Speaker 1: Pushing. I'm Khalil Jibrad Muhammad. I'm Ben Austin. We're two
Speaker 1: best friends, one black, one white. I'm a historian and
Speaker 1: I'm a journalist. And this is some of my best
Speaker 1: friends are Some of my best friends are like, I'm
Speaker 1: not a blank, some of my best friends are blank.
Speaker 1: In this show, we're gonna wrestle with the challenges and
Speaker 1: the absurdities of a deeply divided and unequal country. And
Speaker 1: today we're talking to one of our best friends, Matthew Gatura.
Speaker 1: He has a new memoir, skin Folk. It's about his
Speaker 1: experience growing up in a large family with multi racial
Speaker 1: and adopted siblings in New Jersey during the nineteen seventies.
Speaker 1: But you'll hear all about it in the show. So
Speaker 1: let's get to it, don't all right? Man, this is
Speaker 1: this is a long time coming. I mean, I have
Speaker 1: I have the two white guys in my life that like,
Speaker 1: are unrivaled in personal significance. I mean, it's always all
Speaker 1: about you. It's always all about you. I Mean, everybody
Speaker 1: knows Ben by now, but but nobody knows Matt, and
Speaker 1: most especially they don't know Uncle Matt. Because all the
Speaker 1: folks who know about Ben and I vacationing together. They've
Speaker 1: heard the Black Martha's vengeance story for our long time listeners.
Speaker 1: What they don't know is that these guys are like interchangeable,
Speaker 1: Like one week it's been and then the next week
Speaker 1: it's Matt. And my kids are like, hey, hey, Ben, Oh,
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, uncle Matt. I mean, that's just how it is.
Speaker 1: So this is a very special episode of Some of
Speaker 1: My best Friends. Are you do the same thing, Khalil.
Speaker 1: I've heard you call me been a number of times. Fine,
Speaker 1: you know so, So Matt, what black friends do you
Speaker 1: mistake for Khalil. I'm just gonna have a sip of
Speaker 1: my sola here and wait, Matt, this has been. I
Speaker 1: agree with Khalil. We've been dying to get you on
Speaker 1: the show. You know, you are one of Khalil's longtime friends,
Speaker 1: and through Khalil, you've been my longtime friend. You're brilliant.
Speaker 1: You two guys went to graduate school together at Rutgers.
Speaker 1: You had the same advisor, the amazing David Levering Lewis.
Speaker 1: You go into the same field. Like you guys both
Speaker 1: are historians. You both study race and particularly African American
Speaker 1: history and you end up together at Indiana University. You
Speaker 1: both teach there and you've you've been friends since, and
Speaker 1: this is an opportunity for me to ask both of
Speaker 1: you about the experience in grad school, like what were
Speaker 1: your first impressions of one another? Who who was Matt
Speaker 1: and who was Khalil at this moment in time? And actually, Matt,
Speaker 1: since you're our guest, I'm going to ask Khalil to
Speaker 1: go first. Khalil, tell me who was mad at that moment?
Speaker 1: What do you think of him when you met him?
Speaker 1: What do you think of him during grad school? Well,
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, I thought he was kind of
Speaker 1: a know it all. I mean, Matthew Pratt Caturoll was
Speaker 1: in nineteen ninety five, a first year PhD student, like
Speaker 1: like I was. We met in a seminar with one
Speaker 1: of our faculty members and it was a class on
Speaker 1: African American history. He had already gotten a master's degree.
Speaker 1: I was right out of accounting and didn't know very much.
Speaker 1: And he used a lot of big words. I mean,
Speaker 1: the kind of words that you know, not only had
Speaker 1: I never heard before, but if I'm honest now, I'm like,
Speaker 1: what am I the only idiot in this room to
Speaker 1: doesn't know what he's talking about it, So I thought
Speaker 1: he was kind of a know it all, maybe even
Speaker 1: a little bit arrogant when I first met him. No,
Speaker 1: don't don't hold any punches, Khalil, like you know about
Speaker 1: you and and Matt. So you meet this guy, what
Speaker 1: do you think of him? Who was he at that
Speaker 1: moment in time? He was charming and graceful and extremely opinionated.
