Speaker 1: Good morning, peeps, and welcome to wok F Daily with
Speaker 1: me your girl, Daniel Moody, recording from the home Bunker. Folks,
Speaker 1: let's take a break from oh I don't know, the
Speaker 1: serious amount of crazy that has been circulating around since
Speaker 1: the quote unquote assassination attempt of Donald Trump for a
Speaker 1: second time in two months, the influx of violence into Springfield,
Speaker 1: Ohio because of Donald Trump and JD Vance's stochastic terrorism,
Speaker 1: the just overwhelming amount of fuckery that is Trump and
Speaker 1: Laura Lumer and whatever the hell is happening over there.
Speaker 1: And friends, for those of you who have yet to
Speaker 1: venture over to my YouTube channel, I am have done
Speaker 1: a couple of videos on that, so do head over.
Speaker 1: You can go into the YouTube search button and put
Speaker 1: in Danielle Moody channel and woila, there I will be
Speaker 1: Also it is Danielle Moody Underscore the same on TikTok,
Speaker 1: so absolutely do head over there where I'm creating new,
Speaker 1: fresh videos on a daily basis. But we need a break.
Speaker 1: I mean I know that I need a break. So
Speaker 1: I am very excited to bring you a fantastic interview
Speaker 1: that I did with author Nikola Yun, who wrote the
Speaker 1: book Our Kind of People. It is a novel. It
Speaker 1: is a thriller. As is written on the inside of
Speaker 1: the book, it is like get Out the movie get
Speaker 1: Out meets Stepford Wives. It is set in a suburb
Speaker 1: of Los Angeles. A black utopian neighborhood is created and
Speaker 1: the lead character, Jasmine, and her husband and their young son,
Speaker 1: move into this black utopia and things kind of go
Speaker 1: left from the beginning. The book is fantastic. The conversation
Speaker 1: on race, on racism, on what it means to create safety,
Speaker 1: and the lengths that people will go to in order
Speaker 1: to create safety. It was such a fantastic conversation the book.
Speaker 1: I turned every single page faster than the next. For
Speaker 1: the last eighty pages of the book, I could not
Speaker 1: put it down until it was finished. I highly highly
Speaker 1: recommend it. So check out my interview with Nikola Yune. Folks.
Speaker 1: I am so excited to welcome to WOKF Daily New
Speaker 1: York Times bestselling author Nikola Yun, whose new book, latest book,
Speaker 1: One of Our Kind, is your first adult novel. And
Speaker 1: when you open up, it says get Out meets the
Speaker 1: Stepford Wives. Yeah, And I'm like, oh, you sold me
Speaker 1: because two iconic movies about what the character thought something
Speaker 1: was and what it actually turns into. And I think
Speaker 1: that for me, why those two movies And I want
Speaker 1: to ask you why those two movies are kind of
Speaker 1: how you ground the description of the book. Why those
Speaker 1: two stand out for you. Does it have something to
Speaker 1: do with the fact that we often enter into situations
Speaker 1: experiences in our lives where we think they're going to
Speaker 1: be one thing and then you know, outside of it
Speaker 1: being a thriller or a horror, it turns out to
Speaker 1: be something else. And is that why you think that
Speaker 1: people are so inclined to this kind of art, this
Speaker 1: kind of genre.
Speaker 2: Thanks for having me on, And that's a great question,
Speaker 2: actually get out. I think it's one of the first
Speaker 2: sort of social horrors, or certainly one of the first
Speaker 2: ones that got the public mindset thinking about a way
Speaker 2: you can do horror and something that's like, you know,
Speaker 2: sort of consumer friendly and also talk about deep social issues, right.
