Hello, everyone! It’s been a long year, to say the least. Hard to believe 2021 is about to close. Before it does, however, please check out this special episode of Loitering, featuring Albert Samaha, Johana Bhuiyan and Arvin Temkar. We discuss Albert’s new book, Concepcion, and dig into the process of excavating family history and identity. I like to think of it as the good thinking, good listening podcast we could use for our ears right now! Let me know what you think.
Peace,
Sonia
Sonia Paul 0:13
Okay, thank you both for agreeing to join me for this book club/book talk about Concepcion, by Albert Samaha. And so before we like get into the book discussion, could you each introduce yourselves so listeners know who are friends of Loitering right now? Sure.
Johana Bhuiyan 0:34
I am Johana Bhuiyan. I am a tech reporter and editor at The Guardian. I live in the Bay Area. I'm half Filipino, half Bangladeshi. That's pretty much the pertinent information.
Arvin Temkar 0:48
Oh, that's super cool. Yeah, we're all half. We're all mixed. That's really interesting. So my name is Arvin Temkar. I am a freelance photojournalist and writer in Atlanta. And I used to live in the Bay Area. So a lot of the book was really interesting to kind of learn about the history of San Francisco. And I met Sonia in the bay,
Sonia Paul 1:08
And to Arvin's point about all of us being mixed, I think that is interesting. All of us have a connection to Filipino culture. My mom's side of the family is born and raised in the Philippines. They're like mixed Indian-Filipino from the Philippines. So there's so much of that culture in my family as well.
So to that end, I'm curious because how this started is that I knew Arvin would be reading this book, and I was interested in reading this book. And then I was like, let's have a book club. I know who was probably reading this book as well. And that would be Johana. But also, like, let's pinpoint what was compelling each of us to read this book.
Johana Bhuiyan 1:47
I worked with Albert at BuzzFeed. So that was part of it, part a lot of it was just in support of. But I also I mean, I am really interested in my Filipino culture and learning more about the history of the Philippines. There was a lot of like, wanting to learn a little bit more about my Filipino ethnicity. My dad is the Bangladeshi one. I grew up largely culturally Bangladeshi. So I learned how to speak Bangla. Like, I really don't know a ton of the Tagalog. So honestly, any opportunity I get to learn a little bit more about Filipino culture and people who have Filipino backgrounds. And obviously, Albert, knowing him personally, I was really interested in, and he had done a couple of articles too about his mother. And I was actually hoping to read a little bit more about that as well.
Sonia Paul 2:30
Yeah, did you to have a chance to like, exchange information or experiences about being half Filipino?
Johana Bhuiyan 2:38
No, I honestly, like did not know that. He was half Filipino. I like did not know what ethnicity he was. Until he started writing about his Filipino mom. I'm like, Oh, this makes a lot of sense, based on his name. Like, I'm like, this all started to click for me. But yeah, I'd never put two and two together. We had like, talked about it after I stopped working on Buzzfeed. But it was never like a topic of conversation.
Sonia Paul 2:59
Hmm, interesting. How about you, Arvin.
Arvin Temkar 3:02
I also know Albert, we're friends. And we went to journalism school together. So obviously, I want to support him and his brilliant writing. But you know, I'm also just super interested in all of the topics that he writes about, particularly in this book, the question of whether his family or anybody's family is better off moving to the United States and kind of pursuing the American dream, as many of us have been raised to believe. I didn't mention this earlier, but my mom is Filipino, and my dad is Indian. But I relate mostly to my Filipino side. And I think that's because I learned my mom's language when I was little. I have a lot of cousins in the United States who are Filipino, my mom cooked food from her country. And I didn't really have that same experience on my dad's side. It was kind of interesting also to kind of read the book and learn a little bit about Albert's dad, but also kind of recognizing that he seems to really identify particularly with his Filipino side. I think I have a similar experience.
Sonia Paul 3:59
Yeah, I was also really intrigued to read this book because I feel like I haven't come across many books about Filipino identity and culture from like a second generation experience. Also super interested in that critique, as Arvin mentioned, of like, is it a good thing that people chose to immigrate to this country. And also the experience of coming from a half identity or like a bicultural experience? And then writing about that diaspora community or about that immigrant community? I just don't feel like we have a lot of that in literature at this moment. And so one of the things I was thinking about when reading this book is that considering that he's examining his own Filipino identity and acknowledges he grew up with that side of his family and really embraces that, how did that portrayal resonate with you?
Arvin Temkar 4:51
I thought it was really interesting that Albert describes kind of this black and white dichotomy in our culture, and kind of questions where other people fit in, particularly if you're Filipino. And the part that resonates with me in the book in regards to your question is, he kind of does this cultural analysis of this movie called The Debut, The Debut.
Sonia Paul 5:16
Yes!
Arvin Temkar 5:17
And where the main character kind of falls, how that relates to his experience. And I guess Albert relates a lot to Black culture, and the character in that movie seem to fall in with white culture. And he kind of compares and contrasts these experiences. And I really did that personally, because I've always felt like I have kind of related more to the white culture, but had noticed in my school that it felt like many of the Filipinos were relating more to Black culture. So it's always been like just a weird dynamic. And I think partly that might be because I moved around a lot when I was a kid. And I didn't have many other Filipino friends, until I got to like, MiddleSchool AND high school, where I was on an army base, and there were a lot of Filipinos,
Johana Bhuiyan 6:03
I mean, I was gonna ask you where you grew up, because I think that adds a lot of context, you know, whether you identify more with white or Black culture as a person of color. I mean, that was something similar, but I thought was interesting in the book. And it's something that I think about quite a lot. Because I do feel like speaking of the lack of representation, or a lack of any kind of narratives about what it's actually like to be Filipino, I think growing up without that, you basically are forced to choose between white and Black culture, because what is a second-generation Filipino culture? What does that look like? Or what is brown culture look like? You know, we just didn't have a very real concept of that. I mean, I grew up in Queens, New York. And so I definitely, I moved more toward Black culture. But I think I also felt more accepted by Black culture and much more comfortable. And so it is interesting to me that while Albert, he felt closer to Black culture than white culture, his family kind of took on and accepted a lot of sort of the white stereotypes, white expectations, kind of saw whiteness as — whether or not it was a net positive — accessing that whiteness, or that closeness to whiteness would be the thing that provided them a lot of opportunities. In order to progress in American society, they needed to accept whiteness, which I think is pretty true of a lot of my immigrant family. Right. Like, I think that that was sort of the same thoughts that they probably had. That the closer you get to the white standard, or the white way of living, the more successful you actually are. I think all of that kind of rang true for my experience as well.