Speaker 1: And I only got to see the opinions, none of
Speaker 1: the charm and the grace we were we were We
Speaker 1: weren't the most problematic people in the room for each other.
Speaker 1: I think there were other far more problematic personalities. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and how does race come to play into this? I mean,
Speaker 1: so Matt's white, Khalil's black. You're studying American history. I
Speaker 1: do remember Khalil getting um, what's the word I would use? Uptight,
Speaker 1: worked up, excited about the use of social construction of race.
Speaker 1: This is a phrase we were using a lot in
Speaker 1: the classroom, And so I think I was inelogently making
Speaker 1: the argument that everyone has a racial experience, and therefore
Speaker 1: the study of race belongs to everyone and we should
Speaker 1: be much more careful about it. But Khalil heard that
Speaker 1: as and I think rightfully so, because again I wasn't
Speaker 1: terribly elegant. Khalil heard that as a refutation of the
Speaker 1: idea of race at all, that race didn't simply didn't matter. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I had a lot to learn. I mean I was.
Speaker 1: I was sort of a bull in a china shop
Speaker 1: back then in grad school, just trying to make sense
Speaker 1: of all this new information. And I remember at one
Speaker 1: moment talking to another white classmate of ours, a guy
Speaker 1: named John, who's a friend of ours, and John shared
Speaker 1: something and I'm admitting this, I think I've said this
Speaker 1: to matt at some point over the last twenty seven
Speaker 1: years since I've known you. But John's like, um, you know,
Speaker 1: matt has a wife who's a woman of color. And
Speaker 1: I was like, fuck, no shit, because because he was like,
Speaker 1: you know, I mean, I won't say he was like
Speaker 1: a stereotypical white guy, but in a way Matthew presented
Speaker 1: to me at the time, as I've already said, as
Speaker 1: to know it all. And so it was intimidating to
Speaker 1: be jousting with this guy who definitely knew more than
Speaker 1: me at that point. I mean, I was shooting from
Speaker 1: the hip based on the most recent weeks readings. But
Speaker 1: he'd already had you know, he'd already gotten a master's degree,
Speaker 1: and he was a convert to this, like you know,
Speaker 1: he was already born again. And I was still like
Speaker 1: stumbling into the church on Sunday morning, trying to figure
Speaker 1: out if I belonged. Listen, Khalil, you and I just
Speaker 1: read Matt's new memoir Skinfolks. That's right. I don't know
Speaker 1: you as well as Khalil, and so all of it
Speaker 1: was new to me. But Khalil has just been calling
Speaker 1: me and he's so excited about about actually getting to
Speaker 1: know you better, even after all these years. Yeah, man,
Speaker 1: it's been it's been twenty seven years. And first of all,
Speaker 1: I feel like you cheated on me a little bit
Speaker 1: because because you've written, You've written this whole book. You know,
Speaker 1: I know so much more about who you are as
Speaker 1: a person, what you've been through, and I feel like
Speaker 1: you were leading a double life. I mean, I've known
Speaker 1: you for twenty seven years, and he could have been
Speaker 1: telling you this stuff all along. Yeah, you know, like,
Speaker 1: what the hell? All right, so we haven't even sort
Speaker 1: of broken down what your background is. Can you tell us.
Speaker 1: What was noteworthy about your parents and the family that
Speaker 1: they created in suburban New Jersey. Sure, thanks, Ben. My
Speaker 1: parents were both sort of committed liberals from the late
Speaker 1: nineteen sixties on, and they decided to adopt kids from
Speaker 1: around the world and raise them together with two quote
Speaker 1: unquote natural white kids in a large, blended family and
Speaker 1: set them behind a white picket fence as a kind
Speaker 1: of reminder to the country of the American promise, or
Speaker 1: the promise of diversity, or a post Jim Crow world.
