When the indomitable Ida Rodriguez steps up to the mic, you know you're in for a story that's as punchy as her comedy. Her journey isn't just a tale of one woman's rise through the ranks of stand-up; it's a testament to the colorful threads of Latino culture, the realities of being Afro-Latina in Hollywood, and the bittersweet symphony of cultural pride and struggle. With Ida's infectious laughter as our guide, we explore the rich tapestry of her life – from the vibrant streets of Puerto Rico to the cutthroat backstage world of comedy clubs.
In a landscape where voices like Ida's are often on the fringes, she pulls us right into the heart of the conversation. This episode is an intimate mosaic of identity, laughter, and truth. We examine the intricacies of navigating two worlds as Afro-Latinos, the persistent hurdles for proper representation in the arts, and how the resilience of culture can be both a shield and a spear in the fight against erasure. Together with Ida, we celebrate the triumphs of Latino comedians who break stereotypes, and we share in the warmth of traditions that bond families across distances.
Finish off with a nod to the soul-stirring power of storytelling. Ida takes us from the laughter-filled warmth of Thanksgiving dinners to the emotional depth of her own family's narratives. These stories aren't just words passed down through generations; they are the living, breathing heartbeats of communities that refuse to be forgotten. Ida's voice rises above the clamor, a clarion call for authenticity and inclusion, compelling us to listen, learn, and most importantly, to let ourselves be moved.
When the indomitable Ida Rodriguez steps up to the mic, you know you're in for a story that's as punchy as her comedy. Her journey isn't just a tale of one woman's rise through the ranks of stand-up; it's a testament to the colorful threads of Latino culture, the realities of being Afro-Latina in Hollywood, and the bittersweet symphony of cultural pride and struggle. With Ida's infectious laughter as our guide, we explore the rich tapestry of her life – from the vibrant streets of Puerto Rico to the cutthroat backstage world of comedy clubs.
In a landscape where voices like Ida's are often on the fringes, she pulls us right into the heart of the conversation. This episode is an intimate mosaic of identity, laughter, and truth. We examine the intricacies of navigating two worlds as Afro-Latinos, the persistent hurdles for proper representation in the arts, and how the resilience of culture can be both a shield and a spear in the fight against erasure. Together with Ida, we celebrate the triumphs of Latino comedians who break stereotypes, and we share in the warmth of traditions that bond families across distances.
Finish off with a nod to the soul-stirring power of storytelling. Ida takes us from the laughter-filled warmth of Thanksgiving dinners to the emotional depth of her own family's narratives. These stories aren't just words passed down through generations; they are the living, breathing heartbeats of communities that refuse to be forgotten. Ida's voice rises above the clamor, a clarion call for authenticity and inclusion, compelling us to listen, learn, and most importantly, to let ourselves be moved.
Hey, what's up? It's your girl, aida Rodriguez, and you are watching Todo Latino on Todo Wafi.
Speaker 2:Hey everybody and welcome back to the Todo Latino show from 1500 Live Pro Audio LA. I am Rafael and I'm here with my host. We got Daisy, we got Yobi, and our guest for today is one of my favorite comedians, whose special fighting words can be seen on HBO Max. She is also the author of the tremendous book legitimate kid. Welcome to the show, ida Rodriguez. I always start the show with an origin story, just like in Marvel. We all have one. We're both Puerto Rican, dominican. Like. What was your growing up experience like?
Speaker 1:Did you read the book?
Speaker 2:I read the book, but I know that there's some people out there Trauma.
Speaker 1:So you know what? My origin story is very colorful. My grandmother came from Puerto Rico in the 50s to Connecticut. She went to Connecticut and she had a little problem and she had to leave Connecticut and went to Boston. My mother she went with my mom. My mom was born in Puerto Rico but my mom was raised in partly in Boston and so I came along in Boston. I was not in Boston that long. They took me to the Dominican Republic because my father is, uh, was undocumented and he got deported. So we went back to the DR and I was there for my very young years, um, and then my parents broke up. My mother took me from my dad and we moved to Miami where the rest of my family was. So I grew up in Miami and we moved to Miami where the rest of my family was. So I grew up in Miami, you know, going to New York but really growing up in Miami. And my origin story is that I was raised by this band of colorful people, my uncles. I lived in the house with my whole family and it was very normal for me, you know, know, to be in a house with my whole family, my tios several generations yeah
Speaker 1:I. I knew my great-grandfather. My great-grandfather used to walk me on sundays. We used to walk, we used to run jog together and I used to have dinner with him every sunday. So you know, I had a very latino experience in america and though I was born in Boston for those of you people who harass me online I am a citizen but I grew up very Puerto Rican. I grew up in the house with the Puerto Ricans, eating arroz con gandules, listening to Hector Lavoe comiendo pana, just, you know, vapuru for everything, and I never realized how much that is in me until now as a mom. You know, like the things that I reach for, that my kids are like lady, scientifically, I'm like you shut up, it works it works yeah, the socks or the whole don't go outside when you shower.
Speaker 3:Cause these kids come with information now.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but the information is, you know, the thing is that there's a quote that I don't know verbatim, but it's something about that white supremacy will demonize your roots to the point where you start retreating from it because you are being told that it's not, because it's not mainstream American, but the reality of it is. Is that those telos that my grandmother gave me, they worked. Oh yeah, those remedies and those rules that they gave me on how to live, they worked, and I don't care what anybody says, and they may not be proven in your science, but it is proven in our science. Yeah.
Speaker 2:There's a set of a part of the culture that people just try to take away, especially from kids here. Everything's WebMD and you know trying to put out as much stuff out there, but some you know some of the things that I go back to. Like you were talking about the Viva Peru, I still use it, like my kids my daughter's 27. The minute we start seeing the cough and the fatigue you know.
Speaker 4:Got me through.
Speaker 2:COVID.
Speaker 4:Oye.
Speaker 3:Arnica, you know things like that.
Speaker 1:The thing about it is it's real, and a lot of people like to invalidate it because they want to. They got to crush our culture. But also capitalism is real because antibiotics are a very profitable business in this country. So if you step away from the antibiotics and you go buy this $4 bottle of Bapuru or you go get these leaves from the, you know, bayarta or La Botanica, there's a lot of money that people are not making, and so you have to take that into consideration. How'd you like Miami? I couldn't deal with it. My whole family did the same thing. I was living there.
Speaker 2:I didn't know why. You have to take that into consideration. How'd you like Miami? I couldn't deal with it. My whole family did the same thing.
Speaker 3:I was living there. I didn't know why you have a rep with Miami. That was my hometown too. First of all, I can't stand that. It's just completely flat. I could stand over there on.
Speaker 2:US 1, and I look down and it's downtown.
Speaker 3:Anyways, what was your experience?
Speaker 1:like I have, a very love-hate relationship with Miami. My introduction to anti-blackness was in Miami. I went from Boston to Miami. Oh, so you went like from I mean both of those societies are pretty anti-black. But Miami is very hard because it's from your own people, which is very different than in Boston, when it's from white people, where you expect it and let's just be clear.
Speaker 2:I'm not saying all white people are anti-black, but I mean, if you're watching this show first of all and you're feeling that te perdiste ya, yeah, no, but I'm just going to say that.
Speaker 1:But anti-blackness lives in everybody. Yeah, because we've been indoctrinated to believe that black is white, is better than black, especially, not especially, but Black especially, not especially, but very much in the Latino culture, the Latine culture. So I wasn't. I never heard those things until I started interacting with Cubans in Miami Cubans yeah. And not to say because a lot of people do this, not to say that Puerto Ricans and Dominicans don't have anti-blackness, because that's a lie. Oh, we do. But all I heard was my grandfather calling my grandmother the negra linda mira morena, my uncles.
Speaker 1:Everybody loved my uncles. They were like the debarges of my neighborhood. People would be like everybody loved them. They were like the hottest dudes in the neighborhood. So then, miami I have a very painful connection to that in Miami in terms of hearing those things that didn't serve me and I left there relatively young. I was a teenager when I left Miami and I never wanted to go back because I never it wasn't just anti-blackness, the anti-indigenous sentiment, calling Mexicans and Nicaraguans, salvadorians, indios, you know, like that.
Speaker 1:That was a language that I didn't grow up with, that my grandmother never talked about other Latinos like that, and not that she was una santa, because she wasn't, but she just didn't.
Speaker 2:She was just like it wasn't mentioned in that way. She was like la.
Speaker 4:Hondureña la Mexicana. So who was calling them that? The Cubans around? That's so weird. You would think that thing.
Speaker 2:When Castro and everything, there's a lot of Cubans very Spanish-oriented Cubans.
Speaker 4:Is it like the fair skin or anything?
Speaker 1:There's a sense of hierarchy too, but even the morenos, the mul, but even the morenos.
Speaker 2:It's like everybody needs somebody To look down on, to feel better, because even in the 80s, when they had the, you know the different type of Cubans, as they called them.
Speaker 1:They used to talk bad about them, and not just Cubans, because I've experienced it from the Venezolanos and the Colombians and the Puerto Ricans All of them do it. But I was in this little enclave of this little reality that was created by my people. That indio is not a derogatory term, because we were so connected to our indigenous Taino roots. So you know, my grandmother would be like Mira que linda esa mexicana, mira que india, mira que bello tiene el pelo. You know, it was just very, very different. So Miami is so connected to you know. People always talk about how diverse it is and that there's so much, there's so many people from different places there. But it's like it was just very. There was a lot of antagonistic vibes coming from different people, like anti-Haitian sentiment.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Or you know, and to me that was very different than my experience in New York.
Speaker 2:And so.
Speaker 1:I didn't. I used to romanticize New York a lot when I was younger because I was like I was around. You know, mexicans and Puerto Ricans in New York are just Cubans. They're all together.
Speaker 2:It's one like it's just one Latinidad.
Speaker 1:I live here and I go back and forth between here and New York and I gotta go to Miami, of course, because my mom is there, but I just Miami, and you know Miami is a beautiful place there, but I, I just miami, and you know miami is a beautiful place. Um, I'm actually developing a tv show about miami as we speak, and the thing about miami that I will say is that what you see on television is not the real miami oh, no, no, no yeah, they never show no
Speaker 1:no, they don't ever really show like the communities. There's a working class of, of people in Miami that keep their city going Right. It's not Diddy buying one house.
Speaker 4:But when you think about Miami, you think about the big buildings, the beach, the frozen bikini glamour.
Speaker 1:I always think like if.