Sonia Paul 7:36
Yeah, I mean, I thought it was really smart that you mentioned, it depends where you're growing up, what a culture would identify with black culture, or white culture, if those are the two dominant cultures, because reading this book, so much of it takes place in the Bay Area. So so much of it is familiar for me, because I am from the Bay Area. And in the Bay Area, like growing up kind of the same generation as Albert, it is kind of, in the areas that we grew up, we're growing up around a lot of other minorities, right. So I feel like in my elementary school days, there was maybe like, one white person. And then he actually left in like seventh grade. It was just like all these other kids. And so like, kind of hip hop culture was the dominant culture. Um, just the way we spoke and interacted with the culture. It never felt like whiteness was something we were trying to aspire to, per se. Because it was never sold to us as the thing that we needed to aspire to. Like, you know, we had multicultural days, and sort of like what you call like, crab beads, but we didn't always have crab, sometimes we'd have like Filipino food, because that was like the population that was around and was interested in that. So that was really striking to me.
But also, you know, this book is also examining colonialism and imperialism. And I'm curious how you thought of the way that book related those structures, concepts to this aspiration of whiteness, or this idea that being closer to white was like a good thing versus Black culture was more transgressive. If you have any thoughts about that.
Johana Bhuiyan 9:13
I loved the way that he drew it back to colonialism in the Philippines, because I think people don't really think about how it's impacted the way that Filipinos exist today and the culture and the things that we've just accepted. Like, I have recently been thinking a lot about it because my mom is a nurse, and my tita, my aunt, was a nurse who passed and COVID because she was working on the frontlines. And so I've been trying to like, understand their paths to nursing, and why they chose those paths, and just how like, the way that they started on their disparate paths impacted where they ended up. And a lot of it goes back to colonialism. Like, so much of it goes back to the fact that Americans, when they colonized the Philippines, created western hospitals, brought western medicine there in order to help their like, uncivilized brown brothers and sisters, I forgot what exactly it's called, like beneficent colonialism or something like that, like we're gonna save our fellow Catholic brown brothers and sisters, but they are so backwards that we have to like, read their entire health care system of whatever medicine that they were using, remedies and things like that, that they had. And they basically put into the system and put into the minds of Filipinos at that point forward, that Americans were superior, and the American healthcare system is superior. And then they started creating schools for Filipino nurses to learn about the American health care system. And then that's why all of the nurses come to America — not only that, there's a lot of other reasons, but they basically are only trained in western healthcare. And so they essentially created this pipeline. And that is years and years ago, and obviously, my mother was not alive then. And my aunt wasn't alive then. But it so impacts the way that they came to America. They were still taught years later that America was the land of opportunity, that they literally could not be successful or make as much money as they need to unless they went to America. It's just so deeply, deeply intertwined. And it has such a resounding impact for generations and generations. And I absolutely loved how he started with just the way that the Philippines even was created and formed. I'm like, all that matters so much. Like you said, I don't think there are a lot of books that delve into what it's like to be a second-generation Filipino. But I think even more, so there aren't books that tie that to the colonial context. Like there's generational trauma. There's also generational, you know, influences on the way that we think and the way that we operate globally.
Sonia Paul 9:35
Yeah. And also, it's quite interesting what you said about Filipino nurses because they also became the go-to population to help the United States when there was a nursing shortage here, like around World War Two. And it's because the United States did go into the Philippines and influence that system of education, the fact that it was an English speaking country. And even now, like there was a story I did earlier this year about this second-generation Filipino nurse reckoning with the idea becoming a cultural stereotype by going into nursing. So it's not even just sort of an immigrant tradition, because so many of the people are born and raised here. But to what extent has that history of immigration and colonialism sort of stayed within the family? Yeah, like, Arvin? I'm sorry, did you have anything that you wanted to add?
Arvin Temkar 12:30
Well, one of the details that stuck out to me was the story that Albert told, I think it was one of his family members, maybe, reciting the Gettysburg Address. And that just surprised me because although I'd known about the colonial history of the United States in the Philippines, I didn't know the details of the education system, and of what people were learning. And in my trips to the Philippines, although I've kind of witnessed western influence in western culture, as I've seen all around the world, I didn't really understand, I think, the depth of American influence, like rooted in how people are educated, what their values are from that education, and what kind of ideas are formed in people's minds about themselves and about the United States and about their governments.
Arvin Temkar 13:17
I have something else to say about the memoirs, I feel like Albert, as a journalist, you know, a journalistic technique, I guess, is you find a character, and you create a narrative and use that character to talk about larger issues. And in this book, it seems like Albert just reported himself and his family, really in-depth. You know, he makes himself the character. Which makes it a little bit different from a traditional memoir. I guess, you're still doing reporting in memoirs, you might read like more creative nonfiction memoirs, but you're also I think, taking a lot of creative liberties. Whereas in this book, it feels very straight. And you can kind of see where interviews happen, you can see where details come from, whether they come from things that his family members have written or his conversations with them. So I think in that sense, you know, it feels more like a reported book than a creative memoir.
Sonia Paul 14:12
Yeah, that's interesting, because that's actually a question that I have for Albert is like, how did you go about interviewing your family members and really putting this history together? Especially since I think excavating family history can be really contentious, depending on who you're talking to. And a lot of it is just invisible or forgotten too. And I'm curious, what are some questions you have for him either about his process of putting the book together or what the outcome has been or anything else that comes to mind?
Johana Bhuiyan 14:42
That was actually one of my questions too, like one. How did you approach your family about potentially writing about them and interviewing them and putting this out in the open. I can tell you right now, my family would disown me if I put any of their dirty laundry out there like that. It would not be okay. It would definitely not fly, and he was so honest about his perception of like, so many things that his family members did and their positions and all of that, and I just love my family to death. I could never be that honest, like ever. And so that was a huge question of mine.
Johana Bhuiyan 15:12
And then I'm really interested in the interviewing process, when there's a reason why journalists typically don't interview people that they're close with, right? It's difficult to one, get maybe, sometimes getting them to take you seriously is hard, but also two, how do you cut through your own personal dynamic with them in order to get like the truth of the matter? I think all of that is so so fascinating. And you know, he's telling these stories about his uncles in this band, and like sitting around the table drinking, I'm like, what was that reporting process like? And, and — I assume all of its true, but it has to be difficult to like, stick just to the truth when you're trying to put a family history like that together. How do you like separate fact from fiction when it's like, oh, these are my family's tales. You know, this is the narrative they tell about their life and so like, what's true and what's not? And how do you figure that out as a journalist?