Speaker 1: And of course it despite their best of intentions, it
Speaker 1: was an idea almost doomed to failure, and there were
Speaker 1: moments of high high comedy and tragedy along the way,
Speaker 1: and things went sideways, you know, especially in the teenage
Speaker 1: years and beyond. And this was an opportunity for me,
Speaker 1: you know, now, almost at the age of my father
Speaker 1: when he passed away, to sort of reflect back on
Speaker 1: what that's meant for me and what it means for
Speaker 1: all of us, you know, Matt, I want to talk
Speaker 1: about this a little bit more in the sense of
Speaker 1: the politics of adoption that you explore in this book,
Speaker 1: because it's it's both familiar to us. Some people think
Speaker 1: about the fascinating choices that Angelina Jolie and Brad pittmay
Speaker 1: Some listeners will know about Josephine Baker's adoptive family of
Speaker 1: children from many parts of the world and raise them
Speaker 1: in part in France and a place called a Milan
Speaker 1: that we've been with our own family. But I think
Speaker 1: you capture a moment in time that I didn't really understand,
Speaker 1: a kind of progressive moment in early nineteen seventy on
Speaker 1: concerns about population growth and the sustainability of the earth.
Speaker 1: There's this organization called Welcome House, and your parents in
Speaker 1: some ways become kind of a poster couple for the choices.
Speaker 1: Just talk a little bit more about about Welcome House,
Speaker 1: about this progressive moment, about this idea that we must
Speaker 1: conserve humanity and not just wastefully produce children in a
Speaker 1: world that can't sustain life. Yeah. Absolutely, I mean there's
Speaker 1: a there's a longer history of adoption that you all
Speaker 1: must know where where racial matching took priority and it
Speaker 1: was quite common, you know, before the nineteen sixties for
Speaker 1: white children to be placed with white families and and
Speaker 1: to really limit adoption to a kind of national context
Speaker 1: in a way. In the late nineteen sixties, you start
Speaker 1: to see that get broken down, and there are a
Speaker 1: number of progressive organizations, and Welcome House it's one of
Speaker 1: them that try to break the national instinct to match races.
Speaker 1: So Welcome House, funded by or created by Pearl Buck,
Speaker 1: among others, and with a lot of support from both
Speaker 1: the black and white community, becomes the vanguard of this
Speaker 1: new international adoption program that brings together children from around
Speaker 1: the world old than children of different races, largely with
Speaker 1: well meaning white families. The impetus here is to really
Speaker 1: bring kids from disadvantaged or marginalized communities, are broken homes
Speaker 1: or war torn countries back to the United States and
Speaker 1: put them in a white headed household. It's not intentionally
Speaker 1: a metaphor for a white headed, diversifying country, but it
Speaker 1: certainly echoes or rhymes with that national interest. And so
Speaker 1: it has all of the hallmarks of the nineteen sixties
Speaker 1: in the sense that it's a radical revision of what
Speaker 1: the country has always done with adoption, and it reflects
Speaker 1: a radical revision of what the nation state is supposed
Speaker 1: to be. But it's also still a white centered model
Speaker 1: of the way in which the family and the nation
Speaker 1: should exist. Man. I mean, in listening to you and
Speaker 1: sort of reading your memoir, I just want to say
Speaker 1: for a moment how great it is. And it's very
Speaker 1: intimate and personal and grapples with race and all its complexities.
Speaker 1: But even what you're describing here, it's a story that
Speaker 1: captures sort of mid century America. It's a story that
Speaker 1: is caught up in Americans entanglement in Korea in Vietnam,
Speaker 1: because two siblings come from Korea, one comes from Vietnam. Um.