Speaker 2: And so for me that was a really big inspiration
Speaker 2: because I really did want to talk about race and
Speaker 2: racism in America, but I also wanted people to want
Speaker 2: to read the book, right, Like I really wanted people
Speaker 2: to stay up all night because they needed to know
Speaker 2: what was going to happen and turn those pages, you know,
Speaker 2: and then maybe fling the book across the room at
Speaker 2: the end. And then after that, I really wanted people
Speaker 2: to have, you know, sort of interrogate themselves and call
Speaker 2: their friends and just sort of talk about the ending
Speaker 2: and why the book ends the way it does. I
Speaker 2: don't know why happens in the book in a deep
Speaker 2: and meaningful way, right, and also a graceful way where
Speaker 2: we actually listen to each other and pay attention to
Speaker 2: what the other person is saying and believe people when
Speaker 2: they say this hurts or this doesn't hurt, or what
Speaker 2: have you. So for me, get Out was a really
Speaker 2: big inspiration because it allowed people to do that. And
Speaker 2: then the Stepford Wise, I actually hadn't read that book
Speaker 2: until I started writing this one, or I read it
Speaker 2: a few years ago, and I was listening to this
Speaker 2: podcast called You're Wrong About and was talking about the
Speaker 2: Steppard Wise and how most people misremember that book because
Speaker 2: people think of Stepford Wise as being like a pejorative
Speaker 2: that we beat women over the head with, right, like
Speaker 2: she's such a Stepford wife, and we sort of make
Speaker 2: fun but actually The book is really really feminist because
Speaker 2: it's about the men who would do this thing to
Speaker 2: their wives, right, who would make them into Stepford wives,
Speaker 2: which I hadn't really known. I sort of had an
Speaker 2: idea of it, but then I read the book and
Speaker 2: I was like, oh, this is fiercely feminist. And so
Speaker 2: that happened and I sort of put it into my brain.
Speaker 2: And then a few years later, after George Floyd's murder,
Speaker 2: like a lot of things merge in my mind, and
Speaker 2: Stepford Wise was one of them. Because it's also a thriller,
Speaker 2: also talks about important social things and importantly talks about
Speaker 2: the ways in which you don't know the world. If
Speaker 2: a world is putting you in danger, there's a way
Speaker 2: in which that if you're walking into a world that
Speaker 2: is often problematic, you never know what situation you're going
Speaker 2: to walk into and what that does to a person.
Speaker 2: So the main character in One of Our Kind, her
Speaker 2: name is Jasmine. She's my most complicated character. I love Jasmine,
Speaker 2: but she's also judgmental, and she's kind of a pain
Speaker 2: in the butt right like she does. She sees terror
Speaker 2: and fear and trouble everywhere, but she has a reason
Speaker 2: to see terror and trouble and fear everywhere, and it's
Speaker 2: mostly about the world that would make a person like
Speaker 2: Jasmine behave the way she does.
Speaker 1: I think that there are a couple of things there
Speaker 1: that I want to dig into, and I think that
Speaker 1: in reality, I feel like black people, particularly Black women,
Speaker 1: are always gasolt into believing that the issues that we
Speaker 1: bring to the forefront don't actually exist. That whether it
Speaker 1: is in your workplace, in dealing with microaggressions, whether it
Speaker 1: is in relationships and seeing all of these red flags
Speaker 1: but being told like, no, you're just angry, or no,
Speaker 1: it's your trauma, not mine. I think that there is
Speaker 1: this idea that any time that black women in particular
Speaker 1: bring up an issue to the forefront, whether it's Michelle
Speaker 1: Obama saying nearly two decades ago that she was proud
Speaker 1: of her country for the first time, right, and being
Speaker 1: dragged for articulating something that was very true. This country
Speaker 1: is inherently racist, and look at you, your embrace of
Speaker 1: my black husband and family, and I'm proud for the
Speaker 1: first time, right, I'm not shameful, But being gasoled into
Speaker 1: believing that that made her unpatriotic. So how is your
Speaker 1: understanding of the perpetual gaslighting that happens in this country,
Speaker 1: but particularly for black women. How does that feed into
Speaker 1: what could be seen as hysterical or anxiety driven by
Speaker 1: your character. But it's like, no, these things are really happening,
Speaker 1: Like I'm not making it up.