Sonia Paul 15:59
Yeah, I think that's a smart question to like, so many families have their own mythologies about who they are and how they came to be. Yeah. What about you, Arvin?
Arvin Temkar 16:08
I'm really curious about — maybe this is in the end, which I didn't see. But whether his mom has read the book, and how she feels about it, because the descriptions of her come off as like so loving and tender and caring, but also concerned, and feeling like there's this huge gap between the realities that mother and son see. And all of the reporting and even the kind of political analysis and cultural analysis that Albert makes, seem to be conclusions that his mom and the sources his mom gets information from would not agree with. And I'm just really curious as to how she read that, if she read that, and how that affected the relationship.
Sonia Paul 16:53
Yeah, I mean, as we wrap up, is there anything else that comes to mind that you think would be relevant for this discussion? Or you think the listeners ought to know about your thoughts on this. I'll just go first of all, I feel like I made a mistake when I talked about my childhood experience, because there were a couple of white kids in my elementary school class. But it is — there's very vivid memory of a male classmate who was really like, a very sweet classmate. And our teacher talked about how sad it was that he left our class. And he was like, one of few white kids. So I'll add that. Anything else?
Arvin Temkar 17:27
Yeah, to your point, I'm curious about other people's experiences growing up, if people have this experience, as it seems like all of us do, of being in schools that are incredibly diverse. I guess, in my early childhood, that was not the case, because I was in rural Illinois. But then I moved to this army base in Japan, which was made up of just all kinds of different people. And my high school was so diverse, and it felt like being in the Bay Area or Queens or something. So that aspect of Albert's book is super relatable, but I don't know if other listeners or readers will have that experience.
Sonia Paul 18:02
Yeah, I think also just the influence of class in that experience to have growing up or not growing up around a lot of minorities.
Johana Bhuiyan 18:11
Yeah, I initially grew up in Queens, but eventually moved to Long Island. And I feel like the story that's always told us like, I brought my smelly, you know, ethnic food to the lunchroom and people didn't like it. Like, it's so funny. Like, I consistently hear from people who grew up in the Bay Area that it just like, was not the case. Like, all my friends brought in chicken adobo. So nobody, like had an issue with it.
Johana Bhuiyan 18:31
But yeah, I think that, like all immigrant stories, like class and race are really important. And it is interesting —like reading his book, it just does not read to me the same way that like other biracial or multiethnic half Filipino stories I've read in the past. It just reads like, like, Albert is telling the story of his life as a Filipino. You know, like, it doesn't read to me like this sort of mixed kid's story, which I think is like, you know, probably true to his experience, right? Like he and more identifies with that side of his family. So I thought that was super interesting. And I wonder if there's like any, like effort on his end, or any desire to learn more about the other side of his culture as well and what he's doing to do that?
Sonia Paul 19:12
Cool, yeah, I'll ask him! So thank you both so much for this book/talk book discussion, and I'll let you know how the conversation with Albert goes.
Johana Bhuiyan 19:23
Tell Albert we say hi.
Sonia Paul 19:25
Okay, I will! Thank you. Bye.
Sonia Paul
Do you often work on the weekend?
Albert Samaha 19:35
Yeah. Always.
Sonia Paul 19:37
Like for your day job or for like book projects?
Albert Samaha 19:39
Both, especially now that I'm an editor. There's a lot more weekend work because as a reporter, you kind of crash on a story, and then take some time off. But as an editor, there's always another story coming down the pipe. And you want to treat every story like it's the most important story in the world. So that means if the reporter is working on the weekend, I'll be working on the weekend, and I never want my reporters to feel like they're like oh, on island on their own, and they want to like, lead by example and make sure that they see how hard I'm working so that they know that like, excellence has the cost and the cost is putting in the hours.
Sonia Paul 20:11
Damn. Okay, so that's like so American of you to say.
Albert Samaha 20:15
Yeah. Well, or you could say it's very immigrant of me to say. Immigrant to America, capitalistic. Yeah, very immigrant of the capitalist age thing to say. Immigrant coming to the capitalist empire of me to say.
Sonia Paul 20:28
Yeah. man, I can't wait to talk to you more about these topics. But before I launch into like formal questioning, first of all, can you just introduce yourself?
Albert Samaha 20:36
Yeah, I'm Albert Samaha. I'm an author and inequality editor at BuzzFeed News. We're at Fly Bar in San Francisco's Fillmore district on Divisadero Street.
Sonia Paul 20:47
Is this bar special to you?
Albert Samaha 20:49
It's my go-to bar, whenever I'm in San Francisco. It's the closest bar to my mom's place. I guess, now, there's a couple bars that are closer, but those are new. But when I lived here, this was the closest bar. It was just dependable. It's also the only bar open before five around here. So it's very convenient for day drinking, which I love to do. I mean, I spent a lot of time in San Francisco. And I'm a big remote worker. I like to structure my life in such a way that I can be just as productive, whether I'm home in New York, or anywhere, because that just gives me freedom to be where I want to be.
That was one of the cool things about moving to New York, is I grew up in California, you sort of live your life year-round. But in New York, a place with four seasons, your life is much more structured around kind of the natural turns of the earth.
Sonia Paul 21:33
Oh, wow, that is so true.
Albert Samaha 21:35
When I first moved to New York for grad school was when I was like, okay, what are you doing Thursday, and people pull up the phone, see, like, well, let's see what the weather's gonna be like, on Thursday. I'm like, oh, s**t, we got to do that. Versus here, just like, um, what? What are you doing Thursday? You know?
Sonia Paul 21:47
Yeah.
Albert Samaha 21:48
Let's do it. But I kind of like that, you know, I think my memories are often tied to particular seasons. And it also forces you to sort of readjust your routines. And I believe there's like a season for everything. Nothing's permanent, and the sort of cycles of seasons. So it creates this balance and order that I think my life might not otherwise have, if it weren't for the seasons.
Sonia Paul 22:10
But your book. It's like not in New York, for the most part. It's in California.
Albert Samaha 22:15
It is a California book, for sure.
Sonia Paul 22:18
Also, sorry for our Loitering audience, but we're outside. And so some cars are driving by, just let them do their thing.
So you mentioned right as I arrived, that you were reading this book that you wanted to read as you were writing the book, but you were Philippine'd out. So what does it mean to be Philippine'd out?
