the neighbors we had lost. And then I realized that people definitely thought I was to blame in a way that I was like, how? How has this, how? Like, I lost the same city you did. How would you think that I didn't? And they clearly didn't and that that was probably my first

you know like what I now kind of look back on that I'm like what what a breezy coddled life I was having to never have to interact with that before because I know for sure that many of my black American friends many of my Mexican American, many of my friends that were living in different kinds of marginalized groups, they never had the illusion that I had. They never even got to hold on to that for half a year, let alone a chunk of a lifetime. But yeah, that was sort of the first, that was the first like, oh, it's not, this is how they're going to, this is where we're going to fit in. Yeah. You also, I mean, if I remember correctly, you had also literally just moved in with the man who would then become your husband the day before, who's a white Jewish guy living in New York City.

Yes. Which means you're both experiencing this moment together and also experiencing it profoundly differently as this complete new couple, like living together and starting to think about life together. Totally. Do you remember how many couples broke up in that time? You know, it's funny. I remember so much strife.

I remember so many people splitting apart. And then the flip side, and I know you've shared this experience too, is I remember a sense of sistership and fellowship in the city and openness and service and kindness for about six months. That was stunning.

And I haven't seen Back in the City since then. I know. Do you remember that blackout? Yeah. Do you remember how we all freaked out? Because it was like, oh my God, the blackout. And the panic came back. Like, it's not going to be okay.

And everyone was running and getting... But then what happened was the whole city went dark and everybody just sat out in every available space and like had picnics and talked to each other yeah it was amazing right it was just this wild beautiful thing where it was like oh we're don't we don't have to like run for cover it's summer the lights are out in the whole city i don't know who you are. Let's talk. Like that was a really, that was a really crazy moment. That was what my experience of that night was, the blackout. But yeah, I think about it a lot because I think that so many of our couple friends also went one of two ways, right?

It was either, okay, we're in it. Like we're in it for life now. Or like, I have no idea what I'm doing with you. I have no idea what I'm doing, period. But like everything has to change. And we were all in that weird precipice of the, you know, the late sort of 20s, early 30s of when people were sort of like trying to couple up, or I don't know if that even is a thing anymore, but it certainly was in that generation. And I think about that so much because one of the things that happened was seeing how my partner reacted, seeing how he sort of, there was that day, I wrote about this in the book,

I wrote about watching the buildings fall, but there was actually a couple that I ran into that I didn't know, I didn't know them deeply, they were friends, but not great friends, and they were sort of, we went over to their house to watch TV,

and they were sort of doing the thing where they were making jokes, because they were still in the old New York where you made a joke about any amount of pain that came out. Do you know what I mean? Like there's that, it was such a way to be in the city. There was such a veneer of the like, we've seen it all. And so many people were kind of cracking by that point, but they definitely weren't. It was early enough and no one had seen the repeat yet. We hadn't been in the endless loop

of the buildings will fall every single day, 27 times. So it was sort of fresh. Nobody knew what to do with their emotions. And that couple in particular was kind of joking about it. And I remember Jed turning to me and grabbing my hand was like, we're going to go. We're going to go. You guys have a great night. He's like, I'm glad you're okay. And we left and we were just like, I do not feel the need to do that. And I was just glad that he also didn't feel the need to do that. I know, I understand that it's a coping mechanism, but I was just so relieved that we didn't have to cope by pretending that it was all unimportant and we were too removed to be terrified. I was like, oh, we're scared. And we're going to be screwed up by

this for a while. And we were. And I was just glad to be with somebody that understood that something had happened and we were broken in a specific way and it wasn't going to get better immediately. And it definitely wasn't going to get better if we were going down that road. Yeah. It's interesting that that moment has stayed with you because clearly there's a lot of significance to what wasn't said, but assumed between you. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, there is that thing of like the, you get to know the pressure of somebody's hand. Yeah.

You know, you get to know like what that specific tug means. Like that specific tug to me was like, let's get out of this before, let's get out of this before we have to either insult them or partake in something we don't want to. Like, let's just step away. We don't have to have this be our way through. To know that you both felt that tug was huge.

