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Down to Brown
Down to Brown episodes
- Make it make sense: American & Indian gender norms (Shelly Patel)
Our experiences and interactions with gender norms and dynamics as Indian Americans really did a number on us. Shelly Patel and Lahari talk work through what influenced our voices, life choices, and, ultimately, the types of futures we want.
52 min - Brown & Black communities, who does the Kamala win "belong" to? (Vivian Odior)
Both the Brown and Black community were, and are, stirred by Kamala Harris's recent Vice Presidential elect win. Vivian Odior and Lahari cover: what this means for Black and Indian communities, the ways in which we see ourselves in this win, the pressure of having limited representation, and how the Indian and Black community have more in common than we think. So who does the Kamala win "belong" to? Everyone.
44 min - Family, Trauma, & Healing (Sruti Bharat)
Sruti and Lahari talk about their journeys in understanding and identifying cyclical trauma in their families, and how they've started to heal from it. We talk mamas, the Ramayana, conflict-aversion, therapy, vaginismus, etc. (Trigger warning: topics of sexual assault are discussed.)
59 min - Colonized Minds (Nisha Dwivedi)
Nisha Dwivedi and I talk about the elections, what a Kamala Harris win would mean, the history of colonization in India, and the contemporary impact coming from a colonized country and moving to a colonizer country.
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1 hr 12 min - Ashamed of Fob Shaming (Charu Subramanian)
Lahari and longtime friend Charu S. discuss the concept of fob shaming: feeling distressed or conscious of tendencies that seemed "too Indian," or "Fresh of the Boat" (FOB.)
59 min - Introduction: Why Am I Down to Brown?
Lahari talks about the journey that brings her to Down to Brown, and the search to understand the answer to: “How do we embrace and THRIVE given the contradictions and comedy of being multiple identities?”
10 min
About Down to Brown
From the publisher's feed
Lahari Rao is a quirky, opinionated, & curious gal who vowed on her 18th birthday, that her Indian-American confusion would be fixed in her adulthood if she pretended she was a brown Carrie…
Bradshaw. Instead, Lahari found herself in the following situations: negotiating with her dad the number of years she could date on her own before he put her profile in a Telugu marriage bureau site; being the only South Asian person in a 700-person cereal factory in rural Georgia; and frantically pulling beach towels to cover her body to avoid getting ‘even darker' while her friends embraced the sun. When she wanted to talk about being South Asian socially, she was met with a lot of enthusiasm about butter chicken, arranged marriage, and Slumdog Millionaire (“Jai Ho!”) At 30, she decided enough was enough—she would awaken from her denial, embrace her identity, and dive deeper in its psychology, and how to heal oneself to show up better for sister communities. Now, on this podcast, Lahari talks with every day, badass brown women and allies, about topics that were often avoided. Here is a community obsessed with the question: What would life look like if we freed ourselves from the pressures of pressures and stigmas, to be our best, truest selves?