Albert Samaha 22:38
There are so many books written by Filipino authors, which is great. And it allows you to not have to worry about representing the entire diaspora, and just telling your own story. But I read like 50 plus books, in research for my book. And I guess like, when you're so deep in that rabbit hole of like a particular subject, you start to hear echoes from one book to the next, of kind of the same ideas. So this is an amazing book, Insurrecto. And it deals with the Spanish American War, and how we remember it. But also, I read like, three books about the Spanish American War. It feels like oh, man, I don't know if I can fully appreciate a novel about the Spanish American War. After reading like 1000 pages about the Spanish American War, I felt like I needed a little bit of time to like, decompress and process. Also, it's just a time issue. Like, I still have a dozen books I'd like to read that obviously won't go into the book I've already published, but will add to my general edification of the subject of colonialism in the Philippines. So it's kind of like playing catch up.
Sonia Paul 23:41
Yeah. Okay. So I really want to talk about these ideas, like colonialism, empire, imperialism. Like all these ideas, were they in your mind when you set out to write this book that was in many ways, a memoir, but not like a full-on memoir? Because there's so much history? Or did those ideas come to mind as you start reading more?
Albert Samaha 24:03
I think the seeds of them had already been planted. I had been thinking about colonialism and empire even before I began the process of writing the book. But I don't think I fully appreciated it at the time, how central those would be to the themes of the book. I knew it'd be a book about family, I knew it'd be a book about immigration, and it would be a book about America, and its relationship with the Philippines. But colonialism and empire were still very much abstract topics to me. Like now when I speak of colonialism and empire, I speak of it with a lot of confidence. And what I like to think of like, the depth of knowledge, and I sort of can, you know, tell you like six degrees of colonialism. Like mention something, an act or an event and I'll tell you the colonial impact of it, right. But I didn't know enough about the history of those words, those ideas, to be able to say what they would mean for the book, or or how they would manifest in the book, or even that they would sort of be the defining buzzwords of the book.
Sonia Paul 25:08
So if you didn't know what they would mean for the book, what in that abstract way did those words mean for you?
Albert Samaha 25:15
They meant an abyss of history. They meant a history that I didn't think enough about. They represented the abstractions of a history that I hadn't yet considered was intentionally erased by colonizers. But just the history that wasn't present in my mind. I mean, like, the term like colonial mentality is one that I have been using since like high school, you know? Yeah,
Sonia Paul 25:39
Like, what's your first memory of using the phrase colonial mentality?
Albert Samaha 25:43
I would like, say to my mom, whenever she would say anything that I found, like, elevated whiteness, or denigrated Blackness, or like not wanting to teach me Tagalog, or those sorts of things. I would be like, oh, that's just colonial mentality. You know, I'd say when my friends, I would cite it often. So to me, what it meant, what colonialism meant, was purely the act of elevating whiteness over our native heritage. So it was purely this act of replacement and erasure. But what that meant and how that actually played out, I didn't really think about and I didn't have the tools to be able to unpack. It was purely a buzzword. I don't even know where I heard it. I couldn't tell you I first heard the term colonial mentality.
Sonia Paul 26:29
Well, yeah, I've definitely heard colonial mentality from a lot of like, diaspora communities of colonized countries, but you know, people ranting on Twitter, you know, right, right. I think someone has written some texts about colonial mentality and Filipino identity in relation to like, their psychology?
Albert Samaha 26:48
Yeah, I think E.J. David, yeah, wrote a book about that. Yeah. Right. (But then) Brown Skin, White Minds.
Sonia Paul 26:53
Yes. You know, this whole, like, coconut situation that comes across in many cultures. But I'm curious, just to go back when you were like thinking of first writing this book, what crystallized for you that Yes, I'm gonna write a book. And it's gonna encompass these ideas about colonial mentality, empire and my family? Like, was there some sort of experience in your life or tipping for you? Or was it something that had been growing and growing? And finally, you knew you wanted to do it, or you had the resources to do it?
Albert Samaha 27:25
I think the tipping point was around like 2016-17, I think was when it sort of dawned on me that my elders were roiled in financial struggles that were not temporary, but were just sort of reality. And I think that is what sparked the triggering questions for the project, which was like, wait a minute, if they're just going to struggle here, like, why did they come? What was what's the point of coming? Why? They've clearly sacrificed, right? It's cliche in the immigrant experience that the elder generation sacrifices for the benefit of the second generation. They just sort of take that for granted. But to see what that actually means, to see that the lives that they were living in the years when many of my friends' parents were retiring, and were in their nest eggs and moving the Florida and beach houses, my elders were still working, and still in debts and still struggling. It made me wonder, like, why did they have to sacrifice? What would it take to make the sacrifice worth it? And like, answering those questions is sort of like, you start looking back at each domino. And eventually you realize there's more and more dominoes that trace back and back and back and back. Until eventually, it becomes clear that the reason we are here, is because of colonialism. It's because we came from America, because America is the country that colonized the Philippines, and taught us English, and offered us visas, and is the most powerful country in the world, richest country in the world. The promised land that we aspire to and were taught was exceptional, and welcomes you with open arms and offers you endless opportunities to elevate yourself and more importantly, provide a means for upward mobility for the next generation. This entire mythology was spun over the course of that colonization effort. And I think there were a lot of things I took for granted and thought about is inevitable. That no longer seems so inevitable to me like wait, why America? Why did America become the empire? America isn't the first empire. Won't be the last empire.
Albert Samaha 29:37
So thinking about this moment of like, is America in decline, right. Post-recession, and this was around the time of like, the ascent of Trump. I think our generation, one of our earliest memories as kids was like 9/11, and then Katrina, and then the economic recession. Like, the first election that I could, like, vividly remember, was one with a guy with more votes didn't win, you know, like, we were have raised in this epoch of American decline in many ways. Like, born into an America that was very overtly not living up to the promises that we were taught. And it forced me to think about the long arc of history. Like, my elders were born into the age of American predominance. And that's how we came here. So the next question is, well, how did America rise? How did America build its power? How did America make it so that it became the country that all of us wanted to come here? And why is it not living up to the promises?
So it very much was a process of coming to the sudden realization that all of these expectations, all of these assumptions I had, didn't hold up. And the things I assumed were inevitable, were rooted in decisions, events, very tangible history. And it's sort of that moment when I realized how little I knew. And I think that was the joy of this book, is I sort of came into it with a pretty good oh, here's what the books about. And within months of embarking on the project, I knew that actually, I don't know enough to know what it's about.
