Unapologetically U.S.

In this episode, Rebecca Snyder shares about her experience being an Adopted Chinese-American. Making sense of being Chinese in a White family, feeling disconnected from China, and at times feeling othered in America.

I got to chat a little more with Dr. Zainab Okolo about managing boundaries as a second-gen while belonging to a collectivistic culture but growing up in an individualistic one.

In this episode, we discuss the tension between growing up in U.S. culture and having a collectivistic ancestral heritage. How do we cope with our identity as individuals, maintaining our psychological well-being, develop relational intimacy, and express boundaries in cultures that might be more enmeshed, hierarchical, or authoritative? At a certain age, do we listen to our parents or listen to ourselves? Do we sit with our feelings or do we push past them? Our experiences are certainly not generalizable but might resonate.

Foreign-born Americans may learn to assimilate, but their ancestry is in their heart. What considerations are given to raising their children born in America? Jin and Hyeri discuss their assimilation experience and their journey raising second-generation children as Asian-Americans. We also discuss how they process and teach their children about racism,  anti-Asian sentiments and tensions between Black and Asian communities in the U.S.

In this episode, Dr. Charisse L'Pree, media psychologist and communication professor, shares her experience as a monoethnic and multiracial American, how she navigates being in her motherland Guyana and her homeland America and rests in the complexity of her identity as an Afro-Sino Guyanese Black and Asian American woman in the United States.

In this episode, I chat with comedian and actor Seyi Brown about the impact of representation on the Nigerian immigrant experience and the value of shifting the narrative as an industry insider.

In this episode I talk with my friend of almost 20 years, Stutee K, an immigrant from India and mother of a second-generation American. We discuss assimilation, transnationalism, belongingness, and feeling like an immigrant or their children are never truly one or the other by virtue of of having a mixed cultural experience.