Speaker 2: I mean, I think that you're tapped into exactly the issue, right.
Speaker 2: So I mean in a world where you can turn
Speaker 2: on the news one day and see the murder of
Speaker 2: a person and see his body left on the street
Speaker 2: for just hours, it makes you vigilant, right, It makes
Speaker 2: you hyper vigilant in a way that's not healthy actually
Speaker 2: for anyone. But how could you not be, How could
Speaker 2: you not be at any moment a terrifying and a
Speaker 2: horrific thing can happen, Right. I think for Jasmine, she's
Speaker 2: so hyper vigil and she has a young son, she
Speaker 2: has a black husband, she has a baby on the way,
Speaker 2: and she is a public defender. She's steeped in the news,
Speaker 2: she's steeped in all the trauma, just all the time, right,
Speaker 2: And I think there's a way in which that can
Speaker 2: make you just sort of go, oh my god, everything's
Speaker 2: a threat. And I think that's where Jasmine is right.
Speaker 2: I mean, and sometimes things are a threat and sometimes
Speaker 2: they're not, but it's hard to tell the difference when
Speaker 2: there's so many horrors. And I think, you know, I
Speaker 2: want to really talk about a world. I mean not
Speaker 2: just for black women, I mean especially for black people
Speaker 2: in this country, but in general. The world is on
Speaker 2: fire a lot. Right. You can wake up and turn
Speaker 2: on the news and you're like, there's climate change, and
Speaker 2: there are several wars and genocides, and if you're a
Speaker 2: reasonably good person, you want to fix it and you
Speaker 2: don't want to just sort of retreat into your bubble.
Speaker 2: But also you cannot possibly fix everything. And I mean
Speaker 2: it can make you crazy, right, And you can make
Speaker 2: you so see threats when there are no It can
Speaker 2: make you mistake when there is a threat that you
Speaker 2: should be looking at. I think you know, it turns
Speaker 2: you upside down. And I think that's where Jasmine is.
Speaker 1: I want to talk a bit too about liberty, about
Speaker 1: the place that you created in the book, this idea
Speaker 1: of a black utopia. It's something that I think about often.
Speaker 1: I don't know if you have visited Martha's Vineyard and
Speaker 1: Oak Bluffs and this historical black town and place where
Speaker 1: the affluent have gone to vacation throughout history and time,
Speaker 1: and in a lot of places it had been one
Speaker 1: of the only places where you get to see black
Speaker 1: people on vacation. I know that when I travel there
Speaker 1: are sometimes when I may see one or two other families,
Speaker 1: but largely we're not seeing ourselves. Talk to us about
Speaker 1: the creation of this place of liberty, of this black utopia,
Speaker 1: and the why around it for.
Speaker 2: You, So you know, Jasmine moves along with her husband
Speaker 2: and her young son to liberty. Right, So it is
Speaker 2: a black utopia. It's in the suburbs of Los Angeles.
Speaker 2: It's very, very wealthy, and she's hesitant to move because
Speaker 2: she is, as I say, a public defender, and she
Speaker 2: has a sense of community and wanting to help the
Speaker 2: less fortunate and moving to a place where she gets
Speaker 2: safety feels wrong to her because there's so many people
Speaker 2: who don't have safety. But she does move for safety. Right.
Speaker 2: She wants it to be that when her husband and
Speaker 2: young son walk down the street and they get stopped
Speaker 2: by a cop, that cop is going to be black
Speaker 2: and presumably on their side and is not going to
Speaker 2: be horrible. Right. She wants to revel in black excellence.