Speaker 4:I go to Miami, I have to have a beach body, because that's what everybody makes it seem like they have to be assertive, they'll go to suburbs that are just very like they.
Speaker 2:they're not exactly like. My mom is from Perrine, they named it now like Cutler Ridge.
Speaker 3:You know what I'm saying? Yeah, Cutler Bay.
Speaker 2:That whole area is just working people who are? Just literally supporting but all they focus on is obviously, like the Cutler Bay and all that area in the front Especially now with the art scene.
Speaker 1:Wynwood is gone.
Speaker 2:Wynwood is yeah, so it's just one of those things where it's like they're trying to like kind of revolutionize Miami.
Speaker 1:They're trying to gentrify Miami.
Speaker 2:Oh, totally, I was trying to use a better word.
Speaker 1:Revolutionize has a different connotation Overtown all of that O and you know I'm all for the improvement of our neighborhoods as long as they benefit the people that live there not push them out, and so Wynwood is now the arts district.
Speaker 3:That's where Art.
Speaker 1:Basel is it's really hard.
Speaker 3:Oh, they're getting into even Carroll City and Alapata All of that they got to leave Alapata alone.
Speaker 2:That's where I'm from. How colorful your family is. You had what is it? Your Uncle, Davey, was the one that kind of introduced you to the arts. Can you share a little bit about that?
Speaker 1:My deal. Davey, that's my guy. I missed him this weekend. I got to see him. Next weekend I'm going back. My Uncle Davey is the youngest of my uncles and he is the proudest to be Puerto Rican.
Speaker 2:That's the one that has the Puerto Rican flags on every day, every outfit, on the little hanging thing in the car, Everywhere.
Speaker 1:Everywhere you see he has a Puerto Rican flag tattooed on his body.
Speaker 1:I think most of my uncles have tattoos of a Puerto Rican flag. But he is the youngest and my mom had me really young, so I was around him the most when I was little, other than my uncle, raymond, who was like a caretaker to me. Raymond Davey was more like not a peer, but he was like my big brother and he was the one that would listen to Richard Pryor and hip hop. He introduced me to hip hop because he loved Run DMC and he was really into. He was a dancer, he used to break, dance and pop, lock and all of that, and so he is the one that introduced me to Muhammad Ali and Bruce Lee like he.
Speaker 1:I was like a little, he had me, he turned me into his like little brother, you know, and um, and I know that's problematic to say now.
Speaker 1:This is why people don't want to do stand-up anymore but it was uh, I mean, you ain't lying, though, because they're like it's non-binary, it doesn't belong to. But it was when I grew up, boys like Muhammad Ali and girls like Barbie, and that doesn't mean that, but it was when I grew up, boys like muhammad ali and girls like barbie, and that doesn't mean that other people didn't like other people, but that's how it was that was.
Speaker 2:Uh, I mean, that was that, that was the majority of the way.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it was just how it was, because of socialization and and it doesn't mean it's right or wrong but my, my uncle, you know, he used to have me doing karate kicks and he was was teaching me how to defend myself and dancing with him with a cardboard. So he's the one that introduced me to Richard Pryor, because he used to listen to Richard Pryor albums and I used to sneak in and listen to him Because I wasn't allowed. I'm Pentecostal. I'm not supposed to be listening to somebody curse.
Speaker 2:My whole family was. After a while they became Pentecostals, so I know the feeling there. I was actually shocked to read that because I thought comedy came first, but you actually moved to LA to be an actress and a writer.
Speaker 1:Thank you for saying that, because every day I got to fight to prove my love and it was.
Speaker 2:I didn't know. And it wasn't until I read the book that I realized oh, like that was the original goal.
Speaker 1:So, like.
Speaker 2:What was your experience when you first got here for trying to do that?
Speaker 1:So when I first got here, the reason I came here is I wrote a script. Not the reason, but one of the one of the things that pushed me to come sooner was I wrote a script that made it to the Sundance Writers Lab finals.
Speaker 4:I didn't.
Speaker 1:Then I didn't get picked, but I thought I was going to get picked and my life was going to change immediately. So I moved to California. I wrote a script for myself because at that time I was seeing a lot of actors writing their own projects, saying create your own stuff. I would look at the breakdowns and I was never in the breakdowns.
Speaker 1:I there was never like Puerto Rican, dominican or you know she's tall and she's Latina, so I just wrote it and then, um, when I came here, I got signed immediately um a woman named Holly Holly Davis Carter, who's like a big producer now in Hollywood.
Speaker 1:She had an agency and they signed me and, um, and I you know I was I booked a movie when I first got here. But you know, like anything building blocks, you gotta you have to build it and I, um, I ended up doing stand-up by, you know, by accident, I was doing a roast for my friend's birthday, a brunch, and Chris Spencer, who's a comedian, a very successful comedian, was like yours, you should do stand-up because you're naturally a stand-up comedian and then he gave me, um, an address to an open mic and I went and did it and then I never stopped. But, um, and then it kind of became, it became center stage because I, um, I, I wasn't booking roles and I was booking comedy work. So comedy became, you know, the priority because it was paying my bills. But I, I've always been an actor. I'm focusing on it right now. Um, it was my first love, but stand-up is something I wanted to do when I was little.
Speaker 1:It was yeah, I used to grab the broomstick and I used to tell the jokes to my mom because I used to watch. You know, I used to be like Johnny Carson and I would be like I want to do that right.
Speaker 2:And then they would be like eso no para las niñas.
Speaker 1:No, you're never going to find a husband, that's rough. And I was like Lucy got a husband, they had a TV show, but it was something that I kind of veered away from and then I kind of leaned into what people would always tell me they thought I should be, which was a model. Because I got recruited when I was 14, maybe 13. I was tall and I was walking with my mom and a lady was like she should be a model. She's ethnically ambiguous.
Speaker 1:I know what is up with that word? That was what they used to love to call people.
Speaker 2:She could blend in in any room.
Speaker 1:But it was, I think it's anti-blackness.
Speaker 3:I'm like what is it? You know what it is? It's the underlining we do it is. It's the underlining.
Speaker 1:I'm like no, we do it too. Esta es la reina, esta es la reina, esta es la reina, esta es la reina. That's black, black, black black with freckles. Like come on Stop it. Canelita.
Speaker 2:Canelita.
Speaker 1:Everybody has the terminology and that was the American terminology and and I did model and you know I was like I'd be behind the scenes with the models making them laugh and I just was like I was really great on the runway. It was my favorite thing to do. Everything else I hated taking pictures. I still do. I hated, you know, doing some of the stuff. It wasn't for me and I felt like I remember getting recruited by an agency in Italy and they wanted me to move to Milan. I had my baby already.
Speaker 2:Oh, so it was going to that like that level. Yeah, yeah, yeah Okay.
Speaker 1:I was signed to.
Speaker 2:Because normally it's like Italy or France, Like they make you go into those. Those are like big model areas.
Speaker 4:How would you say? Your first gig experience was like Like did you do good?
Speaker 1:In what.
Speaker 4:In comedy.
Speaker 1:My first experience was really good. The second one is when I learned my lesson. The first one was Jamie Foxx used to have a radio station called the Foxhole and I was on the Foxhole doing an interview with a comedian named Speedy and they booked this show in Arizona and they were like you want to do the show? And I was like I've just been doing open mics, like I'm not a real comedian yet, and they were like, ah, you can do it, you're naturally funny, you kill it on the show. They gassed me up so I was like they're like we'll pay you and that's unheard of to get paid for, like your first gig.
Speaker 1:And they were like, we'll pay for your travel to arizona. So I went to arizona and I performed at the orpheum theater and I did five minutes and, um, I got a standing ovation, like they were yeah but I like, I don't know what I was talking about.
Speaker 2:Let Let me ask you something.
Speaker 1:What the hell did you fit in five minutes? I was just blabbing, talking about the audience. I had so in my defense. I had been writing jokes for a very long time before I first stepped on the stage. What I had not done is develop those jokes and performing them Like. You can write the jokes, but you got to go work them out.
Speaker 2:The delivery is kind of yeah, you got go work them out the deliveries.
Speaker 1:yeah, you gotta work them out before you perform them, which a lot of people who think they're stand-up comedians don't know, um, so I had the jokes and I, I, you know, I, I worked them out on that stage. I said some of the jokes, I got a standing ovation, I got paid. It was amazing. Then I came back to la and I was feeling myself because I had that she was all out. Yeah, no, I thought I was like I'm ready to get this I got this.
Speaker 1:So I go to the laugh factory on a Sunday, on chocolate Sundays night, and my friend, convinced, convinces Pookie the booker to put me on stage to do these. They have these developmental spots before the real season Comedians. Come on and you do three minutes and developmental spots before the real season comedians. Come on and you do three minutes. And I went on stage and he was like I don't think she's ready, I don't think she's ready. And she convinces him and he puts me on stage. So the first few minutes I'm doing fine, Like they're laughing.
Speaker 1:I got I had that one joke because I worked it out in Arizona, so I know it's a joke. Then I go into the other jokes and the audience just all freezes, they joke. Then I go into the other jokes and the audience just all freezes, they all get quiet. Before that I got cocky and I told Pookie I told you I was ready, motherfucker on stage. And then from that moment forward I proceeded to just die on stage. And that was the moment when I said, oh, I want to do this. You know we had Gabriel Iglesias. He was on the moment when I said, oh, I want to do this, I want to figure it out. You know we had Gabriel Iglesias.
Speaker 2:He was on the show. He said the same exact thing. He's like. His first experience was phenomenal.
Speaker 1:It was really well, Because it's adrenaline. And then the second one he bombed.
Speaker 2:But he said that because of the first experience, that second one just didn't even phase him. That's how he knew it's like a challenge, that it was like this is my thing that I want to do, yeah.
Speaker 1:That was me.
Speaker 4:I was like, I'm gonna, I'm gonna show you guys, I'm gonna figure this out, I'm gonna get it right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you just learn and the thing is is that? But most people can make other people laugh, especially the people in their surroundings. That's why so many people will come up to a comedian and say, oh, this is my friend. He's so funny, he makes us laugh at work. I told him he should be a comedian. I'm like. The comedian's job is not to make their friends laugh, it's to make everybody laugh, and so it's easy to be the funniest person.
Speaker 2:Yeah, your surrounding also understands your humor.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's your, you guys are probably on the same wavelength, but comedians have to go out and make all people from different places, different thoughts. You know just a whole bunch of different people laugh and that's really hard.