Speaker 1: It is this this sort of ideology and sensibility that
Speaker 1: you're describing. A whole world, a whole history comes out
Speaker 1: in these pages. And Matt, you know, can you can
Speaker 1: you name your siblings and where they're from and name
Speaker 1: them as you name them in the book what you
Speaker 1: feel most comfortable with. Thanks so much. Um. I have
Speaker 1: a younger brother, Bug, who comes from Korea, and as
Speaker 1: we know, entirely Korean, although you know, we're also revisiting
Speaker 1: what we know about Korean adoption at this exact moment,
Speaker 1: so you know, we only have the official narrative from
Speaker 1: the from the country of what Bug is or was.
Speaker 1: I have a younger brother named Mark, who's natural born
Speaker 1: white sibling. I have an older brother by forty five
Speaker 1: days named Bear. He's African American in Vietnamese, the son
Speaker 1: of a US soldier in Vietnam. A sister named Anna
Speaker 1: who's mix of white and Korean, and a younger brother
Speaker 1: named Eddie who comes from the South Bronx African American Black. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I want to ask you something else about your folks,
Speaker 1: About your parents, Bob and Cheryl. Your dad's a dreamer,
Speaker 1: your mom's kind of practical. The book feels a lot
Speaker 1: like a love letter to them. I mean, it feels
Speaker 1: like it's it's this portrait of them, and I'm thinking
Speaker 1: about this response to whiteness that they have and this idea.
Speaker 1: You're talking about a literal pick a fence, white pick offense.
Speaker 1: There's a white pick offense around your house in Subourban,
Speaker 1: New Jersey. I'm thinking about my own family, you know,
Speaker 1: white parents, and they settle us in the inner city,
Speaker 1: you know, and sort of in a on the South
Speaker 1: side of Chicago, and you know, there are all sorts
Speaker 1: of reason why that happened. Maybe it's way more Jewish,
Speaker 1: like I'm thinking about, like Jonathan Leatham's books in Brooklyn.
Speaker 1: That's not the choice that your parents make. They're not
Speaker 1: like I'm thinking about race and we're going to raise
Speaker 1: our white children in a diverse neighborhood. They create create
Speaker 1: diversity in an all white space. Can you talk about
Speaker 1: those choices and what they were thinking? They were both
Speaker 1: especially my father was a child of Jersey City and
Speaker 1: had always wanted to live in the country, wanted to
Speaker 1: live in the sort of green spaces of what was
Speaker 1: then the rural central part of New Jersey, and you
Speaker 1: wanted to join a law firm out there. Met my mom,
Speaker 1: who was a legal secretary at the time, finishing college,
Speaker 1: and they moved even further out into the state, basically
Speaker 1: into the middle of nowhere, partly because you know, they
Speaker 1: wanted this green space, but I think also because they
Speaker 1: wanted to build a big family, big family in a
Speaker 1: place where, as you said, there weren't other big families
Speaker 1: like this, and being in the green spaces of the
Speaker 1: state really gave them a sense that they were they
Speaker 1: were both practicing their commitment to a sustainable, healthy environment
Speaker 1: and practicing a commitment as well to a zero population
Speaker 1: growth initiative that they both cared very deeply about. So
Speaker 1: for them, the racial politics of zero population growth made
Speaker 1: it determined rather that they should bring this big family
Speaker 1: into the part of the state that wasn't paved over, concreteised,
Speaker 1: and that felt, you know, where they could feel the
Speaker 1: wind on their cheeks and smell the flowers and stuff
Speaker 1: like that. Are they thinking about changing the racial ideas
Speaker 1: of their white neighbors around them. I think so. You know, certainly,
Speaker 1: my father was there. They're interested in the symbolism of
Speaker 1: the family, and it's very quickly, you know, the idea
Speaker 1: of the family expands from let's adopt two to let's
Speaker 1: adopt for over a period of about five or six years,
Speaker 1: very quickly, they get sanctified by neighbors. Your parents are saints,
Speaker 1: your you know, your parents are the heroes of this town.