Sonia Paul 31:11
Yeah. So when did you start to know enough to know what it was about? Like, how much recording, interviewing did you do before you got to that point?
Albert Samaha 31:24
It's a good question. When did it come together in my head? Lemme think about that... I think it was, like early 2019. I was reading this history book by Luis Francia, who's this historian. He wrote a history of the Philippines from the perspective of Filipinos. And it's a survey. And I knew my family's history, and then to sort of project my family's history onto this broader survey, and seeing oh, that's what the world was like when my great-great grandmother converted to Catholicism, or my great grandmother moved to Manila. And so I had all the interviews, I had all the family stuff early on. So once I saw the broad history, and I had the family history, it clicked into place. Where all of these decisions and outcomes in my family suddenly made a lot of sense.
Sonia Paul 32:23
Okay, so one of the questions I had was about how you actually approached your family, for interviews for this book, because if I were to just make a guess, if you knew that this book would be about interrogating concepts that are just truth to them, that yes, America is a land of opportunity. Yes, we come for a better life. Like, would they have maybe been more guarded? Or what are your thoughts on that?
Albert Samaha 32:54
Well, I didn't come to them with any big-picture ideas.
Sonia Paul 32:57
Okay. Yeah. So how exactly did you come?
Albert Samaha 32:59
I said, I just wanted to write a story about our family's history, and how we came here, how we ended up in America, and what our landing in America was like. And our family has a lot of pride in our family. And we know we have a lot of characters. So it was the easiest part of the project, you know, (really). Yeah, I mean, there was some like, aunties and uncles who like, were supportive, but didn't want to, like, put their thoughts out there. But the majority of folks I wanted to talk to, were more than happy.
Albert Samaha 33:22
I mean, I'm used to sources being, you know — I'm used to having to persuade sources, you know, in like day to day investigative journalism. So this was like the easiest sourcing experience I've ever had, because they love me, and they're proud of our story. And they wanted to share that story. So I got as much access as I wanted, I can call them whatever I want. I think it drew a lot of us closer together, because I probably should have been calling them more to begin with, and just gave me an excuse to talk to them much more regularly.
So I didn't come to them with any preconceived notions, or I didn't ask them big picture questions about well, how do you feel about the American empire? I asked him granular questions about like, what do you remember about your first day here? What did you eat? What are you wearing? Because I knew at the core, while I obviously wanted to have big picture thoughts and ideas about America and the world, I knew at the core of the book would live and die on to strengthen the family narrative, and that it was important that I fleshed out those characters, those stories as vividly as possible. That whatever conclusions I came to, I didn't know yet. But I did know that there would be a strong, tightly wound narrative around these characters.
Sonia Paul 34:25
Yeah. And so was it more telling them that you were going to write this book or asking them if it's okay for you to write the book.
Albert Samaha 34:32
I kind of just told them. I mean, I've written about family stuff before. I mean, I also felt like, well, it's also my story to tell, like, I didn't feel I needed to ask permission, maybe to tell their individual slices of it. But to the degree that it's a memoir, I cannot tell my personal story, without the stories of the people who influenced me most, which are like my family. And it was never really a question. I never got any pushback. I never got any doubt or skepticism about why I was doing this project, everyone sort of saw the merit in it, and was happy to help. Which I know is not the case for a lot of people writing about their families.
Sonia Paul 35:07
Yeah, you know. So before I came here to talk with you about the book, I actually talked with two other people. We had a kind of like book club discussion about your book. And there are people who know you have questions for you too.
Albert Samaha 35:19
Cool.
Sonia Paul 35:20
Arvin Temkar
Albert Samaha 35:21
My guy.
Sonia Paul 35:22
And Johana Bhuiyan.
Albert Samaha 35:23
Ah, my other — my gal, my gal. Two of my favorite Filipinos.
Sonia Paul 35:27
Yes! We were talking about your book in relation to family and identity, and also kind of being from a bicultural experience too at that, even if Filipino identity is very central to that. But one of the questions Johana specifically had was like, your family is so familiar with you. Right? So how do you cut through that familiarity to actually get to the truth in an interview and separate fact from fiction? Because did you ever get the feeling that maybe, you know, they were just telling you mythologies of the family, or just family tales that have been massaged over the years to become true, but not like, truth with a capital T as in fact, this really happened?
Albert Samaha 36:15
Yeah, I mean, I think my journalism background is helpful for that, because I just inherently come into a project or reporting process, skeptical to begin with, right? And so anytime anyone tells me anything, my instinct is, well, how can I verify this? Is there another person who was there I can talk to, did they say the same story. And so I kind of took that into account when I was interviewing people, I would ask them about other stories I heard from other people. So to the degree that I could, I verified everything with multiple sources, every anecdote, every detail. And when I couldn't, I would make that clear in the book. And on occasions where there was conflicting facts, then just lean into it. Like one of the most prominent cases in the book was when my auntie told me that my grandmother had come on a tourist visa, overstayed it, and was here on this very street. She was living on a house that my mom lives in now that my great grand-aunt used to live in, in like the 70s. And my grandmother's green card had expired, when she'd gone back to the Philippines in like the late 60s. When she came back to the US, story goes, she came on a tourist visa. She expires, she's undocumented, or out of status, I guess is the term, and not really sure what to do. And then she's here — the Fillmore was like a very different place back at the time, it was like high crime, broken streetlights, a lot of desperate people around. And one day her and my grand-aunt were walking from the bus stop back home after work. And they get mugged by a guy with a gun, steals her purses, and leaves. Police come and police are like, oh, what was in the purse. And my grandma was like, my green card. And well, but she didn't have a green card. So a few weeks later in the mail, she gets a replacement green card. And suddenly she's valid again. And like, so the story goes, right? And I love this irony of America pushes us into this neglected corner of its empire only for that very neglects to lead to our legitimacy.
Albert Samaha 38:16
But then I brought up my mom, she's like, I don't think that's true. It's an entirely different, like, grandma would never not follow the rules. And like, I never heard that story from grandma, I think she was legitimate the whole time. So like, I did a public records request for my grandmother's immigration file, I got it, read through it, it could neither confirm nor deny the fable. There was like clues in there that suggested it could be true. But there was nothing confirming that it could be true. And so I lay that out in the book, just as I would do in any investigative story, which is that here's what one side says. Here's someone disputing it. And here's the evidence that we have. But at the end of the day, we don't know. So my approach was to apply the same journalistic rigor to my family story that I would have with anyone else's story. And I sort of reported this with the same process that I would anything else except this time, the sources were my family.