Speaker 2:It's got to be a universal reception.
Speaker 1:Yeah, like it's got to hit yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I wasn't universal that night at the laugh factory.
Speaker 4:Did you feel bad after? Were you kind of like stressing about it? I was embarrassed.
Speaker 1:I was embarrassed because I made a fool out of myself on stage. I didn't feel bad. I felt like how do I get this off of me? Which I learned later. That's what comedians do when they bomb. They have to get on stage and get the kind of do it again, yeah for them and and that's what made me feel like maybe I was a comedian, because I didn't say I never want to do that again.
Speaker 1:I was like oh, I gotta get back up yeah, I was like give me, let me get back up there. I gotta win them back.
Speaker 2:I'm like he was like trust me, you don't want to do that so I have a question because the second one you said you use your platform for something that a lot of comedians technically don't, which is to address, like racism, and sometimes there's some of the toughest topics on there what inspired you to kind of go that route Because that's more like an activist comedian, so to speak you know what I'm saying when you're kind of hitting on some notes that society isn't ready to listen to, through even through jokes they're just not ready to like receive what.
Speaker 1:What made you kind of say I'm going to use the platform to do that? Um, I will. I will just say that I've always done it. My first jokes were about, you know, anti-blackness, um, colorism. My very first jokes I came out the gate like that yeah, it was about body standard. I had a joke about my modeling experience. You know, I don't even say activism anymore because I feel like fighting for what's right should be what you do. This whole idea that people are really, really proud to be activists yeah, the real activists are not on social media they're on the ground, doing the work you know, like you don't.
Speaker 1:You don't see dolores huerta like yo here's a selfie y'all like in the name of mind you.
Speaker 2:If they had internet back then, we don't know, but they would use it to amplify their platforms, because they do it now.
Speaker 1:I just think that a lot of people love to pride themselves in being activists. I think you if you, I mean for me like I was a member of Chitla a long time ago, right before I started doing standup, and they were like people would be like you're Puerto Rican, why do you care about immigration? And I'm like, cause I'm Latina, and yeah.
Speaker 1:And that care about immigration and I'm like, because I'm Latina and yeah, yeah it. And that was a time where I wasn't even talking about my father being undocumented and deported, but I was like you should be, I should be talking about speaking up about immigration because I am a citizen, that's my job, right, and you know, and a Mexican person that is, you know, has a white privilege, should be speaking up against the anti-blackness or the anti-indigenous sentiment of the people of you know, mexico and beyond. I, you know, I just that's just always been my brand of humor and it's really hard because people will say to me you know, people don't want to hear that or you know it's not a time for that, but it's because it's coming from me, because I'm a woman and I'm Latina.
Speaker 2:You think that if somebody else George Carlin did this years ago.
Speaker 1:Oh yes, he was an expert he trends on TikTok all the time talking about, you know, women's bodies, talking about capitalism, talking about both political parties, and people are like he's a genius, but he's a white man, so he's able to do that.
Speaker 1:Now me. They're like shut up. It's like when they told LeBron, shut up and dribble. It's like, you know, shut up, you know. And I'm like, no, you shut up and giggle, bitch, like let me tell my jokes, you know. And I think that it's. It's just the packaging. They don't. There's a lot of opportunities I don't get because certain white racist men who are in the business cannot stand me because of what I stand for and they will block me from opportunities. And I'm very well aware of it, I have evidence of it, and I'm just like, oh, there's just nothing but good old racism, you know, and sexism all rolled up, that's crazy and actually we were talking about that before we started that about that like how you compartmentalize Afro-Latina.
Speaker 2:That's crazy.
Speaker 3:And actually we were talking about that before we started that about that topic, like how you compartmentalize Afro-Latin, you know, afro-latinidad, like, for some reason I was kind of explaining to Rafael that sometimes there's a barometer where some people may be caught in the middle and then they will call you maybe a sellout, or you can go all the way over there and then you can call yourself also very blackity, black, black in in your environment. So, with that being said, you know how do you feel about it? Are there gatekeeping within also that community? And sometimes I want to say that sometimes I've I've heard headlines that it's like you know why Aida Rodriguez is speaking about Afro Latinidad.
Speaker 1:Yes, I, um. I thank you for asking that question because I really want to address it. First of all, the spectrum of blackness in Latinidad is always being has always been kept by certain people, right Before it was ignored and it was erased. That was ignored and it was erased. Now that it that it has been brought to the light because it's always existed, there are people who feel like they can tell people who is black, who's indigenous exactly, and the reality of it is. Is that um in, for example, in american black culture? I've been in a room with quincy j Jones's daughter and I'm darker than her and she's a black woman and nobody questions her blackness. And now they do, because now there's this wonky bullshit on the internet where you get mixed People telling you you're not.
Speaker 1:I grew up in a house where everybody was the same. That was my grandmother's survival tactic. It was not oh que tu eres, mas clara que tu eres, mas negro que tu eres. It wasn't, that was her. She came here, she suffered a lot and she was like ustedes son iguales y esos blancos los odian a todos. So así que no se crean que tú, no te creas que porque tú tienes ese pelo que a ti, te van a tratar mejor, right. So she used to always tell us it doesn't matter what you look like, they're going to treat you differently. I actually had a moment because I did come under attack for not for why am I speaking on the panels and I had to really unpack with Gata, my friend, who is a dark skinned Afro Latina.
Speaker 3:Oh, Catalina Engelson.
Speaker 1:Catalina que amiga mía, and she and I would talk about this and she had to tell me. You got to be able to decipher between what of this is really valid and what of it is jealousy, because they want your spot.
Speaker 2:That's what I was told.
Speaker 1:Which.
Speaker 3:I never thought about I'm getting goosebumps.
Speaker 1:Right and it was. She was like all of this because the truth is that when, when I had Truth Serum, my podcast, I would bring Catalina on, I would bring, I brought Gadiel on, I brought Julissa on, I brought Sasha on Right, and people were like, oh, but they're, they're all light skin. I'm like they are the people with the platforms, because I also brought a lot of people who you didn't know and you didn't watch because you didn't know them. So what is it? What do you want? Do you want to show up for the people or do you just want to talk shit on the Internet? Right?
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Right. So I, anyway, I sat down and I was like you know what, my, my identity evolved right, I claim. Now I don't. I don't say I'm Afro Latina anymore, because it offends a lot of people. I say I'm Afro indigenous, I claim my indigenous roots. But the reason why I took it so seriously was because I used my privilege to shed light on a group of people that would never have, you know, gotten the light shined on them and, to be completely honest, I wasn't doing that for the collective.
Speaker 1:I honestly was thinking about my tío Carlos, who era el negro de mi familia que lo trataba muy mal and I was like, if I ever get on and if I ever have a tv show, that Negro is going to be a character on that show, because they won't be on the show of the other Latinos. The other thing I learned is about these activists that were like pushing back on me and talking a lot of shit about me the minute a white person gave them an opportunity to dance they went and danced and it was like.
Speaker 1:I was like oh, this is not about the movement, this is about you just mad because you don't have what I have stature you, you need, you want my spot because you're trying to sell your whatever you're selling. You're trying to put on whatever you're doing. Yeah, and I had to learn to decipher between that, because I have two black children.
Speaker 1:You do and they are black. My kids are latinos but also negro, and when people see them, they see black, and I have to worry about my son all the time, you know, riding around in the city of los angeles, and my daughter. So what I did was I had conversations with them and I was, like you know, I'm going to use my privilege and every opportunity that I can to shine a light on people that have never had, that have never been seen in their full humanity, and I hope that other people do the same right, which I know quite a few people who are doing it but I could not continue to worry about what was being said about me, because there are some people who are lighter. That was just I'm Afro-Latina and blah, blah, blah, and they were just exploiting the movement.
Speaker 2:And.
Speaker 1:I wholeheartedly, was really just trying to make things happen and it was just very, it was a very painful time for me because I was like who? You think they're going to replace me with you? No, they're not. They're going to replace me with una Lat latina, the latinas that have always been here, that are that you know, are close, have a proximity to whiteness, yeah, and now, now this conversation is gonna go away, so I just went back into my, into the lab and I was like I'll just put it in the art, okay, because the reality of it is is that there has been no other feature film made since um in the heights for Latinos that was made by a major studio after the takedown, because they don't believe that we play nice. You know we don't. We can't have nice things.
Speaker 2:That topic always pisses me off, and and the reason it does is because I understand the argument that they made for In the Heights. The problem is you chose the wrong time to fight that battle.
Speaker 1:I wouldn't necessarily say it was the wrong time to fight the battle. I feel like there could have been another way to fight the battle.
Speaker 2:That's what I mean to fight the battle. That's what I mean because, because you took down one of your owns who's trying to put the culture out there for the sake of something that we know we can discuss in a different platform, I think well, I don't know if I would say that you know, I I don't know limon and I have had they.
Speaker 1:I actually hosted the trailer release for In the Heights in.
Speaker 2:New.
Speaker 1:York, in the Heights, I don't know. You know, everybody has their own journey and the problem with people of color is that every single person of color who has a platform automatically has the responsibility of saving the people, Whereas, white, you know, ain't nobody telling Hillary Duff like what are you? Doing for white women right now, like why are you not speaking it just?
Speaker 2:it's uh, I get that, but this man was also producing. It's funny because he was doing that and he was also doing um encanto at the same time no, I know.
Speaker 1:No, no, I'm not.
Speaker 2:What I'm saying is, first of all, it's like they didn't see themselves in that movie. But then all of a sudden they jumped the hell out on the other one, because we saw each other. In this there's little kids who have the hair.
Speaker 1:Well, it's easier to jump on Lin-Manuel than it is to jump on Disney or than it is to jump on Steven Spielberg. That's what I'm saying.
Speaker 2:They made this man apologize on Twitter. Like they broke this man while he was working on projects that did have a lot of people.
Speaker 1:I don't know if they broke them, I just they might have alienated him. And now I don't know what's going to happen. I think the argument is always going to be valid. For someone like me and you to say that to feel like you know this is not the time, or to tell dark-skinned black people you know this is not the time, is something that they've been hearing for a very long time.
Speaker 2:I don't mean it that way.
Speaker 1:No, no, I know, but what I'm saying because somebody else publicly did say that, but what I will say is that there could have been an opportunity to make something happen out of that and say we're going to hold you accountable and, as a result, but support it, right, but that's what I mean by that. That's what I mean by that.