Speaker 1: And I think there's some there's something to be said
Speaker 1: for the way in which they both took pleasure in
Speaker 1: their neighbors commitment to our symbolism, and the way in
Speaker 1: which they doubled down on it. Matt, we're gonna we
Speaker 1: want to talk more about this memoir and about your upbringing.
Speaker 1: We're gonna take a short break. We'll be right back.
Speaker 1: We are back on some of my best friends with
Speaker 1: Matt Gutura, one of our best friends. That's right, you know.
Speaker 1: I am fascinated by the intentionality with which your parents
Speaker 1: created this family. And I've heard you say often, Um,
Speaker 1: you know, we don't get the families that. How do
Speaker 1: you say it, Matt? I'm just gonna let you say it,
Speaker 1: because you've said it to me many times. There are
Speaker 1: many things I say, but I think, no, But it's
Speaker 1: about families you make. Say yeah, that the families you
Speaker 1: make matter as much as the families you get. And
Speaker 1: I you know, or you know, your families aren't born,
Speaker 1: they're made. That's right, That's right. And I've always loved that.
Speaker 1: And there's a passage in the book early on when
Speaker 1: you describe your father taking advantage of the family dinner table.
Speaker 1: Six o'clock sharre Cheryl's bell has already rung in the neighborhood.
Speaker 1: Everyone's gathered, and your father tells this biblical parable of
Speaker 1: Noah that he sees as the kind of origin story
Speaker 1: for the family. Could you could you share that story? Yeah.
Speaker 1: He relates the story of the assemblage and the Ark,
Speaker 1: the decision by Noah to protect the world species by
Speaker 1: bringing two of every kind on board the arc so
Speaker 1: that they can be released later. And I mentioned it
Speaker 1: in the book not just because my father was in
Speaker 1: the habit of sitting at the head of the table
Speaker 1: and reciting chapter and verse from the Bible, but because
Speaker 1: he would often say, sometimes with a wink and a smile,
Speaker 1: that what he'd tried to do is to bring together
Speaker 1: two of every race, Khalil. You'll find this humors that
Speaker 1: he would He would usually say this in the context
Speaker 1: of a joke made to Sandy, because she was Sandy
Speaker 1: is Matt's wife. Yeah, yes, but I think I'd heard
Speaker 1: that growing up so often, this sense that there was
Speaker 1: a preservationist instinct, right, the arc is a vessel that protects,
Speaker 1: but there was also a kind of commitment to, you know,
Speaker 1: preserving something in the face of apocalypse, and a commitment
Speaker 1: to a sort of religious mission for the family. And
Speaker 1: when you present that, Matt, I mean, it's easy to
Speaker 1: think about that also problematically of like collecting people and
Speaker 1: people of different races and so on. How are you
Speaker 1: thinking about presenting that in the memoir, You're like, you're
Speaker 1: showing your dad in this way. You're also talking about
Speaker 1: it that it's this bigger sort of mission that he has,
Speaker 1: which is about population. You know, I think it's I
Speaker 1: think people are complicated, and I think it's entirely possible
Speaker 1: for someone to be well intentioned to do things out
Speaker 1: of care and love and feeling and several in several instances,
Speaker 1: the adoptions happen in moments of great national and even
Speaker 1: international urgency where where they hear something over a telephone
Speaker 1: or see something on screen and they feel they just
Speaker 1: have to act. It's possible to do all of that
Speaker 1: and be all of that and also be you know,
Speaker 1: a political instrumentalist, to be tactical, and to think, to
Speaker 1: have moments of reflection where you think about the strategic
Speaker 1: and symbolic importance of the family you've you've created. And
Speaker 1: just for the record, I mean you passed over a
Speaker 1: really significant moment. I mean, at least two of your
Speaker 1: siblings arrive under extreme darress, literally airlifted out of Saigon
Speaker 1: in the final hours of the Vietnam War, and another
Speaker 1: comes as a refugee, and you know, your parents get
Speaker 1: a call and say, is it possible that you can
Speaker 1: make room for another than they expected? Not they wanted
Speaker 1: a baby, but this is a teenager. They get Is
Speaker 1: that correct? Yeah, that's right. I mean, in that particular case,
Speaker 1: they were they were filming an advertisement for Welcome House
Speaker 1: in city of Philadelphia, and we're having trouble presenting a
Speaker 1: kind of real emotional response on camera. They weren't actors,
Speaker 1: and they needed they needed to be prompted to feel
Speaker 1: things on screen. And so the the officer presented them
Speaker 1: with a real world case, pulled a dossier out of
Speaker 1: the drawer and said, here's the story of this young,
Speaker 1: you know, preteen girl, and would you know she's she said,
Speaker 1: a moment where she's either adopted or she stays or
Speaker 1: she is forever, and you know, would you would you
Speaker 1: be interested? And they playing the part said yes, absolutely.