Speaker 2: She wants mostly to feel safe, I meaning being a
Speaker 2: black woman myself and a mother too. I know that
Speaker 2: wanting to have psychic safety and also physical safety for
Speaker 2: my kid, right, so like I want my child to
Speaker 2: be he is innocent for as long as possible, but
Speaker 2: I also wanted to be saved physically right from the
Speaker 2: world that is dangerous. And so Jasmine moves to liberty
Speaker 2: because everyone's black. What could possibly go wrong? Right when
Speaker 2: you are in a community where presumably everyone wants and
Speaker 2: cares about the same thing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And it's like I feel it because you brought
Speaker 1: up George Floyd and can think about Mike Brown, We
Speaker 1: can think about Trayvon Martin being killed inside of a
Speaker 1: gated community. You can think about all of these different aspects,
Speaker 1: and whenever those horrific events happen, my first thought is like,
Speaker 1: I'd like to leave here. I'd like to leave here,
Speaker 1: and I'd like to go someplace where I don't have
Speaker 1: to worry. And there is this seeming feeling of guilt
Speaker 1: that Jasmine has about Like you said here, I am
Speaker 1: believing that like I should be here to make a difference,
Speaker 1: not just book spa appointments, not just pretend that things
Speaker 1: aren't happening. And I wonder when you see in our
Speaker 1: society people who don't want to be as tapped in
Speaker 1: as a way too maybe for themselves have that psychic
Speaker 1: safety that if I am so tapped in on a
Speaker 1: regular basis, I may not get out of bed, because
Speaker 1: there are multiple genocides that are happening, because there are
Speaker 1: kids that are going hungry, that are right down the street,
Speaker 1: because there is a possibility that if my loved one
Speaker 1: leaves and they get stopped by the police, they're not
Speaker 1: going to return. Like, is there this place where we
Speaker 1: can both understand and not be judgmental about people who
Speaker 1: want to tap out because everything can be so overwhelming.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And honestly, that's part of what the book is about.
Speaker 2: I mean, it's important for me to say that the
Speaker 2: book isn't prescriptive, But the question that you just ask
Speaker 2: is the conversation I think that we all need to
Speaker 2: be having right Because so Jasmine moves celebrity, and where
Speaker 2: Jasmine is hyper vigilant, some of the people in Liberty
Speaker 2: are not. Some of the people in Liberty bookspot appointments
Speaker 2: all day and turn away from the world entirely. It's
Speaker 2: not like they're taking a break or looking out for
Speaker 2: their own mammas. They're just completely gone and they find
Speaker 2: their own kind of safety in that, right, they find
Speaker 2: their own kind of you know, turning away from the world,
Speaker 2: a world that's too hard to look at, and is
Speaker 2: there some happy medium? Is that a thing that's possible
Speaker 2: in a world that's so violent and so dangerous for
Speaker 2: black people, you know at certain times? So like, I
Speaker 2: don't know, but I know that I want to ask
Speaker 2: the question as a part of the book, and I
Speaker 2: really want people to start to talk about it. Right.
Speaker 2: There are villains in this book, But the villains in
Speaker 2: the book are also victims, right, They're also victims of
Speaker 2: like an overarching system that's racist, like a system that
Speaker 2: puts people into boxes and forces them to make absurd
Speaker 2: choices a lot of the times. Right. You Know, there
Speaker 2: is a character the book where I think West She's
Speaker 2: got to figure it out, and she has a good
Speaker 2: way of looking at the world. She loves her blackness,
Speaker 2: she loves the black culture. She sees the world for
Speaker 2: what it is, and she chooses to hold on to
Speaker 2: her joy when she can. But I think it's hard, right,
Speaker 2: and I think it's worth talking about what kind of
Speaker 2: world we've made.