Speaker 1:But the thing is, you're talking about people's pain and it's very hard to rationalize with pain sometimes. So you know, I have a lot of friends that were participating in that movie. Leslie Grace is a friend of mine, anthony Ramos is a friend of mine, melissa Barrera is a friend of mine and I don't know that they were properly prepped for what was to happen. John Chu should not have been doing the interviews. Lynn should have been doing those interviews. That's just my opinion. It's easy for me to say.
Speaker 1:I actually was behind the scenes involved in ways that people don't know, because I really wanted that movie to win upon knowing that it was getting made. But I don't think people realize how much power you actually have when you're in that position. People think that you can make all the decisions.
Speaker 2:Yeah, lin's not in charge of casting.
Speaker 1:No, no, no, it's not that he's in charge of casting, because he picked the best people he could out of what he had to pick from. But what I'm telling you is is that if a studio is like we're going to, we got to make sure we get everybody. So we're going to do a Puerto Rican, a Dominican, a Mexican and a black person and a black American person. It was, you know, the. The truth of it is is that we don't know what goes on behind the scenes. I don't think that he intentionally did it, but a lot of people intentionally don't intend to ignore blackness and they do, and so you're talking about a struggle of people that have been going a community that is highly populated by people who are black. And I think that the PR was just off. You know the way the questions were being answered. It was just very. I don't think people realized what they were stepping.
Speaker 2:They were doing more damage than they were Stepping into when they came out to talk about it.
Speaker 1:Now I will say this A lot of black people were dark-skinned black people were a part of that movie.
Speaker 2:I mean, I saw that, but not maybe in the way that they wanted to, just not. They weren't in the forefront of like.
Speaker 3:So, because right now, if you don't know, the United States Office of Management and Budget, the OMB, the United States Office of Management and Budget, the OMB is doing, for they haven't done it in 27 years, but they're going to change the format, those boxes that you fill out and the tabulations, and especially, the organizations like Afro Latino Forum is advocating using the term Latino slash Hispanic as a label for race. Can you, you know, now that we're having this conversation, can you tell us? Because they say that it's going to take away the experience that you have versus the experience that I have as a Latina, or the experience that she has is completely going to be like all merch and we're going to lose resources and you know, know, advantages to us.
Speaker 1:well, well, I think that as we watch, uh, a lot of the things that are happening in politics because we get a lot of the thing is we, we concern ourselves a lot with terminology and cultural norms and we're not paying attention to policy which is far more violent against us.
Speaker 1:So, um, what I what I wanted to say is because I know people like to hijack people's conversations and say, like what she said, cory was in that movie and he's a black man and he was completely ignored and, um, and that was really bothering, bothered me because he was.
Speaker 1:He's also a really good actor and and some people that I saw online were like, why is he in the movie or why they tell the truth about this and the racism and the anti-blackness and all of this stuff. What I encourage, the regular people that I know that are not in the entertainment business felt very differently about the movie than the people who are in the entertainment business, felt very differently about the movie than the people who are in the entertainment business, because a lot of the people that were talking about it and taking it down and putting it are influencers and people who are in those positions that they have. You know, I would encourage them people to write their own content instead of depending on somebody else to do it, because that's what I had to do that was the argument that everybody kept telling me about what's like.
Speaker 2:Oh, he had the position to do, that he should have taken care of business. I'm like I'm like you're in the same position. You got three hundred and ten thousand followers.
Speaker 1:You in the same I mean I just don't. I don't, I don't so sure, but I just don't. Why would I trust?
Speaker 2:personally, I mean no, no, but what I'm saying? Why would I trust?
Speaker 1:no, you personally, I mean the influencer why would I trust, my trust it to somebody else and say cause they've had the opportunity to do it for a long time and they haven't, and you still don't see black Latinos not, and, mind you, they not on Latino television either.
Speaker 1:So let's not act like well they are, but just doing the they're the help or whatever so for me it's like that's why I went away and I was like I'm going to create my own stuff and I'm going to find a way to get things made where I can tell these stories, because I just can't wait on Hollywood to do it. Catch up. Yeah, it doesn't. Puerto Ricans mira la puertorriqueña. They're never Puerto Ricans on TV. Yeah, you know, when you look at the TV shows, they're from Venezuela, they're from Cuba. Yeah because Puerto Ricans have such a negative connotation of like Mexico City.
Speaker 4:Yeah, yeah Do you think that, like for films and movies and shows, we every ethnicity should fit the character? Like, do you think that it's like, let's say, that we have a Puerto Rican role and a Mexican fills it in. Do you think that's that shouldn't be done? Is that kind of how you feel?
Speaker 1:No, I don it in. Do you think that's that shouldn't be done? Is that kind of how you feel? No, I, I don't. I don't know that. I feel like that. I think isai morales has defied that at every turn. He's a puerto rican man, he. He plays mexican.
Speaker 1:He's a good actor, I think yeah but I do think that puerto ricans should have roles in hollywood and if, if all things are fair, that they should be able to get roles and they should have the opportunity to go get roles to play Puerto Rican there should be more opportunities instead of just keeping the same.
Speaker 4:I feel like we keep seeing the same films over and over again yeah instead of creating new storylines.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the other thing is also is like some. It's like you're Mexican and you'll know when somebody from Puerto Rico is playing a Mexican and it doesn't feel authentic to you and you have some white person saying, yeah, she can do it, and then you're like she, she's not. That doesn't resonate, you know, especially when you get into specificity. If you're talking about a Peruvian, which I never really get to see on television and I would love to see a Peruvian, or an Afro-Argentinian person from Argentina, you know, or somebody from Panama, and you hear somebody talking and you're like that doesn't feel authentic to me, and I think that's where the problem is. I think it's not because it's a Puerto Rican playing a Mexican or a Mexican playing a Colombian. It's an actor that has to do their work.
Speaker 2:They got to bust their ass to make sure that they represent that character.
Speaker 1:Well, yeah, if you're going to do it, and some people do it really well and some people don't. You know really well and some people don't. You know, like Constance Marie and J-Lo J-Lo was her daughter and Selena and her mother in La Familia and Constance Marie, you know, was able to play both of those roles but J-Lo had to play a Puerto Rican and or she played a Mexican in both both roles and you know, I just think that you got to do the work, like if you're going to be, you know, elvis Nolasco is a Dominican actor and he's a very good actor and he plays a lot of roles and ain't nobody protesting what he's doing because he does the work.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And you know, like Gina Torres, she does the work. So when you see these people that are like, you can feel it's not real.
Speaker 2:And it's usually a decision that was made by somebody who knows nothing of the culture and it feels weird. So no, I put them in for the for the, the attention that it would bring to the role instead of the actual probability that she would, she or he would do that or do justice to that role. It was like who's the pull, you know?
Speaker 1:and will you look, jane the virgin? Those three women were Puerto Rican and they all played Venezolanos because that's what they were.
Speaker 1:You know, and One Day at a Time they're Cuban and Justina and Rita Moreno is the quintessential Puerto Rican and they play Cuban. So I think that you know, do? I think some Cubans were pissed off that these Puerto Rican women and Venezolanos were pissed off? Yes, because there's scarcity and so people don't have enough roles. So then when something comes up, we're like, oh yeah, a Venezolana. And then the Puerto Rican woman gets it. They feel like damn, like. So that's where the protesting comes in.
Speaker 1:But I never took anything. I never took anything that would benefit an Afro Latino. Like I've never done anything for pay. Okay, you know, what I've done is when I do these panels, and when they asked me to do like, I did that panel where Black Tina and Lisa had that, you know they had that exchange and it became this viral thing. We didn't get paid for that, we just went there because we were asked, and you have to hold the entities accountable as much as you want to hold the people, because people out here just trying to survive, right, and it's you know. So y'all, they're gonna go get somebody else that doesn't give a shit about the people. And I do, you know, like I really do, which is why I backed away from a lot of that stuff. But you know, like some of my haters, who I I had no idea existed, and then my my friends who are dark-skinned black latinas were like yeah, she's a hater, don't fuck that, bitch you know like and I was like, she was like don't even.
Speaker 1:We already know don't even entertain that and I'm like I had.
Speaker 2:I had my goo with her the other day and she was just talking, yeah, and I don't have that energy because I I wanted to have a conversation.
Speaker 1:I'm like let's talk about it. Don't go to Twitter and tweet about me and don't at me like, what's that all about?
Speaker 4:like, really like, ask me personally yeah, do you have a conversation with me?
Speaker 1:if you really want to take me to task. I am not beyond correction. I do not think I know everything. I do not think that I am an expert by any stretch, but I do know that I believe that black people in Latin America deserve respect, dignity and visibility and I will do whatever I can to make that happen, because I selfish reasons I have a daughter and a son who are both in this business and they deserve to be seen. So and if and if that pisses somebody off, then so be. It used to really bother me, not because it was happening, but because the people would never talk to me. Just talk about me, talk about you, and not address the.
Speaker 2:It's kind of funny when we were talking about, because you're talking about the like the representation aspect, even revolution that we did last year. It was really important. The year before we've been doing it for like three years. The first year I did it I was hosting everything like I was literally the moderator for all of these panels just because it was our first year, second year, um this past year, I had looked at all the panels and I'm like, okay, I need, I need to get away from some of these I don't represent that area?
Speaker 2:I don't feel like I represent that area, even though I'm dominican, like I don't see myself as like afro latino, I don't represent that area. Or I don't feel like I represent that area, even though I'm Dominican, like I don't see myself as like Afro Latino. I don't have that experience. So I tagged Yobi for that because I felt like that was the right person to be able to do that. And when I chose those panels, it was like intentional and I don't understand where people get the idea where, if I'm putting like a panel together where I feel like I feel like these Afro-Latinidad to me is not the skin, technically speaking, it's. It's that experience, what you connect with, like how you see your roots, how you identify when within those roots, it is the skin, though.
Speaker 2:No, I mean, I, I mean, I get there's a treatment different.
Speaker 1:Yeah, like I'm not.
Speaker 2:I'm not trying to bring, like you know, like the most whitest Afro you know what I'm saying, but like, for instance, when we talk about like, like friends gadiel, or something like that.
Speaker 1:You know who are people who protest gadiel a lot yeah, and they do.
Speaker 2:And for me, like gadiel has an experience that obviously, um, you know, andy has it differently, absolutely, she's, she's darker, but I, for me, both of them fall under that category, just because of how they perceive those roots to be.