Sonia Paul 39:13
You know, Arvin had commented that this book is not a traditional memoir, because in a lot of memoirs, people may take creative license to — to create truth that is true to them. Right? But this didn't go in that territory. And was that by intention, or did that just come out of the way you are approaching the book, by accident?
Albert Samaha 39:39
Both both. And when I say both, I mean that it's like, intentional in the way instincts are intentional. I didn't sit down and think which path am I gonna take? It was more like, this is how I know how to work. And I feel deeply uncomfortable writing anything that I don't know to be true. So to me, especially in this time of like, media mistrust, I just feel very uncomfortable, not being transparent with the reader or deceiving the reader. You know, I want to earn their trust, I wanna earn their credibility, and I prefer to over attribute. I think 20 year old me used to think that disrupted the flow. But to me now, it's like I'd much prefer to just be upfront with the reader and not try to hide anything from the reader.
Sonia Paul 40:20
You know, Arvin, and Johana and I were talking about, like, you know, Filipino experiences, multiracial experiences. And this book is really like, a Filipino experience. And your father, and that side of your identity kind of figures very sparingly. And I'm wondering, now that you've written so much about Filipino culture and identity, how does that make you think of this other aspect of who you are?
Albert Samaha 40:46
Maybe that'll be the next book? I think it's made me more curious, right? Like this exploration of my mom's side has made me all the more curious about my dad's side, right. But I went into this exploration of my mom's side already knowing a lot of this. I knew the characters, I knew the story. I researched and learned more details about them. But I knew the arc. So it was not so much this journey of discovery, so much as an exploration of a landscape that I had taken for granted, right? Yeah, kinda like when I first moved to San Francisco as an adult, this place I'd spent so much time and as a kid, but now I can drink and smoke weed. And the city took on a whole other tint for me. Versus I think the difference with the story of my dad's side is this black box. And it would be a journey of discovery, as opposed to an exploration of things that took for granted. So it'd be a totally different thing. But it definitely made me much more thirsty to know about that side. And I've already started asking questions, like I'm very curious about and I really want to learn about it. And it's fascinating history. And it's fascinating from a different side, because my dad's side is the story of a family that has maintained wealth over the course of generations and withstood the tides of history. In very prominent standing. Whereas my mom's side is one of constantly adapting to the new colonizers and withstanding setbacks at every stage of colonization, and gradually assimilating into the empires. It's a very interesting and useful and fascinating contrast for me.
Albert Samaha 41:08
So have your family members read the book?
A couple of them.
Sonia Paul 42:18
A couple?
Albert Samaha 42:18
Yeah, my mom has, my cousin has, one of my younger cousins has. My cousins are like more on it than the elders. They lived it, you know?
Sonia Paul 42:27
Yeah. So what is your mom think of the book, and how has interviewing her, having her read what you wrote about her, how has that affected your relationship?
Albert Samaha 42:38
Um, she liked the book, you know, she didn't love the way I characterized Trump. She likes to call them racist and sexist. It's definitely brought us closer. I think it helped me understand her more. It was kind of like me asking her about things that she had told me about over the course of our lives, and just sort of getting more details about them. So it didn't feel unnatural. It didn't feel different than conversations we had before. It just meant that we were talking more frequently, which I think is good for any relationship. I mean, I think it, it allowed us to reflect on things that we wouldn't have really reflected on if I didn't do this project.
Sonia Paul 43:16
She didn't like the way you characterize Trump. How did she feel about the way you characterized her?
Albert Samaha 43:22
I mean, she fact-checked it. She considered it accurate, right? I think there were definitely some things that she was like, well, we we have to we have to say this? Or can we frame this differently, right, the parts about like her financial struggles, no one wants their most traumatic moments to be like, plastered on a page. Fortunately, I've had a lot of experience navigating that with sources. Like most of the work I've done over the course of my career is plastering people's most dramatic moments on the page. And so it's a conversation I've had with many sources of making sure they feel in control of their own story, and not feeling like I'm imposing my own interpretation of their life without their inputs. So I wanted to make sure she always had inputs, and that if anything she wanted to change. I was open to that, right.
Albert Samaha 44:09
Whenever I write about anything, right, it was a victim of a hate crime, a victim of a sexual assault. I'll before publication, I'll run through all the details, especially the details that are sensitive. And I make sure that I presented in a way where they don't feel that I've taken their story out of their hands. And that it's a partnership. It's our story, not my story. And I applied the same tactics with my mom, and there was nothing where she was like, cut that and I was like, no, we have to keep it. Like, there were things that we compromised on. I thought her edits were useful and added useful context. But she was very supportive. You know, she's my mom.
Sonia Paul 44:45
Yeah. Now this book is done and out in the world. I mean, like, how are you feeling about it? Like now that it's finished, like was it we thought it would be, the final product?Did it receive the reception you wanted to? Like, what were your expectations, exactly? And how were they met or not met or exceeded, if at all?
Albert Samaha 45:09
They're definitely exceeded. I learned from my first book that expectations are unhealthy. Because for the first book, I had every expectation under the sun. And that first book, like it did well, like won awards.
Sonia Paul 45:22
Can you talk about your first book?
Albert Samaha 45:23
Yeah, it's Never Ran, Never Will. I followed for like, five years, this group of middle schoolers in Brownsville, Brooklyn, who play on this youth football team. Embedded in the community, and wrote this very, like very verite book about that community, and football and the role football plays in America as a mechanism for upward mobility, for those that have no options but to bash their heads together and risk permanent brain damage. Because in America, you get scholarships for football, but not for engineering, you know. And the unhealthy aspect of that release was I realized months later, looking back, like when you have every expectation, number one New York Times bestseller, Pulitzer Prize everything, right? I found myself, I was more focused on the things I wasn't getting the things I was getting. And like I would spend five minutes celebrating the wins, and five days dwelling on the defeats, and for three months, I was just kind of in that spiral. And eventually, I was like, wait a minute, this worked out great. You know, I have a book that I'm proud of, and people like, and they want to make a Netflix show about it. And like, (yeah, that's a big ass deal!) Yeah, I know, right? I know. But I was I was like, well, it didn't make a number one year, it was the number one New York Times bestseller. It didn't win a Pulitzer. And I was like, this isn't healthy. You know, these are things out of my control. And yet, I'm allowing him to dictate how I feel about something I should be very proud of, and that I put my heart and soul into.
