Where Y'all Really From

The children of immigrants often have a complicated relationship with their parents. It’s not unusual for first-, one-and-a-half and second-generation immigrants to translate both language and cultural norms for their elders. And parents can feel the pressure of being their children’s only connection to the traditions, language and values of home. In this special episode, we gather the whole podcast team to unpack our relationships with our parents, and how it’s influenced the way we raise our own children. And a special guest helps us take a first-hand look at this relationship from the other side: Nima's dad!

The holiday season is upon us, and so many of our celebrations are centered around a table full of delicious food. In AAPI families, cooking food is practically its own love language. In this special episode, we explore the ties between food, culture, identity and family, with Kentucky restauranteurs Dan Wu and Toa Green.

Your name is usually the first thing you share when you meet new people. And if you're an immigrant, your name can either make you blend in, or mark you as a perpetual other. Some immigrants change or shorten their original names. Some have their names changed by bureaucrats. Some keep them. And each outcome has its own set of emotional and cultural consequences.

It’s a phenomenon uncomfortably familiar to many biracial people. Not enough to belong to one group, too much to belong to another. In this episode, Charlene Buckles sits down with public interest lawyer Kaili Moss to explore this “third space” between Okinawan and Black, and how being a queer woman adds yet another dimension.

Every immigrant family has to decide what their relationship will be with their first language. Some parents insist their kids speak it, some turn away from it entirely, and some land somewhere in between. In this round-table episode, Dan Wu, Charlene Buckles and Nima Kulkarni unpack the nuanced ways language informs our self image and how we fit into our families and communities.

Learn more about the show and subscribe for free at whereyallreallyfrom.org.

"Where Y'all Really From" is part of the Louisville Public Media Podcast Incubator. We get support from the Eye Care Institute's Butchertown Clinical Trials.

In this episode, Dan Wu introduces us to Teja Sudhakar, a poet and University of Kentucky graduate, originally from Chennai, India. Teja talks about her chapbook, "Looking for Smoke," and reads a poem called "The Interviewer Stands." She describes her lifelong love of writing, and how she made the decision to embrace it as a vocation.

-----Before you go: Every immigrant family has to decide what their relationship will be with their first language. Some parents insist their kids speak it, some turn away from it entirely, and some land somewhere in between. We’re talking about it later this season, and we want to hear from YOU. Do you speak your family’s first language? How does language shape the way your family connects? Visit whereyallreallyfrom.org and click “talk back” to let us know. We may feature your answer in our future episode.

We’re back with an all-new season, and our first guest is Chef Edward Lee. When he was around 11, he told his parents he wanted to be a chef. “They were like, sure, and Bobby’s gonna be an astronaut. Great.”

He never changed his mind about that calling. But along the way, he added other titles to his bio. Like author, small business owner, mentor, philanthropist, and yes, TV personality, though that’s his least favorite to talk about.

We sat down with him to talk about the link between food and identity, his work with The Lee Initiative, and the incremental nature of saving the world. "Change doesn't happen because one person waves a magic wand," he says. "Change happens because millions of people do millions of small things."

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Before you go: Every immigrant family has to decide what their relationship will be with their first language. Some parents insist their kids speak it, some turn away from it entirely, and some land somewhere in between. We’re talking about it later this season, and we want to hear from you. Do you speak your family’s first language? How does language shape the way your family connects? Visit whereyallreallyfrom.org and click “talk back” to let us know. We may feature your answer in our future episode.