Let's Grab Coffee

Children often feel pressured to live up to their parents’ dreams, but for the children of immigrants this pressure is particularly acute. So, what happens when who you are and what you desire conflicts with your parents’ visions of success that are constrained within heteronormative constructions of family, children, and career? On this episode, SunAh chats with Dr. Anthony Christian Ocampo whose latest book is titled _Brown and Gay in LA: The Lives of Immigrant Sons._Dr. Anthony Christian Ocampo is a Professor of Sociology at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona, an Academic Director of the National Center for Faculty Development and Diversity, and the co-host of the podcast Professor-ing.

What are some key events, places, or people in Asian American history? If you struggle to come up with an answer, you’re not alone. Asian American history is a history of erasure and not-knowing. On this episode, SunAh is joined by Dr. Catherine Ceniza Choy, whose latest book, Asian American Histories of the United States, brings to the forefront the many stories of Asian American history – past and present. Through skillful storytelling, Dr. Choy connects historical moments to present events while weaving in vignettes of Asian American activists, artists, entrepreneurs, trailblazers, and everyday people. Dr. Choy is Associate Dean of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, Belonging, and Justice in the University of California, Berkeley’s Division of Computing, Data Science, and Society.

Have you ever felt like you don't have enough energy, care, or motivation to continue with your daily tasks? That's burnout and it's becoming more and more common. On today's show I'm joined by Amelia Nagoski, co-author of Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle. She talks about why burnout is so common, especially among women, and what we can do to overcome it.  

Amelia Nagoski holds a Doctorate of Musical Arts and was an Associate Professor and Coordinator of Music at Western New England University. Alongside her twin sister, Emily Nagoski, she is the co-author of Burnout.

Every day we are bombarded with messaging from media, advertisers, friends, and family about what our bodies should look like and how we can take control of our bodies. Many of these messages are inaccurate and harmful, but how can we break free? And, what is at the root of all of this focus on body management? Today I’m joined by Chrissy King, author of The Body Liberation Project: How Understanding Racism and Diet Culture Helps Cultivate Joy and Build Collective Freedom. We discuss how we can detach from society’s obsession with controlling our bodies and not just for our own personal well-being but as a component of collective liberation. If you’ve ever found yourself hating your body, believing that losing a few more pounds would lead to happiness, or frustrated that you can’t attain the latest body goals, then this is the conversation you’ve been waiting for.

“Not everything that is faced can be changed. But nothing can be changed until it is faced,” wrote James Baldwin.

From everyday social blunders to corporate scandals and social issues, denial is a common strategy used to address or rather ignore problems. On this episode, SunAh is joined by Dr. Jared Del Rosso, Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology & Criminology at the University of Denver and author of “Denial: How We Hide, Ignore, and Explain away Problems.” Dr. Del Rosso breaks down the common strategies of denial that we ourselves engage in as well as those we commonly encounter and how we can disrupt denial in order to affect social change.

According to the United Nations Convention of the Rights of the Child, everyone has the right to identity, the right to know one’s history and origins. Everyone, including children adopted transnationally out of a war. But how can these adoptees begin to know their history and origins, if their nations of origin deny their existence? On today’s show, I’m joined by Dr. Elizabeth Barnert, the author of Reunion: Finding the Disappeared Children of El Salvador. In this book, she provides a firsthand account that reveals the impact of forced family separations and reunifications in communities affected by El Salvador’s civil war. We discuss her work with Pro-Búsqueda, a non-governmental organization dedicated to the search of children who were disappeared during the Salvadoran Civil War, and the importance of adoptees’ own agency in the process of reunion.

“Anyone with an internet connection can be a propagandist.” Yes, that means you and me. If you don’t believe it – and trust me, I didn’t either – you will once you learn more about Dr. Samuel Woolley’s research on propaganda in the social media age. In today’s show, I sit down with Sam to talk about the conditions of social media that make propaganda easy create and circulate and who is behind social media propaganda. We also talk about the implications for manufacturing illusions of political consensus and importantly the consensus of feeling – feelings like apathy, anger, and polarization. Dr. Samuel Woolley is a faculty member in the School of Journalism & Media at the University of Texas at Austin, the program director of the Propaganda Research Lab, and a Knight Foundation faculty fellow at the Center for Media Engagement.

We all want to be believed, yet not everyone is believable. Criteria for credibility reflect cultural norms and our own desires to leave what we already know unquestioned, but how do these biases affect what we hear and the choices we make? In her latest book, Who Gets Believed? When the Truth Isn’t Enough, _Dina Nayeri uncovers how we listen, who we believe, and the tragic consequences of not believing others. Dina joins me in conversation as we wrestle with how we believe and how we can become better at hearing the stories that people like us and not like us tell. Dina is a winner of the UNESCO City of Literature Paul Engle Prize and a National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellowship. Her previous book, _The Ungrateful Refugee, was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and the Kirkus Prize.

This month Let’s Grab Coffee features conversation with Black Is America host and creator, Dominic Lawson. On today’s show, Dominic and I reflect on our time together this month before listening to Part 2 of the Black is America episode about Marian Anderson.