Lin talks about how much she loved Green Book, winner of TIFF’s People’s Choice Awards, and its realistically diverse supporting cast surrounding the main story.

Margrit tries to learn about North-American middle-graders from Kids Baking Championships, but comes out with questions about why the onus is always on the minority to conform to dominant cultures. Plus, what the heck are bar cookies?

Question of the episode: What stories have you seen that actually walks the talk of diversity? That shows marginalized people in everyday real ways.

Join the conversation on Twitter at @World_ofStories or email us at [email protected]. 

Transcript

Margrit  00:00

Welcome to World of Stories. I'm Margrit and my pronoun is they.

 

Lin  00:04

I'm Lin and my pronoun is she and we're here to talk about diversity and storytelling.

 

Margrit  00:09

There's so much awful stuff going on in the world around this. And I thought we could counteract that a bit. So what are you loving this week, Lin?

 

Lin  00:17

So at the annual Toronto International Film Festival ended this past weekend. And on the last day of the festival, they always have a free screening of the film that won the People's Choice Award. And this year, the film that one is called Green Book directed by Peter Farrelly and it was so good.

 

Margrit  00:34

I've heard about this movie and then quickly read up about it. And I'm so happy to hear you've seen it, would you think of it?  It is based on a true story. It's set in the 1960s about a Black pianist, played by Mahershala Ali, the guy from Moonlight and the pianist is about to go on tour to play a series of concerts across the American deep south, And because being a Black guy and the deep south in the 1960s isn't necessarily the safest thing, he hires a driver played by Viggo Mortensen, who is an Italian American from the Bronx, who has a reputation for being a little rough around the edges and being able to take care of business, so to speak. Yeah, he's like, that kind of--the bouncer at the club type of character. Which actually, he is a bouncer at a club. And so it's this contrast in different personalities where the pianist is very highly educated, very cultured, very well spoken. He's a little eccentric, you know, he lives in an apartment above Carnegie Hall. He sits on a throne. He has like elephant tusks and his apartment is a little wacky. And then the driver's from this working class family, like I said, rough around the edges. Not very well educated. But it's so good.  It's a little bit like Driving Miss Daisy, but race and gender swapped?

 

Lin  02:06

I think so yeah, I haven't actually seen Driving Miss Daisy, but it sounds like it could be a good comparison. So the movie starts with the driver being a little bit racist. I mean, he doesn't outright hate Black people or other minorities, but it's part of the society that he's from, and there's a lot of systemic racism that he's bought into. But as they're traveling across the country, especially in the southern US, where segregation was still a thing at the time, his eyes are open to both the subtle racism that is has been ingrained in him and then also the very overt racism in the society that they're traveling through.

 

Margrit  02:52

So stuff like microaggressions that we still have to this day.

 

Lin  02:56

Yeah, totally. And you know, in the movie, At the beginning of the movie, he uses racial slurs quite easily not just for Black people but for East Asians and for all sorts of people. But I think he uses them without realizing they're offensive. And that's part of what he's learning as he goes is that these little things, you know, they might not seem a lot to him but they do add up and they do make a big impact. And then, again as they're traveling through these different communities, there's a lot of racism towards toward the pianist that is blatant outright racism, you know. So he's on stage and he's entertaining these people and this w

Welcome to the World of Stories podcast! This is a biweekly show hosted by Hudson Lin and Margrit Talpalaru. Join us as we discover diverse stories the world over.

Transcript

Margrit  00:00

Welcome to World of Stories. I'm Margrit.

 

Lin  00:03

I'm Lin. And we're here to talk about diversity and storytelling.

 

Margrit  00:06

This is our first episode!

 

Lin  00:08

It is! And we should probably introduce ourselves. I'm Hudson Lin and I write romance novels with queer characters from all across the LGBTQ spectrum. A lot of my characters are Asian, because I am Asian. And so it's important to me to include that kind of representation in my writing. A little bit about my background is that I grew up in Toronto with very conservative immigrant parents. So I always felt like I was straddling two very different cultures as a kid. Being from a Chinese family and also being Canadian, I was sometimes both and sometimes felt like neither. So that kind of tension and dichotomy is something I try to bring to my writing.

 

Margrit  00:55

And I'm Margrit Tapalaru, and I dare you to say that three times fast. I'm a writer. I'm a professor, a translator and a parent. And in my ample spare time, I'm an avid but slow reader. What I'm looking for most in those moments are stories that reflect my world, rich with cultures and wide with  perspective. As an immigrant and a queer person who's always felt on the outside looking in, I seek some version of our shared humanity, but something that's not simplified. I want something that's nuanced, complex and presented in really subtle ways. So let's talk about our origin story. Lin, what gave you the idea to start this podcast?

 

Lin  01:42

So actually, I love what you mentioned about feeling like you're on the outside looking in because I have often felt that way too. And I think that's something that I'd like to include in this or address in this podcast because... Don't we all sometimes feel like we're on the outside looking in. 

 

But anyways, back to where I got the idea to start this podcast. It was after one of our lunch dates because we go on lunch dates every once--every so often. And what we do is--when we meet up--is we talk about books we've read or movies we've watched or TV shows we've watched and what we thought about the represent-- diversity representation in those stories or lack thereof. And I felt like this was a conversation that I wanted to have. Not just with you, not that I don't love having this conversation with you, but that--

 

Margrit  02:40

It's okay, it's okay to get bored sometimes at the same person.

 

Lin  02:43

No, not at all. You have wonderful insights. You know, we're just two people with two perspectives. And there's a whole world of people out there with different ideas that I thought maybe they would like to join in on our conversation and because I appreciate your insight so much. I approached you to see what you thought of this podcast idea.

 

Margrit  03:06

And basically this is the whole idea of the podcast is that there is a whole world of people out there with their own experiences. And stories allow us to see these different experiences that we might not otherwise have access to. And I thought, this is a fantastic project. This little intro is about what to expect from us in terms of the podcast going forward.

 

Lin  03:31

Yeah. And so we talked a lot about this analogy of stories being both mirrors and windows. And that's what we want for this podcast and what we'd like to get out of it ourselves. You know, we want to talk about stories that mirror our own experiences as members of minority communities. But we also want to talk about stories that are windows into other experiences, because I know that I certainly am no expert in diversity. In fact, I think I know very, very little. And so I'd like to use this podcast as a way to explore what diverse stories can look like.

 

Margrit  04:07

Are there experts in diversity? I think I find the idea