Brown Enough

I’m excited to bring you a special episode of Some of My Best Friends Are, a podcast from Pushkin Industries I recently had the pleasure of joining. On Some of My Best Friends Are, Harvard professor Khalil Gibran Muhammad and journalist Ben Austen, two best friends who grew up together on the South Side of Chicago in the 1980s, discuss their experiences with the absurdities and intricacies of race in America. I joined Khalil and Ben to talk about my own racial awakening – which I attribute to the moment I learned the “real” James Bond, Porfirio Rubirosa, was Dominican. And I share what it means, to me, to be Latinx in a country where most conversations about race are divided into black and white. You can hear more from Some of My Best Friends Are at https://podcasts.pushkin.fm/sbfs2?sid=enough

“The caucacity!” says Mandi Woodruff-Santos, co-host of the finance podcast Brown Ambition, when Black and Brown communities are hit with 6 figures of debt by corporate banks after graduating college. In this episode, Chris chats with Mandi to understand why Black and Brown families are lagging behind in building wealth and what they can do to start changing the narrative.

Brown women have a right to laugh and they need to express it, says Indian immigrant and comedian Zarna Garg. Zarna went from being a lawyer, to a stay at home mom to her three kids, to a stand-up comedian and Tik Tok star. Today, she chats with Chris about how her kids convinced her to start a career in comedy, how she mines her culture for jokes, and what it means to be a Brown woman in the world of comedy.

Writer Mayukh Sen didn't always like to cook. But he found his way into the kitchen when he discovered seven inspiring women who changed the world of food by making an impact in American cuisine. Mayukh is the author of Tastemakers: Seven Immigrant Women Who Revolutionized Food In America, a book that profiles women of diverse countries and cultures. Chris chats with Mayukh about how these seven women helped Americans transform how they cook and eat.

We are looking for stories about your names. Do you have a name that’s unique, one that’s hard for others to say? Do you have a funny story, an origin story? What do you think is special or beautiful about your name? Let us know! Please, send us an email or a voice memo to [email protected].

"What are you?" That’s a very tricky question journalist and cartoonist Malaka Gharib is super familiar with as a first generation Filipino-Egyptian-American. Malaka grew up navigating three different cultures and two religions...something Chris can relate to as a Dominican-Colombian-American who grew up in the vibrant city of Queens, New York. Listen to learn more about how Malaka’s thinking about the question "What are you?" evolved and inspired her to write her first graphic memoir I Was Their American Dream. Her latest book It Won't Always Be Like This is out now.

Listen to this episode to find out exactly who in your life is a donkey and how to pay them no mind. Chris chats with actress and friend of show, Kyla Pratt, about growing up inside the entertainment industry and her long career on groundbreaking shows for Black and Brown folks.

Last time, we started to unpack the complicated history of how Dominicans think about race. Today, we keep that conversation going with Dr. Saudi Garcia, a writer born in the DR who identifies not as white, or latina, or afro-caribbean... but Black. She tells me about the bent towards whiteness she's been trying to fight for most of her life.

Did you grow up in Haiti or the DR? Or maybe in another place with a similar history of antiblackness? What have you learned and unlearned? Send your thoughts in an email or voice message to [email protected].

How can people from two countries in conflict come together? Well that's exactly what today's guest, France Francois, helps facilitate between Haitian- and Dominican-Americans.  France's organization runs workshops called Decolonizing Hispaniola, where they deconstruct historical myth and help everyone reimagine a conflict-free future.  Today, she chats with Chris about how she got into this work and what Haiti and DR have in common. Plus, producer Baudelaire reports back from one of France's workshops!

Did you grow up in Haiti or the DR? Or maybe in another place with a similar history of violence and antiblackness? What have you learned and unlearned? Send your thoughts in an email or voice message to [email protected]"

This episode is going to make you hungry. Because it's all about tacos! Chris chats with taco expert and professor Steve Alvarez about how cultures mix through their food by looking at one of Chris' favorite cross-cultural tacos: Tacos Arabes. Plus, the best tacos from LA to Queens!

Scoring all the right points in Hollywood ain't easy -- especially as a Brown person. Claudia Forestieri learned that first hand when creating her hit TV series Gordita Chronicles for HBO. The show was widely acclaimed and popular... but got cancelled after just one season. Chris chats with Claudia about the lessons she learned from pitching and creating Gordita Chronicles, and what Hollywood is failing to do for Brown communities.