So this time around, I had no expectation. I knew from the moment I filed it, this is f*****g good. The best thing I've ever done. And if it's the best thing I ever do, I'm happy with that. And I know it's good. No matter how many people buy it, no matter what review, say, no matter if it doesn't want to single award. I know it's f*****g good. And I sort of had that piece. And so I remember, after we had like the final copy done. My editor was like, hey, you know, congratulations, I hope you're really proud. This is really good. My editor is Becky Saletan, and she's really wise and a genius. And I was like, oh, thank you, thank you. I'm already nervous about the reviews bla bla. And she was like, like, stop. Like, there's just peaceful moments between finishing the book, and the release, where you have no sales numbers, no reviews, no anything, no expectations, and you can just simmer in the accomplishments. And that really resonated with me, and really changed the way I approached the release. I was like, you know what, yeah, f**k that, you know, I'm proud of it. And nothing was gonna change that no matter what. And so I got like, two New York Times rave reviews. It was like, Oh, my God, it was like, it was coming in. And so every, like, I got a lot of good s**t, right, I got way more attention and raves than I imagined. It was everything I wanted for the first book. And I was much more able to appreciate it. Now, if that all happened with the first book, I'd be a f*****g a*****e today. You know, like, you know, like, because if it had happened with the first book, I would have been like, well, of course, I'm the man. Of course, anything I write, will get this reception. But what I learned from the first book is that it's out of your hands. And not the things you want don't always come. So when they do come, like savor that s**t. And I've been savoring it the last three months, you know, so it exceeded my expectations, because I had no expectations. But it would have been an expectation you would have exceeded anyway. But it's all the more rewarding that I sort of just was proud of the art of it without being too worried about the sort of commercialization of it. And so when the commercialization s**t was positive, I was able to appreciate that a lot more. So that's my relationship with it now, is that I am like, incredibly overjoyed and happy with it. There's definitely great, particularly the reception amongst the Filipino diaspora. That's, that's the thing I'm really happy about because those are the people that would call me on my b******t because they know my story better than anybody else would. That was the audience I was most intimidated by. That was the audience I most wanted to impress. That was the audience I cared most about liking the book. And the reception both from Filipino people I knew, Filipino people I'd never met. Filipino people I only know from the internet. It was just so much support. That made me feel really proud to be Filipino and to be a Filipino with a platform who can use their voice to like, represent our community for younger Filipino writers. You know?
Albert Samaha 49:59
I once met Viet Thanh Nguyen.
Sonia Paul 50:01
And who is this person for listeners who may not know?
Albert Samaha 50:04
Viet Thanh Nguyen is a Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Sympathizer, amongst other novels and works. He's Vietnamese American. And he was a professor of a really good friend of mine, Anna Roth, former restaurant critic at SF weekly. So she knew him cuz he taught her at USC. And so she took me to a panel he was on. After the panel, I got to meet him, get a drink with him. It was like amazing. Love to meet my heroes and not make a fool of myself. Except I ended up making a fool of myself, because he told a story about how when he had like, first I think it was like Joy Luck Club, he mentioned when he first read it, he felt so proud to see members of Asian diasporas represented in books and literature. And after this, like drinks event, I go up to him and we're leaving. And I say, hey, you know, your book was like that, for me. Seeing you know, Southeast Asian culture and history represented on the page did that for me. And he called my ass out. He was like, well, there's a lot of Filipino writers out there. I don't remember the word for word, but. What he meant, what he intended to say, basically, the message was, if my book was that for you, as a Filipino, you're not reading enough Filipinos.
Sonia Paul
Yeah, ok, so who are the other Filipino writers that people ought to be reading because just talking with Arvin and Johana, too, we're just like, yeah, there's a few books that we felt that we had come across that talks about the second generation experience. Yeah, yeah. So maybe we just have these like, awful blind spots. Maybe we're ignorant.
Albert Samaha 51:29
Well, there are fewer second-generation experiences, right. I think the predominant second-generation one for me is Elaine Castillo's America is Not the Heart. The protagonist there is not second generation, the protagonist is first generation. But the protagonist comes to America and lives amongst second-generation Filipinos in a similar way to like Americana, where a Nigerian woman moves to the states for college and like, reflects on race in America from that perspective. It was kind of like that. But it was the first time that I had seen second-generation like, Bay Area folks represented, people I knew, people my cousins represented, on the page. But it is few second-generation perspectives.
Albert Samaha 52:06
But there are a lot of first-generation perspectives. And there's a lot of Filipino perspectives. So there's Mia Alvar's In Our Country, short story collection. There's Cinelle Barnes’ Monsoon Mansion, there's F. Sionil José Dusk series, which is kind of an epic series covering Philippine history, Gina Apostol's Insurrecto, which is the book I mentioned that I'm reading now. But these are all recent, these are all within the last decade. But I later learned from my friend Anna, that in Viet's class at USC, Jessica Hagedorn's Dogeaters was on a syllabus. And I think that is, in some ways, the godmother of contemporary Filipino literature.
Sonia Paul 52:50
Really, why?
Albert Samaha 52:51
It's from '95. So it's before this new wave of Filipino literature of all these kinds of contemporaries of mine, right kind of a generation prior. And it captured the Filipino ethos, in like a really original literary way. Where it kind of captured that moment of like post World War Two Philippines, the rise of dictatorship, the sort of clash between corruption, and this simmering colonial mentality of like reverential feelings for America, juxtaposed with the class divides, and all that. Really wonderful novel, very funny, and Filipinos are funny, and Filipinos love humor, and approaching traumatic incidents with light-hearted headspace. So that book is an example of like, I'd never read that book. And when I said that to Viet, I had not read any of the books that I'd mentioned at that point in my life. These are all existing in the ether, beyond my realm of knowledge. So part of the reason that I'm so proud to be able to tell a story of the Filipino community, Filipino diaspora is because I never want a young writer to go up to their hero and make a fool of themselves the way I did with Viet. Where it's like, there were voices out there that represented me that I just didn't know about.
Sonia Paul 54:10
Yeah, your book cites so many other authors and their exploration.
So this is great. Thank you. First of all.
Albert Samaha 54:19
This is really fun.
Sonia Paul 54:19
Yeah, this has been wonderful. To wrap up, can you tell me a little bit about the playlist?