Speaker 1: I want to ask you too again, We're living in
Speaker 1: a really wild time, and we're living at a time where,
Speaker 1: in this moment, as you and I are speaking, we're
Speaker 1: sixty some odd days away from the most consequential election
Speaker 1: of our lifetime. Yep, where for the first time ever
Speaker 1: in America's history, a black and Indian woman is at
Speaker 1: the top of the Democratic ticket. There are two very
Speaker 1: clear pictures that are being painted about this country. One
Speaker 1: that is steep in white Christian nationalism and exclusivity, and
Speaker 1: one that is imperfect, Yes, incredibly imperfect, but steeped in
Speaker 1: the desire to be more inclusive with each generation than
Speaker 1: we have. Yeah, and the decision is so weighty for me,
Speaker 1: it seems so friggin' obvious, right, like duh, you know,
Speaker 1: like pick the one that isn't run by a criminal,
Speaker 1: like just you know, duh.
Speaker 2: It's a really obvious decision.
Speaker 1: Yes, it's just so obvious. And yet and yet here
Speaker 1: we are. When you kind of look at the world,
Speaker 1: you have a daughter, when you look at the world
Speaker 1: and you think, like, what have we become? Do you
Speaker 1: see the possibility. Do you see it as a horror?
Speaker 1: Do you see you know, like, is there still like
Speaker 1: I don't know. I find this mix of feeling where
Speaker 1: I both feel incredibly joyful and excited about the possibility
Speaker 1: in this choice and equally friggin terrified about the possibility
Speaker 1: of the wrong choice.
Speaker 2: I mean, isn't that why the world is crazy? I mean,
Speaker 2: it's interesting to be a human being, the way you
Speaker 2: can hold to simultaneously opposite emotions at the same time, right,
Speaker 2: And you just have to live with it, right, Like,
Speaker 2: my daughter is the best thing on earth, and I
Speaker 2: put her on the school bus this morning and she's gone.
Speaker 2: My heart is on the bus all day. And I
Speaker 2: just have to trust that the world is going to
Speaker 2: treat her well and that she will be smart enough
Speaker 2: to like, you know, stick her elbows at when she
Speaker 2: needs to and be kind and all of those things.
Speaker 2: And you know, I have a wonderful husband who I
Speaker 2: adore and so and you know who really is the
Speaker 2: love of my life, and so I am lucky and joyful.
Speaker 2: And also you know, we turn on the news, we
Speaker 2: could turn on the news after this podcast and something
Speaker 2: new and horrific can have happened, and part of the
Speaker 2: tension in the like modern society is learning to try
Speaker 2: to live with both of those things and still go
Speaker 2: forward and still do good work and still care and
Speaker 2: not turn away. But also you can't because if you
Speaker 2: revel in it, you only get the one life, right,
Speaker 2: and you cannot live if you've steeped in it all
Speaker 2: the time, right, Like, there's no way there's no joy
Speaker 2: for you to have. And I refuse to see my
Speaker 2: joy to like someone else's view of me or the
Speaker 2: entire world. And also part of joy is actually trying
Speaker 2: to make the world a little bit better, you know.
Speaker 2: I mean, you're talking about these two candidates. One is
Speaker 2: trash honestly, and the other candidate is flawed, right, But
Speaker 2: at least there's one candidate that we can push towards
Speaker 2: more progressive policies and more and doing the right thing
Speaker 2: right and so but that it means that we all
Speaker 2: have to be engaged and push and try. It means
Speaker 2: we have to believe in a flawed world, right, even
Speaker 2: the times when it's really really bad. You know, maybe
Speaker 2: stay in bed that day and then get up the
Speaker 2: next day and try again.
Speaker 1: I don't know if you watched the Democratic National Convention,
Speaker 1: but when Michelle Obama offered I mean so much, but
Speaker 1: one of the lines that stuck with me the most
Speaker 1: was this Goldilock sensibility, this idea that everything has to
Speaker 1: be just right in order for us to get things done.
Speaker 1: And I, you know, and I think about that. I
Speaker 1: think about the ways in which fiction and fairy tales
Speaker 1: have kind of in a lot of ways guided our
Speaker 1: view of the world. And I want to ask you this, like,
Speaker 1: what do you see as the role of fiction at
Speaker 1: a time when the world is so dark?