Yeah. Yeah, I mean, it is funny. A lot of the things that sort of ended up lasting between us definitely started taking deep root right then. Yeah. The Apple Watch Series 10 is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest-charging Apple Watch, getting you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's

the fastest charging Apple Watch, getting you eight hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series 10, available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone XS or later required, charge time and actual results will vary. Mayday, mayday, we've been been compromised The pilot's a hitman I knew you were gonna be fun On January 24th Tell me how to fly this thing Mark Wahlberg

You know what the difference between me and you is? You're gonna die Don't shoot him, we need him Y'all need a pilot? Flight Risk You, I mean you've been writing since you were a kid You did your education in it you did your MFA in it. But it sounds like that was also, you started working on what would then become your debut book, I guess right around shortly after that. Yeah.

Was, I mean, was 9-11 sort of like one of the reasons that made you say, I have to write this? Or was it? No, that's so funny that you asked that. Actually, it's because I was ghostwriting a book for Kenneth Cole. And he was great, but I had to write in his voice. And there's nothing like channeling the voice of an established white 40-year-old man every day to make you desperately turn and find your own. It started shooting out of me. Parts of the novel just started shooting out of me because it couldn't be myself. And at some point I was like, I'm writing a book for a man who's achieved a level of success I'll probably never have in this life. And that's okay. But I can't be invisible. Like, I'm never going to be a multimillionaire with my own clothing brand.

That's okay. But I have to be me. Like, where am I in this? Where does my voice happen, if ever? And I just started putting it into the novel, also so I could continue to do the work i was doing for him without kind of losing it yeah it's interesting that is i think this happens so much in the arts um whether it's writing whether it's painting whether whatever the form of

expression is that that so many people end up kind of taking like a one for me one for the studio approach absolutely um because you don't want to live hand to mouth at a certain point in your life that so many people end up taking like a one for me, one for the studio approach. Absolutely. Because you don't want to live hand to mouth at a certain point in your life. Yeah. And you kind of want to know you're okay. But at the same time, like if you don't find a way to express that essential thing that's a part of you, there's Robert McKee, who's like the legendary guy for like his storybook and story seminars. Years ago, I sat down and we had a conversation. We were trading interviews. And he's like, for writers, the thing is, um, I'm going to butcher this, but basically he was saying, the thing about writing is that you've got a monster in your head. And the only thing worse than doing the work to let it out is keeping it in. Oh my God, that's so real. That's so real. Yes. Oh my God, that's really funny. But yeah, that is really true. And I know for me, that first book, at some point I mean my life got so painful right then because my dad

started dying and at some point the writing of the book because I was sort of failing upward through the corporate ladder too the writing of the book became so much more pleasurable than any one aspect of the life I was living. That it just was like, oh my God, get me into that fictional world. Get me back with those characters. Get me into a place where I decide what the pain is and how to meet it out and how to explore it. Where it's not just me and my bare beating heart wandering through the world, losing everything I love every second.

Yeah. Becomes not just a form of expression, but refuge. Absolutely. I definitely think that writing fiction is like building a church to go take refuge in. Like you are building the church that you will then go take shelter in. And you build it every day. I know that book, you mentioned your dad went through, I guess, a number of years with cancer and finally passed. So there was a lot of window where you were dealing with that and also just navigating a different world. The book took about a decade for you from when you started to actually when it came out.

It took about a decade to create, right? Oh, for sure, yeah. And at that point, you're also married, got a son towards the second half of it, working during the day, doing all the stuff that writers do to sort of like take care of themselves. Yeah.

So, and dealing with your dad, both when he's alive and ill, and then the aftermath. So, I mean, I think it's to stay with something for a decade, you know, writing in the margins, because this is the thing you can't not do. Yeah, yep. You do, that level of devotion to this has to happen is stunning. You know, what is so interesting about that to me is, so I started writing the book, that book, and I thought I was writing about a character that had Alzheimer's, like a really rapidly

growing form of Alzheimer's. And in the middle of writing the book, I found out that my dad was dying and I completely shut down. I just couldn't write it anymore at all. And I put it away for three years while he was dying. And then when I went back to it, I sort of, it was like this way to be with him, which was really weird because the dad wasn't him when I was first writing it. And then as I started writing it again, it sort of turned into him. And I was like, this is terrible. I know this is bad, but also I lost him in such an ugly way. Like he was a doctor. He never wanted to go to hospitals. You know, he understood every single thing and it was just so brutal. It was just so awful.