Speaker 2:And if they're bringing that roots to the forefront, I want them to present that for the even for the people who may not get the opportunity to get on that stage, cause, like you said, if you didn't have that spot, who are they going to give it to? Well, the next person in line with that popularity, maybe JLo.
Speaker 1:No, you hear people talking about their black experience and you're like where?
Speaker 1:You know Gadiel has visibility and he speaks about Afro-Latinidad a lot. He came out the gate talking about it. So when people protest him because he's fair skin or lighter skin or whatever the terminology is now, I'm like you know he's using his platform and y'all don't see his DMs, y'all don't see. You know that the way, calling him negative and all kinds of derogatory terms, people don't understand. Like you know, I have people calling me the N word. I have people telling me I need to get lynched. In my YouTube page People are like look, I didn't know monkeys could talk like YouTube page. People are like look at, I didn't know monkeys could talk like. So when people don't realize that even you may not think I'm dark-skinned, because I'm not dark-skinned, but to somebody I am and that that has been my experience like I, I've never. You know, I got called the n-word in front of my son and he's four and he's black and I didn't know how to explain it to him because he was like mommy, what does that mean?
Speaker 2:What is that?
Speaker 1:Yeah, you know what I mean, and that doesn't mean that it undoes the experience of a darker black person than me. But my experience does not count, because other people have experiences.
Speaker 2:And I think we've just gotten in this place that we get to invalidate other people's struggles because they don't look like ours, and that doesn't get us anywhere. That's my point. On that, I feel like and I'm going to go now we're going to go into the book.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:Because the book is dear to me now.
Speaker 4:If you haven't gotten it, you have to get it. He finished it in three hours.
Speaker 2:Well, it wasn't three, it was more like five, and a half and I don't like. I don't buy books, I don't, I don't like. I think the last thing I read was the iliad back in, oh wow, and that's because I'm an ancient history guy that's a long time. That was a long time ago, but and I'll tell you how much I don't read like I had no idea what forward meant in the book. So it was, it was, it was.
Speaker 2:Uh, joey got to explain it to me I'm reading it, through it I was like, wow, and you have my heart because I'm reading it through it and I had no idea that the foreword is like something that somebody else is writing to. And so I'm reading this and we're talking about steven spielberg and and west side story and I realized, oh it's, it's ariana de bos who's writing this like, and what you did for her was just absolutely amazing. She was obviously, you know, casted and right away she was starting to feel the negativity and all these different things, the backlash and so forth.
Speaker 2:And right from the book, you dm'd her and and your like words, like we got you. And when it came to the, when the movie was releasing, she says on here where you bought out the theater and you filled it with Afro-Latinos and Latinos and people from the African-American community. And so that's where I was talking to Joey. I'm like that's where, like that's what we should be doing, that's how we elevate and whatever, and you did it nice and quietly, because I didn't even know.
Speaker 2:No, yeah, I mean. Well, I mean now everybody knows, because she put me on blast, you know, but for me, like I I was, we were talking about the compartmentalization of like oh, what you can say this to me is like, what support? And like what the community should be doing, as opposed to sitting there putting people aside- and doing that. So you know I'm going to go into the book because you would think that a comedian wrote the book, that the shit should be funny.
Speaker 1:No, it's not, it's not. This is not a be funny, no, it's not, it's not.
Speaker 2:This is not a funny book. Like it's not.
Speaker 1:Thank you, it is the reviews.
Speaker 2:People get mad and like I thought it was going to be funny and I'm like I never I feel like people probably thought oh, because it's Ida Rodriguez and she had the documentary, the special that some of that would no, this book is raw.
Speaker 1:I'm not a clown, I'm a stand-up comedian. Yeah, it's my job and I do it on stage. I don't have to entertain you. Everywhere I go and people really do that they will walk up to me and they'll be like you're a comedian, tell me a joke, I'm not.
Speaker 2:You don't open your mouth when you meet a dentist you know, like I saw that, I saw you mentioned that interview. That's actually funny, it's annoying.
Speaker 1:It's like I'm not. I'm not a jester, you know, I write jokes. I think that trivialization that's the word of stand-up comedy, of comedy period because of the internet has become this thing where people are like I'm a comedian, everybody's a comedian, everybody who makes 10 people laugh is a comedian. So now they think you're just a clown and they think everybody.
Speaker 2:Like everything that you do now, has to entertain them.
Speaker 1:I'm an author. I wrote a book, a memoir, that was about my life. I felt it was very important that I did not, you know, trivialize the trauma, because it's not just mine that's in that book, it's the family members a lot.
Speaker 2:I was about to ask you that like what, how was it received when your family like?
Speaker 3:and this took, like you, seven years. You said that you were processing this my um.
Speaker 1:You know my mom hasn't read it yet. I've been keeping it really her?
Speaker 2:yeah, I don't, I don't want to know, it's out there?
Speaker 1:yeah, she does. I just I don't think it's time I told her. I'll let her know when I I'm gonna sit with her and we're gonna do it together.
Speaker 1:I don't want to hurt my mom, um, but I had to tell my story, um, because I need to. I needed to get it out. It was trapped in my body, the trauma, uh, but my family's been very receptive of it and they know how much I love them and it was, it is an attribute so they they understood like, okay, this is my story and so they're more of a supportive side on it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, my Uncle.
Speaker 1:Richard read it and he was like I'm so proud of you. My aunt read it twice, oh wow, and she was my panamanian tia. She was like I'm very proud of you and I really love this book. I think you did a great job and so, yeah, it was hard. And with regards to Ariana, you know Ariana experienced a lot of anti-blackness from Latinos when she got picked for that movie. The stuff that people were saying to her that she never, ever aired out the dirty laundry, because she has integrity and she's just that.
Speaker 2:That's just who she is, and I mean, she doesn't even have to explain it now, she you know.
Speaker 1:Yeah, she's a A-list Oscar winner, but the kind of stuff that she was experiencing, you know which Nadia Hallgren, who directed my special, my documentary, who's a Puerto Rican woman, also experienced. She did a documentary for Netflix called After Maria, about these four mothers, and they called Puerto Ricans from the island were calling her the N word and they were like you're not a real Puerto Rican. You know, ariana was getting similar to that and I had been around that you know, because my special, I was doing it. All of this was happening kind of like around the same time and I was like you know what? Like I said, I'm going to use my opportunity and privilege to do what I need to do to help and instead of going on Instagram and and doing you know, straight to camera, I was like let's buy out a theater and let's support her and let's. And I I was like you call me or you reach out to me when, when you need talk and just show up for her, because she belongs to us, of course.
Speaker 1:But that whole, you know, la gente busca las excusas para decir que una persona no es de nosotros, de que no naciste en Mexico, no naciste en Colombia, no naciste en Puerto Rico. You were Puerto Rican, a New York Rican, you were Cholo. You were a New York Rican, you were a Cholo, you were a Chicano. All of those things are results of colonization and it waters us down and what it does is it takes away, it dilutes our power, because the more we do that, the more resentment is breeded and the more divided we are.
Speaker 1:And two things can be true at the same time. I will tell you this I'm very confrontational. So when I get that you're not Puerto Rican because you didn't grow up on the island, well, you're not Puerto Rican. You could be Puerto Rican because yo soy Boricua. I can trace my roots back to my. Taino and African great great grandparents. I know where I come from. I know that where we say ajo is because we are closest to our indigenous roots.
Speaker 4:My uncle used to talk like that.
Speaker 1:But, that's because it's closest to the indigenous roots and then you got these clowns saying Okay, no habla el español correcto, eso no es mi idioma, eso no es mi lengua, that's not my language at all. They took my language. That's not my language at all.
Speaker 1:They took my language away my ajo is closer to my language than saying arroz to get patted on the head by the Spaniards who colonized us right. And it is infuriating and exhausting to have to deal with that, because we worry so much about the dumb shit that at that same time they are trying to arrest people in texas just because they look like immigrants yeah, you know how dangerous that is that is where we are.
Speaker 1:You know puerto rico is suffering at the hands of colonization, on the brink of being colonized yet a third time, and you you worried about a Puerto Rican that was born in the Bronx.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:It's just stupid. And so with her I was like we deading that, we not entertaining that, we entertaining the kids in the classroom that came to learn, the ones who are disruptive, we sending them to the principal's office and that's how we moving yeah they really shafted her.
Speaker 2:And then, well, she turned around and represented, you know, the funny part is it's like she won.
Speaker 1:She won the oscars, and then everybody was riding that shit, oh, of course.
Speaker 2:Then all on social media. All of a sudden it's oh, look at her representing us and this and that and blah blah.
Speaker 1:That's sad like jirell jerome. Like people, they always ignore him when they talk about how black Latinos haven't done anything. I'm still trying to get that dude. He's Dominican right.
Speaker 2:I don't know how to get him and he won an Emmy. I'm going to have to connect me because I've been trying to get that dude. I wanted him for Revolución, like one of the panels. He won an.
Speaker 1:Emmy, I don't know if he want to fuck with us. I wouldn't, because we're like we ignore it. And two things can be true at the same time we can hold him in the light and say this is still not enough, but we don't.
Speaker 2:We just mull over people, which goes back to like the End of Heights thing, like we could. I don't know it's.
Speaker 1:Lupita and Ñongo Lupita was, she was Mexican. Oh, she ain't no damn Mexican. Que chilonga que she's not this, she won an Oscar. Oh, now she's at the front of all the Latino shit and it's like la primera foto de todos los posts and all these blogs are Latina, queen.
Speaker 3:Bitch, you's a liar.
Speaker 2:What were you saying?
Speaker 1:five years ago. You fucking liars and it is gross and I don't want no parts of that. So that's why the people who are always trying to police me are always like I have conversations. You know Catalina has been like no mama, you can't do that.
Speaker 1:You got receipts, that's why yeah but it's like but people can tell me yo, yeah, when you, when you sat on that panel, it was uncomfortable because I really wanted to say. I wanted to say something. I did a panel with a woman named Sulma and ella es a garifuna right and New York one of my homies. I was on a panel with her and I just shut the fuck up and let her talk. That was my act of my moment.
Speaker 1:Right there. I was like I ain't gonna tell you about garifunas. I can't, I don't know to tell you about God-E-Fool-Us. All I know is what I read in the book Online. Let her tell you you know what I mean. That's how you show up.
Speaker 2:But I'm not going to shoot myself in the head. It serves a double purpose, because you brought whatever audience you would bring to it and, at the same time, the person who's there got to give the information that was technically supposed to be received for that.