Speaker 2: Yeah, that is a great question, you know. As the
Speaker 2: fiction writer, I will say that when I first wrote
Speaker 2: the first draft of this book, I wrote it from
Speaker 2: a place of despair and anger. I was so and
Speaker 2: I'm not in general angry or sparing person and fairly optimistic.
Speaker 2: I'm always smiling or always joking, but you know, the
Speaker 2: world had gotten to be a lot and so that
Speaker 2: very first draft was there was no hope in it.
Speaker 2: There was no like sort of air in it. But
Speaker 2: the role of a fiction writer is to tell the
Speaker 2: truth right, the truth as you see it, and that's it.
Speaker 2: That's really just the job. And then hopefully people will
Speaker 2: come to it with grace and empathy and be in
Speaker 2: dialogue with the work, and hopefully it'll mean something to them.
Speaker 2: It maybe will reveal a truth about themselves, or maybe
Speaker 2: it'll give them a way to reveal a truth to
Speaker 2: someone else. You know. For this book, the thing I
Speaker 2: really wanted was for people that treat each other with grace,
Speaker 2: because I think our national discourse lacks that. It lacks empathy,
Speaker 2: it lacks grace, It lacks us believing each other when
Speaker 2: we say things right. And the thing is, I have
Speaker 2: made mistakes with friends, artst in my culture before and
Speaker 2: outside of my religion. Right. I have like said the
Speaker 2: wrong thing, done the wrong thing. And the thing that's
Speaker 2: always saved me is that they know that I love
Speaker 2: them and I just got it wrong, and we can
Speaker 2: talk about it and they're like, Nikki, that's dumb, and
Speaker 2: they'll say it, and then I'll be like, oh, you're right,
Speaker 2: I'm sorry, and then we'll move on and similar the
Speaker 2: same things have happened to me, right, and I've treated
Speaker 2: them with grace and go, that is the dumbest thing
Speaker 2: I've ever heard. Here is the truth, and then we'll
Speaker 2: move on. But I don't think that we do that anymore, right, Like,
Speaker 2: I don't think. I think if someone says this thing
Speaker 2: happened to me and this hurt and you know, this
Speaker 2: racist thing happened, to believe them and really listen and
Speaker 2: hear what that means and try to empathize, and you know,
Speaker 2: no more whispering about things like that. We have to
Speaker 2: really just talk. And most people are good, most people, right,
Speaker 2: they're obviously so terrible people in the world, but most
Speaker 2: people will do the right thing if they know what
Speaker 2: the right thing is. And we just have to talk
Speaker 2: to each other. It's like, the only way things change
Speaker 2: is that way, Like you and me in conversation, really
Speaker 2: listening to each other is the way things change. Right.
Speaker 2: Otherwise it's just we're just in our camps, not going anywhere.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I think that fiction writing provides us with a
Speaker 1: tool to be able to navigate real life and give
Speaker 1: us kind of a touchstone to imagine something different than
Speaker 1: where we are. That reality can be really dark, can
Speaker 1: suck the air out of the room and make us
Speaker 1: believe that what is will always be, And fiction allows
Speaker 1: us the space to dream, even if that dream is
Speaker 1: a is a nightmare or a thriller.
Speaker 2: It gets us.
Speaker 1: Out of out right, yeah, it gets us out of
Speaker 1: our skin and out of our mind and someplace else.
Speaker 1: And I think that that is often what is needed
Speaker 1: for change and what is at the core of any revolution.
Speaker 1: So I appreciate you so much for your work, for
Speaker 1: this book, which folks, is out now, one of our kind,
Speaker 1: and the link will be in this show notes. Nikola,
Speaker 1: thank you so much for this conversation and for your work.
Speaker 1: That is it for me today, dear friends on Woke
Speaker 1: a f as always Power to the people and to
Speaker 1: all the people. Power, get woke and stay woke as fuck.