When the body fails, it can be such an extraordinary and excruciating thing to witness, especially when you love the person in that body just unbearably. And so when I started writing it again, and he started slipping in, that was part of that particular church that I built. It was like the one place that I could still find him, which was so wild because the character in the book isn't me. Like she's a kind of troubled weirdo who doesn't express herself very clearly. And for all my faults, that's not one of them. And it wasn't his family. It wasn't my mother. It wasn't my brother. Like it was just this other family that suddenly my dad had been shunted into because he had left the planet. And I was like the pain of the world like it felt so good to be able to go somewhere where he was still alive like I know that sounds weird what I mean

is when you know when someone dies you sort of like you preserve them in amber and you can only see their good parts and you can only talk about their good parts and but I just got to like be with a character who was super flawed the way my dad was flawed. And loving the way my dad was loving. And on his way out the way my dad had been on his way out. And I just got to go slower. And I got to give him a different death. And I got to just stay in a place where I felt like I was making new memories with my dad until I was ready

to stop, which I will admit is a super weird thing to do, but I don't think I would be able to love the people in my life as deeply as I do if I wouldn't have allowed my heart that wild fantasy. Yeah, I don't think it's that super weird. Okay, I'm glad. You know, I think it's, people deal with loss like in every conceivable way. And that was your way of sort of like creating a slower, gradual transition to a certain extent. Isn't it weird how we just don't talk about grief?

Yeah. We don't talk about a lot of stuff. I mean, we don't. That's true. That's one of them for sure. I mean, I feel like it's interesting. We've had a handful of friends and guests on the podcast where we've gone kind of deep into it also. And there's so much unease and so much discomfort about the one thing, like the single thing that I think we all know that we're going to experience.

Yes. Everything else is uncertain. This is the one thing we know 100% certain. Well, it's sort of the opposite of like the beauty culture and the, you know, post for likes culture. Like you're not posting about your father's death for likes. I'm in the middle of losing someone right now. I'm not posting about it at all. No one would know. I'm not talking about it.

I'm walking around my house and like weeping about it. Okay. So that said, you know, what's been interesting is there are some people that I look at. Yes. I think there's a lot of glam culture and like look at my shiny, happy life culture on social media. There are a few people that I know that I'll follow who basically are like, this is the reality of my life. Yeah. And here's, you know, like on any given day, here's how I'm suffering. And they have become astonishingly popular.

I think in part because it's so rare to have people sort of like stand in and then share and publicly say like, this is my flag in the sand about what I'm gonna sort of express to the world. But also because there's so many other people are like, A, I'm not alone. And B, you're giving language to what I'm feeling. And there's, to me, there's so much value.

If I look at certainly the world of social media and with all the mixed feelings that I have about it. Like that potential to me is astonishingly valuable. And I feel like when the rare person drops into it and uses it that way, it is so incredibly powerful and people resonate around it. But you've got to be that rare person who's willing to stand in that place publicly to do it. Yeah. I mean, it is really funny because I think about that. I also weirdly feel like sharing. This is going to sound so weird when I say it, but I feel like sharing my grief with someone is a privilege.

I don't know how to explain that better. But my really tight, tight people know all the depths. And I feel like it's a confidence thing where it's like, if you're close to me, you will know this partly because I don't want to perform it at all. Yeah. I think that's a huge issue. It's very weird like i don't know what to do when something like i i can i can take little bits of it and put it out in a certain way but like the real i like the really deep deep deep feelings i just find myself wanting less and less

to perform them so i actually don't talk about the high highs either weird do you know what i mean like i don't talk about like the things where i'm like yes yes like i don't talk about that either i kind of keep those ones close and then there's just a very there's sort of a limited spectrum in which i'm willing to kind of be out about things but the really other the other stuff I just want to say for me, because I guess I really still value the difference between a performed friendship and a friendship that thrives with zero audience.