Speaker 1:Also, I stand in a very unique place, like with my daughter as well, because my daughter is like you have to fight for your identity and the people who look like you, because there is no place for you. Because if you go around telling people you white, they're going to laugh in your face, and then if you tell some people you black, they're going to laugh in your face, right.
Speaker 1:So what you got to do, what you're supposed to do, this is my black daughter saying what you're supposed to, because my daughter rides for me and my daughter's like well, what you're supposed to say then? Who are? Who are you? Because there's no identity for you that's the reberto colomante issue.
Speaker 2:When he first came here it was like he wasn't. He wasn't black, so the the black community wouldn't take him. And then he wasn't't Latino enough because of the complexion of his skin and so forth, and then the Americans wouldn't accept him at all because he didn't speak English well. So they were just constantly beating this man down and then he was very proud of the fact that he wasn't speaking English so he would try extra hard for these interviews.
Speaker 1:That's why I check other and then I write in Afro-Indigenous, because de verdad que eso alta, and the fact that I have no idea what it is to walk around the world in the skin of a dark-skinned black person.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:I can imagine how horrible it is that people see it. So there's no, no, that you cannot like when people say well, you know, other people have a lot of people within their culture. Yeah, but they have a uniform of their skin complexion. We don't have a uniform of our complexion. Our, our Latinidad is a. You know, some people don't even want to call themselves Latino. No more. Rosa Clemente.
Speaker 2:Dr Rosa.
Speaker 1:Clemente, my friend. She's like I'm Afro-Burico. Don't even want to call themselves Latino. No more, rosa Clemente. Dr Rosa Clemente, my friend, she's like, I'm Afro-Burico, don't call me Latina.
Speaker 1:You know, that's how it's gotten to the point where people don't they're retreating because they don't want to be a part of that conversation anymore, because they keep getting erased and they keep getting left behind. And I know my grandmother got hosed during the Civil Rights Movement when she moved to Connecticut. No, my grandmother got hosed during the civil rights movement when she moved to Connecticut. So I have nothing but compassion for that and I always try to respect it. But you ain't going to tell me that life for me has been crystal stairs because I'm lighter than you. And you're going to tell me my life has been, it hasn't, and my story matters too. So now we're at this place now, where people are judging and qualifying what stories?
Speaker 1:matter who gets to struggle, who has a heart. It's a lot of people who listen. If you're not a white person in this country and you're not a white person with a white surname, that lives a white world and heterosexual, every single thing that deviates from that has a struggle attached to that. And that's not to say white people don't struggle too, because poor white people in this country struggle. They don't know. They're struggling because somebody told them they were special because they were white.
Speaker 1:But they are out there struggling and they are biting their noses, biting their noses to spite their faces because some white they told you, at least you white and they ain't got no health insurance.
Speaker 2:Yeah nothing no education.
Speaker 1:They working, they absinthe.
Speaker 4:And they think all.
Speaker 1:Mexicans took it from them, not Wells Fargo, right. So?
Speaker 3:Not Wells Fargo Devocating against their own interests when they say that we take their jobs.
Speaker 4:I'm like Girl.
Speaker 1:That's. I'm like girl, that's not. Let me tell you, we watched it in real time. We got the receipts here in California. All those people, those farmers that that they, they turned in the undocumented people and their signs went from farmers for Trump to we need food.
Speaker 2:It went in Florida too. That happened in Florida too.
Speaker 1:Yeah, they passed the bill by their noses to spite their faces. And let me tell you something it better serves you to find solidarity with people who have the struggle in common with you, because they come in for all of us.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:And now that you're talking about solidarity, I know that first of all, I would like to know what are your top five comedians, or Afro-Latina comedians, and why and I understand that also as a matter of fact you mentor some of them and if that highlights your life and, you know, gives you joy and that's part of promoting.
Speaker 1:So I will say, you know I love my favorite comedians are not Afro-Latina, so I'll tell the truth right my favorite comedians the people I respect the most in comedy that I look up to. Bill Burr is my favorite comedian.
Speaker 3:Okay, bill Burr is fun. He's my favorite living comedian and he's a white straight man oh my God, they're going to come for me.
Speaker 1:I'm not going to lie and say, hey, I like this Afro-Latino comedian, that's my favorite, because it's not true and I respect and I love his wife, right Nia, who I've worked with and moved with, but I think that he is like one of the best comedians alive today. His evolution as a comedian, watching him as an actor, a director, but still be true to the craft of comedy and be able to make people laugh, is just amazing. But you know, I do have my lot of comedians that I work with and you know there's Gadiel, there's Sasha, there's Glorelis you know, and to tell me that they're not black is crazy.
Speaker 1:Because I've been with them and I've seen the weirdness towards them and I love Ian Lara, who's also one of my favorite comedians, who I respect very much. I directed his special.
Speaker 3:Yes, you did.
Speaker 1:He's Dominican, Afro-Latino from the Queens and I just think he's one of the greatest comedians that is developing right now and he's going to have a great voice and he's very serious about his comedy and he's broad and he can do comedy in Queens and in the Bronx and he can do comedy in Montana. He's really developed a set that is relatable to all people and I have so much respect for him and I love a lot of comedians. But those are the ones that I have a personal relationship Rose in New York, who's, you know, Afro Latina, Tambien, and she's a newer comic and I offer mentorship and opportunities whenever I can. But there are, those are my. That's the people that I roll with and I want to see more, you know.
Speaker 2:I want to create opportunities.
Speaker 1:I want to see more. I want to see more. You know, I want to create opportunities. I want to see more.
Speaker 3:I want to see Panamanian comedians more, more, more female comedians, more mujeres comediantes latinas, you know, and I'm I'm pro woman, I'm a womanist.
Speaker 1:I think women can talk about whatever they want, but I want to see a nerdy Latina comedian talking about we don't ever get to see that it's always this over-sexualization of women, and those are the most successful women in comedy are the ones who are super sexualized because men run this business. But I'd like to see a dark-skinned black Latina that is talking about science and comedy, and I want to see, you know, an indigenous comedian that her comedy is about travel. I, you know, I want to see queer comedians talking about their lives outside of being queer. You know, I want, I want them, I want there to be a spectrum of comedy and people to have an opportunity to tell all the stories.
Speaker 2:Do you know any?
Speaker 1:like any Afro-Latina comedians that are on that. Oh yeah, when I did my special, I went to the Dominican Republic, in Puerto Rico and in the Dominican Republic. I think I forgot her name, but it's because I forget everything right now, I haven't eaten today so my memory is a little bad, but she was a Dominican comedian, super funny. She's in my special and the documentary part she's a beast.
Speaker 2:I was going to ask you about that. It's funny. You had the comedy special immediately after the documentary flows and then you have the book. Was that intentional for you to send out the message on the three different platforms?
Speaker 1:yeah, it was. It was a three prong effort that lined up and worked in my favor. Um, I didn't, I, uh, I didn't know that the book was going to happen as quickly as it did. A puerto rican man reached out to me, he slid into my dms. Um, and and then this editor, yadon israel, who's I call my editor for life, who is at simon anduster, which is a different publishing company. That were both like you need to write a book, so yeah, but it was all part of that and the trauma release movement.
Speaker 2:It seemed like it was intentional when I because I did like all three and it seemed like you did the comedy for the people who kind of registered that in that way and it's easier to receive that way and then you did the documentary, which kind of like really kind of shows a raw emotion of what you're doing. And then, well, you got to read the book, because the book is raw.
Speaker 3:Like it's raw. I read your book but I have a question here that there's a lot of parts in the book that touch on stereotypes and really toxic mentalities within the community really toxic mentalities within the community and do you feel like letting it all out was a huge part of healing and forgiveness process for you to talk about?
Speaker 1:Yes, I think we got to tell the truth. I think that I can't remember his name either, because I feel like I can't remember anything but the man that is in Wakanda, forever the Mexican. When he talked about anti-blackness in Mexico Tenoch, and he wrote a yeah, like Tenoch.
Speaker 4:Tenoch, yeah, el libro se llama Prieto, no, yeah yeah.
Speaker 1:He was like, really honest. He was like our grandmothers are very anti-black and you know, like for me it was very important to talk about the truth, because I think that the only way we're going to heal is if we tell the truth. And the reality of it is that a lot of anti-blackness exists in the Dominican Republic because it was policy to persecute people that were black. The anti-blackness exists in places like puerto rico and panama and argentina, because colonization really was hurtful and it was very damaging to people and as a result of that, we developed a lot of self-hate and um and all, all of us have experienced it.
Speaker 1:I've experienced it too, like I don't ever try to walk on, like like I'm gliding on water, like I've. I've always loved it myself. And you know they used to tell me they also accused me of getting a nose job. Oh, wow. So when I was little my face was wider. You know, when you're younger you got a lot of fat on your face and my nose was wider and my lips were wider. And people ask me if I got a nose job or if I got my lips reduced, because before they were reducing the lips.
Speaker 2:And now they're, now they're augmenting, augmenting. Pero yo, you know, I I wanted to talk about the stuff that I heard and the you know I feel like um my mom went through the same thing, though, like when I look at pictures of my mom when she was younger, like her nose and even her. Like even her lips.
Speaker 4:Your features change. Yeah, she's gotten older, for sure.
Speaker 2:I look at my pictures yeah, like her nose. I also lost my color.
Speaker 1:I have a very bad.
Speaker 1:Vitamin D deficiency and I thought that I was Because I moved to California and I was like the sun in Miami is stronger it is. But, um, my doctor was like you have a vitamin d deficiency. After I had my daughter, I got really pale. I used to be a lot darker and and uh, and you know, I love my color I was the. I was the one that would go out into the sun while everybody else was trying to protect themselves from it. But uh, um, yeah, I feel like telling the truth, and telling my truth, rather, about some of the things that I heard and I experienced, and some of those stereotypes were very freeing for me very.
Speaker 4:Has anyone came forward telling you you've helped them with your story or healed them too?
Speaker 1:quite a few people wow yeah. People sending me pictures of their birth certificate without their father's name on it. People sending me heartfelt stories about experiencing the same thing, people who are Puerto Rican and Dominican feeling the pressure of having to claim one over the other because there's this antagonistic.
Speaker 2:It's serious.
Speaker 1:It's foolishness, but I've had quite a few people of having to claim one over the other because there's this antagonistic vibe. It's foolishness, but I've had quite a few people.