T H E P L A Y L I S T
Albert Samaha 54:26
Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, I'm so proud of that. Since I first became a writer, I would always love to play whatever music captured sort of the atmosphere of the setting I was writing in. So I take a reporting trip to New Orleans and I listen to like, some brass band music. Second-line stuff, you know, I take a reporting trip to San Francisco and I'd play some like 60s hippie s**t, you know, do some reporting on New York and I'd listening to like Wu Tang and NAS and I was always about immersing myself in the world of my characters. So I did that with this book, and especially music is such a trigger for memory.
Sonia Paul 55:02
Yeah, totally. Like you have VST songs in there.
Albert Samaha 55:05
Oh, yeah. Well, yeah, I mean, that's that was the obvious one, right? When one of the characters makes music, you got to add it to the playlist. But a lot of the other songs were songs that were sort of definitive songs of both my childhood and just my narrative arc in the book, where there are songs that either were prominently placed in the book, or songs that in my head, I imagined as the backdrop. So those were the songs that I listened to, to trigger my memories, while writing the book.
Sonia Paul 55:32
Wow. So what's the song that's most appropriate now, for the completion of the book?
Albert Samaha 55:37
"Welcome to the party," by Bambu, which is the lead song on that Spotify playlist.
Sonia Paul 55:41
Yeah, so I thought that was meant to be the beginning song of the book. But that's the final song?
Albert Samaha 55:47
Yeah, well, it's the kind of the being of the end, right, because the book starts in 2018, loops into history, and then ends in 2020. So I would say Bambu is sort of the artist whose ethos captures the now. I mean, he is very much of the same, like aesthetic as the book, right, where he grew up very much influenced by Black culture in California, hip hop, but he shouts out Filipino history, more than any rapper that I've, like, listened to, obviously, I guess, and his way of sort of shouting out history without sort of fetishizing it, without sort of making it corny, or like an ode to the past, where it's like traditional hip hop, that sounds like some West Coast s**t, you know. And he sort of ties the knot between past and present in ways that I aspired for the book to do as well. And I think I ended up with some VST songs, just because that's sort of like this idea of embracing the past, respecting the past. And Spanky still plays those songs. I still see him performing all around the country.
Sonia Paul 56:54
What advice do you have for others who are curious to pursue delving into family history in the manner that you did? When it's not just that they want to find out family history, but they want to make a statement about their family history?
Albert Samaha 57:13
Well, that's the key, right is that like, I truly believe everyone's family story speaks to a greater truth. The challenge is finding out what that truth is, and what's fresh and interesting about it. That's the editor in me talking right, that you don't want to write something derivative, redundant, stale. So, the only advice I can give is, you don't have to come into it, knowing where it's going. And this is just general wider advice I get for people working on books, is that I like to spend like a year on a project before I even write a proposal. I mean, this the same thing, even to a smaller scale with like magazine stories I work on, which is that I kind of like to have somewhat of a sense of what the story is, what the shape is, before I pitch it. The thing with a family history. I mean, I encourage everyone, even people who aren't writers to just interrogate and investigate their own family history just for their own knowledge and edification, because someone has to do it. You know, every family should have someone chronicling their existence. We don't want stories to be erased, you know.
Albert Samaha 58:19
So I would say just like, start asking questions and talking to people. We don't know what the shape is, until we talk to the sources on the ground. So I'd say just do it. Don't overthink. And I think the only way to know what the story is is like not to come in with any preconceived notions of where to take your story. But just sort of see where does my family fit into the long arc of human history? What does our story say about the world? So I think that's the fundamental piece of advice. And I think the other part of it is like -- and this is just like a wider journalism piece of advice, is like, one of the challenges is like, figure out what to cut out. Because when you have access to so much of the information, instead of it being like, trying to find the pieces of the puzzle, it's like you have all the pieces of the puzzle, or 99% of it, and what are you going to omit? It's hard with families who feel close to it. And so it really is important to try to apply a detached lens. Not the whole time. You still want that intimacy to come across. But when you're writing about yourself, when you're writing about your family, it becomes a lot harder to figure out what is actually important and what is just something that feels important. Because one thing I found about mining my own memories, is that there were so many scenes memories that were very vivid in my mind. But then once I started trying to say like, well, what is like this vivid scene in my memory, which is very important to me. What did it actually mean for the character? That actually meant nothing? That actually didn't influence the characters’ decisions at all?
Sonia Paul 59:46
Yeah, but like, how do you then distinguish between what feels important versus what is actually important?
Albert Samaha 59:51
Narrative. Thinking about narrative. And thinking about like, if I were to write this character, what role did this scene have in this carry? Do I just want to write the scene because I remember it so vividly? But then there would be other scenes that I barely remember, or that I sort of chalked up as just like meaningless moments. But once I interrogated them, realize, oh, this was a critical moment. It was a turning point in ways I didn't appreciate until I thought about it. So distinguishing the meaningless but vivid memories from the sort of somewhat forgotten, but critical memories, I think, was one of the most difficult challenges in shaping the book.
Sonia Paul 1:00:30
Wow. Okay, is there anything else you want to say?
Albert Samaha 1:00:35
I think a lot and a little, you know, a lot and nothing, you know, like, I can talk about this all night. It's a relief to be done. I'm glad it's out there. And I think the thing I'm most proud of is like, I wanted to nail it. Like, this is obviously a very special story for me. And I didn't want to not do the optimal version of the story. Because you can only get one chance to tell your family story for the first time. And I think that was the most satisfying part. Because I felt they did right by this story that I had had in my head for so long.
Sonia Paul 1:01:05
Cool. Thank you so much for talking! (Yeah). Wait, one more question. What's your favorite VST song?
Albert Samaha 1:01:13
Rock Baby Rock?
Sonia Paul 1:01:14
Why?
Albert Samaha 1:01:16
Ah, it just f*****g makes me bounce.
Sonia Paul 1:01:21
Well, okay, I have a little shpeal I'll say now then. (Yeah). So thank you for listening to Loitering, the occasional but lovable traveling minipod we are currently testing in newsletter format. Thank you for listening and have a great day. Goodbye!
Books mentioned in this episode:
Concepcion: An Immigrant Family’s Fortunes, by Albert Samaha
Brown Skin, White Minds, by E.J. David
Never Ran, Never Will, by Albert Samaha
America is Not the Heart, by Elaine Castillo
In the Country, by Mia Alvar
Monsoon Mansion, by Cinelle Barnes
Dusk series, by F. Sionil José
Insurrecto, by Gina Apostol
Dogeaters, by Jessica Hagedorn
Also, please check out this recent piece I collaborated on with photographer Wesaam Al-Badry: “Strangers no More.”
This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit loitering.substack.com