Yeah, 100%. And they feel very different to me. 100%. Like, I almost never post about my best friend, Alison. She's in the book. But, like, I don't, very rarely we'll post. We see each other every other day we talk about something. She blows my mind constantly because she's just one of those people

who I think is so like brilliant but also sort of deeply wildly like interesting in a in a kind of multitudes way i don't talk about that all the time because that's just like that to me is the gift of the gift of my lifetime is that i have somehow ended up in an orbit with this person. I don't want to turn it outward. Yeah, I agree. I think we all sort of like make that line in the sand about what is sacred, what's public, what's performative. And I'm similar to you in that the vast majority of my life remains completely unseen in any sort of public social way. And I'm really happy about that. But, I mean, that's actually kind of an interesting segue into your newest book, Good Talk. Because, you know, so this is a book that is exposed on so many levels.

Yeah. Deeply exposed. It's exposed in terms of your writing. It's exposed in terms of you stepping into an entirely new form of expressive art. You know, like you're not just writing, but you're illustrating. It's exposed because you are talking about a number of the things that we've sort of like touched down on. But also you go deep into issues of race within your family. Yeah.

Issues of, you know, like where, you know, it starts out in a very kind of sweet, gentle way with your son. It's sort of like asking about Michael Jackson, and then that leads to a conversation around skin color, which leads really quickly to a conversation around how white people feel about brown-skinned people. And since daddy is white, how does that figure into things? So when you think about when you're sort of like exploring and writing this and working on it, you're not just sort of like saying, let me talk about these issues. You're saying, let me talk about the people who I love more than anything else on the planet. How do you make those decisions as you're sort of like creating this, knowing that this is going to go out into the world?

So, yes, right. Oh, sorry, I cut off your question. But yeah, knowing that it's going out into the world, how do you make those decisions is such a great question. And I will tell you that like every other artist, I think when I'm working on something, I decided it's absolutely not going out into the world. So that I can just be vulnerable. Because if you imagine the masses standing over your shoulder the whole time critiquing you, you never get to the part that's real. Because again, it's like the performance of an emotion versus the actual feeling through of one, right? So I didn't actually, I knew I had sold the book.

It's like a cognitive dissonance. I knew I had sold the book. I knew I'd sold the book. It's like a cognitive dissonance. I knew I'd sold the book. I knew I was making the book that I had sold. And then on this other part, I was like, girl, you're just drawing some pictures. Like, you don't even really know how to draw yet. So figure that part out first. And here are the, here are the conversations that are whipping around your brain all the time. Get those down. And I wrote down about 80 at first. I think around your brain all the time.

Get those down. And I wrote down about 80 at first. I think 40 make it into the book. What happened was the original book that I pitched was supposed to be so funny. I mean, the book is pretty funny still, right? Like people always tell me like, oh, the book is hilarious. The original book was even supposed to be funnier because America was not supposed to go into this terrible, terrible place that it has gone. So the original book was going to be, like, looking of the fallout from the Obama years was starting to kind of come across, right? Kind of come across like into all of our lives, the sort of slamming down of like, wait, you're actually not allowed

to be this anymore. Like that was starting to happen. I thought I was going to write about a country that went very close to that place. And then I don't know what some magic was going to happen. And we were going to kind of continue on the trajectory of, no, we're going to figure this out. We're going to figure out kind of what the original sin of this country was and how to goddamn rectify it, just how to do it. We're going to figure this out. I realize, like I say that to you now and I want to slap my own face. Okay. Like if anyone is listening, just wanting to slap me realize, like, I say that to you now, and I want to slap my own face, okay? Like, if anyone is listening just wanting to slap me, just boom. I'll do it for myself.

I get it. I know. I know that that was a fantasy. I know that partially that fantasy was made in sharp relief to the understanding that I had that my son was going to turn into the kind of man that this country fears and punishes. And I know that part of that was just built on like a mother's sort of wishful hope that he not have any trace of what I had growing up, any trace of what my brother had growing up, any trace of what so many brown and black people in this country have lived within spades. Like I know that that's what it was. But the book that happened was the book that happened because not only did Trump start

making his rise toward power, but also my in-laws became pretty avid Trump supporters. And I've been in that family for now 20 years. And for that to happen with these people I not only love but trust was really surprising, pretty devastating. Yeah, I mean, it took, the book moves into, and you talk about there are a lot of vignettes. Like you said, there's 40-something stories that touch on different elements of this, but that's where the book really lands,

in this central conflict of that, I think. You talk about giving voice to what so many people are experiencing. You know, there are so many families, I think right now, who are grappling with questions that they either just kind of like assumed would figure themselves out or not. And then you find yourself in the middle of a family

who sees the world not just politically differently, but there are certain assumptions built into that about race. And then when you've got a young child in the family, the conversation gets so complicated. How can you love somebody if you are willing to agree with somebody who sees them as so othered, so less than, so not worthy.