Speaker 2:That's where you and I connected in this book the most, and it's because when you talk about a legitimate kid, obviously it's a little different. I didn't have the situation with the birth certificate and this and that, but you go into the book as to why it was done, which was, you know, something I never even knew was a thing.
Speaker 1:Um economics for a lot of people.
Speaker 2:Yeah um, in my case, my father just kind of like left.
Speaker 2:He was not faithful, and so my mother and like that whole side of the puerto rican side just kind of like went away because everybody else in my family is Dominican you know, with the exception of Jaime who's like who's got a Puerto Rican dad and so all I knew growing up like it's funny because Gadiel makes fun of me now because of it because I put a lot of Puerto Rican stuff. There's a reason for it and it's because, um, I grew up really idolizing my Dominican heritage because my mom was Dominican, all my tios and everything, the ones who stayed, yeah and it was like, and I always associated um, my puerto rican side is bad because of what?
Speaker 2:my father did, and and being um, and we went through the same situation. Like there are questions that you have on here in the book that just hit like how could you move on without me? Do you remember me on birthdays? You know? How did you think of me in christmas? It was shit like that. Like my entire childhood was like that because I never spent time with my dad growing up and we were towns away whereas you were like a country away.
Speaker 2:You know, there's like a different. So for me it was like I'm reading the book and I'm like damn that that shit hits. Like there was times where I was sitting at the window waiting because my mom told me, oh, he's gonna pick you up this weekend nunca vino. And so yeah, that I mean it hit. It hits so hard in those areas and I'm wondering because, like towards the end of the book you started talking about um. You went through all those processes and you didn't know how to feel. Once you met him I was numb, yeah, and you can tell in the documentary.
Speaker 1:I'm sure I mean I got people sending me hate messages, like all those years.
Speaker 2:I didn't. I mean, I didn't. I'll tell you what. When you look at the documentary, I can see a person who is just kind of like inside, shocked at the moment, not numb as in like a way of like hatred or anything like that, but just in disbelief, like this is now like a present moment for me, and I had that same sim. There was a time where I actually went to my dad and was like why, oh yeah.
Speaker 2:Like and I wondered like I know that the documentary doesn't cover everything that you wonder Did you have that moment too with him? Where you were were like poro por que. Like why didn't you call me? Why I was right there, like why couldn't you be a father? Like you know what I'm saying. Like I was just a phone call away. Like did you, did you have your moment like that during that?
Speaker 1:trip. I did. He blamed my mom and I was like, oh, he's still not dealt with his, he's still having a struggling, his, he's still struggling with accountability. And my mom was a child, my mom was a teenager. Yeah, I did. I had that moment with him and I was numb. In that moment, that man walked into that hotel room. He didn't even give me a hug. I had to tell him are you going to hug?
Speaker 2:me yeah, I saw that.
Speaker 1:And I felt like I already had that complejo of not being that to somebody. So I thought that the first moment I saw him he was going to reach for me Like reach and grab you, and he just started crying. And then you know, I know he was going through his own set of emotions, but I'm still a person and I still have because you had it romanticizing your mind, your own expectation, yeah of what that and it was, uh, and I wrote a joke about it for this new special, that that also happens to girls a lot, that you have this romantic idea, you know.
Speaker 1:But it was, it was, it was hard and I'm still processing it. I'm not even gonna lie to you.
Speaker 2:I was gonna ask you like, since the book I mean the book's been out, the documentary's been out what have you been able to? Have you found more closure with that moment now, as opposed to when you first went through it then?
Speaker 1:I don't know about closure, but acceptance, just being able to say this is what this is going to be and this is how it's going to be and there's nothing I can do about it. I can do about it like I can never have that, like that daddy-daughter relationship that I so longed for in my childhood, but I can have a relationship with my father while we're both still here. Um, and just being able to accept the fact that that's just the way that's going to be was really hard for me, because I just thought it was going to be different.
Speaker 4:You know, do you have a relationship with him?
Speaker 1:yeah, yeah, I talked to him the other day um it's it's a strained relationship. It's still not. You know, he has, um he has four other daughters he's got quite so you know within that, you know they're. Those are the daughters that grew up with him that call him papi. Like I don't even. It's so weird for me. The only time I ever called him papi was the day I met him.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:When I said bendición papi, because I always wanted to say that. I used to say to my kids I was going to say like it was probably something where you reminisced that like the has a daughter, one that he laughs about because he's like, she's like me, and she's this and she's that, and I was just, I felt like an outsider. I was like I'm not a part of this, you know.
Speaker 2:I felt like that, like the few times I visit my dad. It just felt like because he had kids with like the other woman that he was with, and it just seemed like I was the anomaly that didn't't belong in that equation, so to speak yeah, and it just always fell yeah, of the scene in the movie the traveling pants.
Speaker 4:Do you remember that scene where America Ferrera, she went to visit her dad and he has a whole new family? Yeah and she felt so like excluded.
Speaker 2:I could only feel like you're at the end of the table and you're just listening to everybody's story and you've never been a part of them. Yeah, that's exactly how it is, and that's so tough, and I got the same excuse from my dad that you got.
Speaker 1:They always blame the women. There's so much misogyny they always say she left.
Speaker 2:Puerto.
Speaker 1:Rico and the Dominican.
Speaker 4:Republic.
Speaker 2:Well, no, the funny part is like my mom was a young mom as well and he went off with somebody else and like no, no, it's the, it's the.
Speaker 1:She was so difficult, she was so hard to deal. That's what he was saying about my I was like you mean the teenager you were all grown like. There's a very big age difference between my father and my mom and culturally that's acceptable that was so common back then very common still to this day, and so it was like um he was a teenager.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I'm. That's what teenagers do. My mom was 16 and my dad was 30 when they got together. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. So 16 and 30.
Speaker 1:You're telling me that's insane, are you still?
Speaker 4:together.
Speaker 2:That would be a pedophile.
Speaker 4:No it didn't work out.
Speaker 2:She was a teen, she was a rebel. Like she was like uh, I think my mom was either 15 or 14. I think it was 15, I think is what you because she had about 15 because she's very.
Speaker 4:He was like 28 like 28, see almost close to the 30s, yeah, so it's a very different.
Speaker 2:So when he was like your mom was difficult, I was like, yeah, most teenagers, yeah, and that's going in the next set, the next special I do have a question, though, because, um, there's one, there's one chapter in this book that kind of gives you a little bit of relief from that, and that's, uh, el dia del pavo. So my favorite chapter of the book is I eat. But you actually go through it as in, like it's. It's one of the shortest chapters, I think, in the book. It's like three, three or four, and it's literally a chapter of you describing what it was like on Thanksgiving Day, the preparations that went into that. Um, are you that person now Like, is that how you prepare your Thanksgiving?
Speaker 1:So I had adopted a policy. So I, when I had my kids, I started reading a lot of books like psychology books, because I didn't want to abuse my children.
Speaker 1:And I felt like a lot of the things that my parents did was abuse, even though they call it discipline, mind you, adding to it that I had two black children. So Thanksgiving for us is a very joyous occasion where we clean together, we cook together. My daughter cooked all the food the year before last because my wrist was broken and, yeah, we clean the house and you smell the cleanliness and I meant that part, the whole book talks about it.
Speaker 4:No, you hear the music and all that stuff.
Speaker 1:But Thanksgiving for me for a very long time was not a happy place yeah, and so it was because my mom had ocd, which we didn't know. But that whole cleanly cleaning was not about having a clean house, it was about proving that puerto ricans weren't dirty. So that was in her psychology, because the cuban ladies in the neighborhood would they, would the latinos, like they sit down and they yeah, but they they have like this these metrics that they impose on other people, like in Miami, is like I'm like, I know some dirty Cubans, like it's so ridiculous.
Speaker 1:We live in such these generalizations, it's like and all that shit. And so my mom, she fell into that and because she was with a Cuban man, she was like always trying to prove how clean she was, because he would say those things and I was like, based, based on what, where you get this from? He came here on a raft. Why does he matter so much?
Speaker 1:you know like that's 12 year old me being ignorant, saying you know, you know, doing the same thing that I learned. So Thanksgiving was stressful. Man, like we couldn't, we couldn't, you know she would mop the floor. We have to wait till the floor get dry.
Speaker 2:You know it was we didn't eat till like 6 or 7 because everything had to be hot.
Speaker 1:And then you're like can I get something to eat? Vamos a comer juntos. Yo estoy cocinando.
Speaker 2:I'm like.
Speaker 1:I haven't eaten in hours. I'm anemic. I need something. Can I have some Captain Crunch, like any? It was just so.
Speaker 3:You were completely robbed of any joy.
Speaker 2:It was probably the most culturally like. I remember that day, like I was going through the chapter and I was remembering my family.
Speaker 3:You were playing it out in your mind.
Speaker 2:Well, yeah, because like we would wake up and my mom was just quarantining the house. Like it almost seemed like we were about to have inspection for a hospital visit of some sort, but like it was the most nostalgic moment of the book.
Speaker 1:Thank you, it's like royalties coming to eat.
Speaker 2:Yeah, princess Diana is coming to dinner tonight, and it's the same people that you hung out with just last Saturday, who were drinking Exactly the same people who are going to get drunk and say the most outlandish shit at the dinner table. And you're, I was just I read that chapter I was like wait, what the do you? I mean, do you cook pavichong like the?
Speaker 1:yes, I make that. Actually, my friends always come to me, my house for the turkey, because I make the pavichong. You know, I make all of the stuff we ate, and then we also eat southern food to honor my children's father's culture and so we have like this mixture. But no, we don't have. It's not that stressful. Y si se limpia.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but you're not quarantining the house Hector.
Speaker 1:Lavo is playing in the background. My kids love Hector.
Speaker 2:Lavo, she's like. This Thanksgiving is brought to you by Fabuloso. Yes, the background my kids love. Hector Love.
Speaker 1:She's like this Thanksgiving is brought to you by Fabuloso God pressure. That was insane. It was pressure. The pine salt I can't smell pine salt.
Speaker 4:Traumatizes you. It's a trigger Wow.
Speaker 1:And I was like it don't even clean.
Speaker 2:What it does is it just makes it smell. It's a fragrance. Yeah, it's a fragrance. I realized that a long time ago. It actually makes your mom smell nasty and everything.
Speaker 4:My mom still uses it.
Speaker 2:I can't get her not to my mom does too my family is vinegar and bleach man, and by the time you finish that fumigation, you got open up the windows and then they teach you that you can clean the toilet with all these chemicals going in there.