And how do you have those conversations with a young kid? And that was, it's just like deeply moving. And the way that you did it, I know you said, like it was supposed to be a really funny book and there was a lot of humor in it. But the fact that this was actually done visually, I got the sense that, yes, the words were powerful. The stories were moving.

They're very real. And the fact that there's a really strong visual storytelling element to this, it's a graphic book. My sense is that it makes the conversation and the stories so much more accessible to a lot of people in a way that I probably didn't see coming until I read it. Oh, that's interesting. Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, the reason that I did that, you know, is because I normally would write an essay or like several about identity in America or something. I don't know. But when I did, when I started trying to do that, I just imagined the wall of people that wouldn't believe his questions. You know, that's the thing about, you have a kid ask you a bunch of questions and those questions are so real. And it happens, I know this from people who deal with kids regularly. They're like, oh my God, they ask the hardest questions.

And we both kind of know that. And then there's a whole faction of people online that are like, that's impossible. It never happened. This is just for political, you know, to make a political point. And it's like, no, my kid was six. He was asking me whether or not white people

were afraid of brown people. And then the natural trajectory from that question was, is daddy afraid of us? And like the day trajectory from that question was is daddy afraid of us and like the day he asked that question I lost my mind I answered him in the way that I thought a parent would need to answer a child and then I put him to bed and I went and sat on my bathtub and shook for like 45 minutes because I was like this is not a ridiculous question. Like the most screwed up thing about this is that it is not a ridiculous question. That is a real question that's coming from a real place.

He is asking for a real reason. And what does it mean that white America thinks so little of it? What does it mean that his dad is a white American? The thing that I was most interested in exploring particularly is the fantasy that people have about interracial relationships and the idea that if you're in an interracial relationship, you're in it because you've solved all of this, because you are the new hopeful dream of America, and it's all beautiful between you now. And everyone else is allowed to fantasize about what a great country we are based on this, on like you and your beige babies. But the truth of it is that my husband is a white American male who grew up in the same white patriarchy that I did.

So those things come into our marriage all the time. And I wanted to tell that story of what does it mean when you love somebody and it's super not perfect and all the ugliness of America comes right into your marriage and you still love them. What does it mean when your in-laws think? Because I do think, by the way, that this is a white American fantasy, that love is the opposite of racism. I think the only people that really believe that are white Americans, because the rest of us know how often the people that love us have been racist with us. So what do we do with that information? And how do we take pride in the family that we are, which is this constantly readjusting, refiguring, questioning, pulling things out, fighting things, you know, fighting about them. Like, how do we take pride in that thing, which is way more complicated than America

wants us to be? Also, when there's so much suspicion, frankly, of interracial couples, right? Because that's the converse side. Like if there's the idea that we save everything, the flip side of that is that people believe that one person or the other doesn't really value themselves. Because if you wouldn't choose someone

so different from you, if you valued yourself, it's like, what do you do with that whole mix? I don't know. And then how you teach a boy to love exactly how complicated he is and all of that. I mean, it's not, by the way, just in case people haven't read the book, I do not answer any of these questions. But I mean, that's what I want to circle around to, because I think the, one of the most powerful things is, um, is that, you know, you flip to the end and, and you kind of, you set the scene, not expecting a magical, and this is how it all got tied up in a bow, but it's really about, um,

I think what you make clear is that life is messy. Relationships are messy. This moment in time is really messy and we are going to perpetually get it wrong. And that rather than fearing that and stepping out and exiting the conversation or burying your head in the sand, it's like an invitation to step in further and be willing to endure whatever comes up and to get it wrong and to dance and just try and figure it out together. The other part of it was, and this was, tell me if this is true, but when I got to the end, it's on Hesse Coates, Between the World and Me. I remember hearing him in conversation. He's like, like, I didn't really realize that this was a letter to my son until like really kind of look back like, oh, this is what's happening here.