Speaker 3:Oh yeah, yeah, everybody reaches a Thanksgiving table with a pile of shit, el ammonia el cloro, eso fue ammonia.
Speaker 1:You see the steam coming off the table, the fumes, and they used to fight all the time. They'd be like empinorano, and that says pine salt where you get that from. That's funny it was a trigger, but yes, no, we don't do that. We enjoy our holidays. That's what it's for.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, we don't clean at my house at all.
Speaker 3:You reclaim your holidays.
Speaker 1:We reclaim my holidays. We celebrate Noche Buena, we don't celebrate El 25. And you know, we have a good time, we have an itinerary. We do karaoke, we play games. We are not under that type of pressure. We do the same thing too.
Speaker 2:I think, like for Noche Buena, we will set up Like we have a tradition on my end where we watch like a whole bunch of like little shows that we watched.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Like when they watched as kids.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and then we always do that every year.
Speaker 4:No matter where they are, we just no. They made me go sing at the neighbor's house. You know, when you go door to door, oh, Carolyn, you and Carolyn, oh my God.
Speaker 2:Yes, I was.
Speaker 4:Carolyn, we didn't do that.
Speaker 2:I was with Patterson. We were not doing that in Patterson.
Speaker 4:Not anymore, but when I was younger, we did that's.
Speaker 3:You know, you guys play and sometimes go door to door.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and you know it's hard to do that in the States. Right, if you're not in a community surrounded by people who understand that.
Speaker 2:I have one final question, because the one thing about the documentary that was interesting to me is when you went to go see your dad. Was that like the first time you had been in DR for like a really long time, or is that where you've been visiting? No, it was the first time. Also, we have that in because I the first time I went to I was in pr when I was a kid. It was like you know four or five, and um garyan makes fun of me because when he came here for the interview that we did like I have my puerto rican flag up.
Speaker 2:I have my, I have my protest, puerto rican, the black flag, you know, and he's like oye, pero tu no, dominicano. And I'm like, it's just like for me. Last year, or like a year and a half ago, my daughter bought me a trip to puerto rico, oh, and we, she went with me and it was like a two week. We. All we did was just dry, like it took two hours to go the entire island and we went to every municipality, everywhere, we went everywhere.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I was, it had been like 30 years since I've been there well, maybe more and so like it was my first time really like experiencing my people, and so I was like super proud when I came back like I had both of my flags when I used to do them when I, when I came back, like I used to, everybody knows got indoctrinated.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I was like.
Speaker 2:I was like I had both flags in the back, I had all kinds of stuff and it was just like a brand new experience for, like, what was it like for you when going to dr?
Speaker 1:oh, the dominican republic was so welcoming of me that's what I got in puerto rico, yeah that was. My daughter loved it. She felt like at home there in the documentary. You see, see it when she goes.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:When I ask her about Puerto Rico and she's like she didn't feel the same way. We didn't get a chance to move on.
Speaker 2:I was going to laugh because I was like, did you make her do that? Take again, no that was. That was a raw answer.
Speaker 1:That was a real answer.
Speaker 2:She was like do you feel like you're connected with these people?
Speaker 1:And she's like nah, she's like, and then she was like, but I don't know, but I don't don't do that Like it was just one of those. Because in the Dominican Republic she was embraced Like they were so warm.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:But also the reality is that what we people don't see is that we only went to.
Speaker 2:La.
Speaker 1:Capital in Puerto Rico, like she didn't go to Loiza, she didn't go to Santiago. Santo Domingo, tori, she went to Caguas where my grandmother was from, but we didn't go in El Campo where my grandmother was from, and so that was just the experience that she had with the mainland, where the people were, you know are. Yeah, the Dominican Republic was beautiful. It was. The way that I was treated was just, it was beautiful and I it's a different.
Speaker 2:People don't understand. Like I said, when we went back, I went back. 30 years later I went. I was there in 88, 87 through 88. My my mom sent me to my grandmother. That's ironic like we all end up being raised by our grandmothers. And my grandmother introduced me to the Dominican side of my culture when I was really young, and so we went back because my grandfather was passing away, so I wanted to give to my mom the opportunity, because she hadn't spoken to him in like a really long time.
Speaker 2:For family stuff, you know how it is. And she went back and we had that experience and so I was like I want to go to where my grandmother like raised me for those two years Because my grandmother passed away. The people who were there were the people who originally bought the house from her and they knew who we were and they were like no, no, no, just come on in, you can show them the house. And we were like in the house, Like I'm looking, and the house was so much smaller Because and we were like in the house, Like I'm looking, and the house was so much smaller because obviously, when you're a kid, but just that, I mean, I don't know, For me like going back was such an experience.
Speaker 1:It was beautiful. I went back to the house of the ladies who used to take care of me and my mother. My grandmother would throw us out of her house and the lady's still alive. Oh wow, she was like. I have pictures of her that my father just sent me the other day, but she was like la cuqui, because that's what they call me, and she was like la cuqui regreso. You know, they were waiting for me and that lady is like in her 90s 90s, yeah, she made it.
Speaker 3:That's her heart.
Speaker 1:She used to take care of me and my mom and I spent a lot of time with them, which I didn't know. You know people that know you and you don't know them because you were a child.
Speaker 1:Exactly, and that lady was like mira, mira la cookie de nosotros, como la queremos. They were an instrumental part of my life, my childhood and my upbringing, and they took care of my mom because my childhood and my upbringing, and they took care of my mom because my mom was also a child. And so esa señora Todavía está. Oh my God.
Speaker 2:Se la ve fuerte.
Speaker 1:Bless her heart I think her granddaughter, but her and her daughters took care of me and my mom and she goes and the tears were coming down her. I think her granddaughter, but her and her daughters took care of me and my mom and she goes. I'm Ipuki and the tears were coming down her eyes. And she said I always knew you were going to come back, so I felt welcomed in the.
Speaker 2:Dominican Republic.
Speaker 1:I felt that I felt that when I was there in both places especially you know when.
Speaker 2:Obviously I've been to the Dominican Republic, uh, earlier, but where I can remember, puerto Rico was the place I couldn't remember. So for me like to go back and to like have me like, have people treat me like, okay, you're Puerto Rican, because it didn't matter whether you were from the states or not. You're like, you're Puerto Rican and it was just. It was just really cool.
Speaker 1:There's a lot of Puerto Ricans that are like that. It's the ones that you know. We amplify always the negativity. That's what social media is. But it's a lot of Puerto Ricans that are like you, are ours.
Speaker 2:We didn't run into any of the negative side of us and we were everywhere. No, they're online.
Speaker 1:They're too busy online. I don't care what you say, like we were online. They're too busy online. I don't care what you say, if you don't speak spanish, you ain't a real puerto rican. And I'm like how about? If you speak spanish, you ain't a real.
Speaker 2:We went from osan juan to different parts of aguadilla, like it was just, it was insane, it was just so beautiful, um, and so, yeah, I mean, I look, I, you are the bravest person on earth wow, thank you, because I don't feel that way Well you may not think that, but this book represents that, because I don't know if I could write half of the stuff that you wrote in here in this book, and so you know.
Speaker 2:I just want to thank you Because, one, the book was extremely eye-opening. I was telling them before we even got into the interview. I'm like like the first thing I had to do is give this woman a hug because he did, he did, and it was the first thing she came out of the car.
Speaker 2:I was like I was like because, um, you know, people can say whatever they want. If you haven't read this book, you have absolutely no idea what ida has been through. I'm getting choked up just even saying about it and then just even having the the you know, very similar type experiences when it came to that, you know, kind of legitimized me in a way, from reading it to where because there's a part of the book where you're like now you know I'm I'm my own person and I can't keep using you- know, those situations as like who who I am, because they didn't keep me from, they just kind of taught me how to be who I am today.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, I mean, if people wanted to buy the book, I mean obviously it's everywhere, I got it at barnes and nobles but what are some of the other places they can get it?
Speaker 1:they get them on um, everywhere books are sold um.
Speaker 2:you can go to my page, my website, funnyaidacom, and it has a list of different outlets um and I would prefer you to buy the book from um independent bookstores that are owned by latin people, because that's why I said that, because I wanted to make sure that we support, like local bookstores they suffered a lot during covid, so please support those local bookstores that are owned by people in the community. You know bipoc people, women when you got upcoming shows working. Are they going to be here in this area? I know you're going to be in San Diego.
Speaker 1:May I'm taking off, it's my vacation month, but in June I do a city winery tour. So I'm going to be going to New York, boston, st Louis, atlanta, philadelphia, pittsburgh and Chicago, so, and then I'm going back to DC where they come, uh, and show up for me and, um, I'm going to San Jose. So you go to funny eithercom and you'll see all the shows that have coming up. But if you're in Texas and the Dallas area, come to the show on Saturday and rep for the and then on Instagram and like the social media.
Speaker 2:It's always funny.
Speaker 1:Uh, I think it's funny, ida, I don't even know what it is on TikTok.
Speaker 2:I don't know what it is on TikTok.
Speaker 1:I don't know what it is. Somebody else does my TikTok for me you don't do the dances. I'm trying to stay off of social media as much as possible to honor my mental health, and Facebook is Ida Rodriguez and YouTube, I think is funny.
Speaker 2:Ida. I love the Instagram account because you keep it real, and Facebook is Aida Rodriguez and YouTube is I think is Funny, aida. I love the Instagram account because you keep it real there, like the thoughts that you be putting out. I'm like she on today, like you might want to move along if you're not Leave me alone, yeah. So, look, I really appreciate you coming. Thank you very much for sharing, you know, not only the book but your story with us. It's a true privilege to be able to have this dialogue with you.
Speaker 1:Thank you for having me. I really appreciate it. This has been a great conversation.
Speaker 2:Don, you got to come back.
Speaker 1:Oh, I will, I will.
Speaker 3:She's part of the total.
Speaker 1:This was 18 minutes from my house Is it really. Yeah, I just got stuck in 134. That's where it got. It was an accident, though it wasn't the traffic, it was an accident.
Speaker 2:It's always an accident. This is LA. They're not always accidents. They're like catastrophic accidents.
Speaker 1:People like Well then, you see, it's the people stopping to look. Yeah, to look.
Speaker 2:To look All five lanes. They want to all look. They can't even see anything halfway across each other. But all right, everybody, that is our show. Thank you for watching. Aida Rodriguez was with us today. We hope you enjoyed the interview. Make sure you follow us at Todo Latino Show and at Todo Wafi. And I am Rafael. That is Aida.