It feels like this entire book is fundamentally is a letter to your son. I knew that I was writing to my son the whole time because of the way this started, because it started with his questions. So there wasn't a moment in which I was like, this is just me talking to myself. I knew that. And then I also knew that so much more than just us gets unpacked in here, right? Like it really just takes a hard pivot into my life. It's everything that I talked about. It's also all the things that I have never begun to talk to him about. So I knew all of that was kind of at play. The last letter in the book is the talk we've never had. I will tell you that I wrote that like 17 times. And the first 16 were so angry, like deeply angry letters,

because they weren't to him or to America. Took me a while to kind of peel back from that place. Yeah, I mean, reading that, those last few pages, I got the sense that while there were a lot of light moments throughout the book, that it was like this just dropped into gravitas and let's not waste this moment type of thing. Oh, that's interesting. Yeah. What do you mean? It's kind of like I'm just taking you on this journey.

And I started out writing this to myself and I'm kind of like I'm just taking you on this journey and I started out you know writing this to my son and I'm kind of like writing this and I got that sense also so this is the part that I'm also writing to you but also writing to everybody but maybe you're not actually it's not even intended for you to read quite now yeah but it was also a call for people to reflect and say don't step out. Kind of like stay in this. Reflect on everything that I've just shared and it's hard and it's complex and it's messy and it will likely stay that way for a really long time.

But stay in it. That's really good to hear. Yeah, that's really good to hear um it's interesting because i think so much about this right now like my in-laws who are very much at the center of the book you know i gave them a copy of this before it went out. And so much about this book is about being a brown woman in America. But one of the things that I've thought about so much recently is, you know, I gave them a copy of the book and then they called me back and said, we read the book, you're very talented. And I was like, oh, thank you. And I thought that maybe they were going to be angry

and what they said which was so sweet to me was we're not ready to talk about it but we love you very much and I think about that all the time because we have had several talks since then none as like wildly progressive as would make the great ending of a show.

But the thing that's so interesting to me about them and this moment, and they are still Trump supporters. So it's really wild. Like, I don't know how to, I'm telling you about this moment. And I also know that there are so many people that will be furious about this moment, but the fact that they keep showing up to me is so really interesting. I don't know what to say about it, except that I find it really incredible. I find it really incredible that despite all of the many differences that we have, and we have a lot of differences, and I feel very betrayed by their vote, and I feel very betrayed by the ways in which they can't engage around this, and yet we still keep showing up. We are all still the people that keep showing up.

So when you say that to me, that the imperative at the end of the letter was, like, don't step out, it's really just such a relief. I don't think anyone's ever said that to me before. I don't... It's just really such a relief. I don't think anyone's ever said that to me before. It's just really such a relief. So as we come full circle in our conversation, in this container of Good Life Project,

if I offer up the phrase to live a good life, what comes up? I think for me, living a good life is living a life where you stay curious. I think so much of the world asks you not to be. There's so many different ways in which you can shut down, either as a reaction to pain or to preemptively try to avoid it. And I said before that I don't think love is the opposite of racism, and I don't. But I think curiosity is a really good place to start. And I don't mean curiosity as in,

you, person of color, must explain to me what you are about. I mean curiosity about, like, why do I act this way in this situation? What am I hearing from the world about the pain that I am either a part of or causing or feeling? How do I interact with that information? What questions do I need to be asking to put something different into this world? How do I stay curious and alert in these moments? Because I think that that is this thing that as humans we bring uniquely to the universe.

Like, it's such a funny animal that we are. And that curiosity, the way in which we deliver ourselves to and from it, like, that to me is actually everything. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much for listening. And thanks also to our fantastic sponsors who help make this show possible. You can check them out in the links we have included in today's show notes.

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when ideas become conversations that lead to action, that's when real change takes hold. See you next time. The Apple Watch Series 10 is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest-charging Apple Watch,

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On January 24th. Tell me how to fly this thing. Mark Wahlberg. You know what the difference between me and you is? You're going to die. Don't shoot him, we need him. Y'all need a pilot. Flight Risk.