Speaker 1: But then also in their minds, we're thinking, well why not,
Speaker 1: Like what, why wouldn't we adopt another child, especially one
Speaker 1: whom you know has been endorsed by Welcome House and
Speaker 1: by an invitiate group. They were really quite taken with
Speaker 1: the story and and acted as a consequence. So so
Speaker 1: we want to know did this all work out? I mean,
Speaker 1: there was so much intentionality for your parents, m and
Speaker 1: what happened. It's a complicated answer. It's a very complicated answer.
Speaker 1: But you know, the best way to start is to
Speaker 1: begin with I think what matters most, which is that
Speaker 1: I have five siblings I love, and I can't imagine
Speaker 1: my life without them, and I don't think they can
Speaker 1: imagine there's without me, or if they if they do
Speaker 1: imagine there's without me, they they don't tell me about it.
Speaker 1: And I think that's being a good sibling too, right, right,
Speaker 1: And so you know, whatever whatever happened, and however challenging
Speaker 1: it's sometimes been, I think it matters that those bonds
Speaker 1: of affection are enduring, and that we feel very keenly
Speaker 1: that we are each other's siblings, and that there is
Speaker 1: such a thing as a wee that our family exists
Speaker 1: as an idea in the world because of our parents
Speaker 1: imagination and courage. That's not to say, as you guys
Speaker 1: are both well aware because you've read the book, that
Speaker 1: things don't go sideways more than once, and that it
Speaker 1: isn't a very difficult story. You know. It concludes with
Speaker 1: one one of my brothers in jail, he's presently incarcerated
Speaker 1: in during North Carolina, And it concludes with, you know,
Speaker 1: my own sense that there are moments where I'm I'm
Speaker 1: pointedly or politically estranged from my siblings precisely because of
Speaker 1: the bounds of race, that as we leave the house
Speaker 1: and as race comes to matter more in our lives,
Speaker 1: it also comes to shape when and where we can
Speaker 1: enter each other's lives and what kinds of relationships we
Speaker 1: can have. It also concludes with you my near twin
Speaker 1: brother Bear and his assault at the hands of a
Speaker 1: group of white supremacists in North Carolina, and his close
Speaker 1: brush with death and his attempt to save our youngest
Speaker 1: brother from his own bad choices. Yeah, just even to
Speaker 1: remind everyone who's here in this, like when you say
Speaker 1: you're near twin brother Bear, Bear, who presents as black,
Speaker 1: and he's black and Vietnamese, but in America he presents
Speaker 1: as black, and so he's attacked precisely because he is black. Yeah.
Speaker 1: He's forty five days older than me, And when we
Speaker 1: were younger, we were roughly the same size and shape
Speaker 1: and wore the same clothes, often in different colors. We
Speaker 1: got matched Christmas presence for years. I like to say
Speaker 1: that that Bear was the more talented, more charming, more athletic,
Speaker 1: and more intelligent of us, and certainly are our grades
Speaker 1: and personal histories reflect that. So. Um. But but you know,
Speaker 1: we uh, we have as we have been apart over
Speaker 1: the last couple of decades. Bear's life, you know, living
Speaker 1: in the South is very different than mine. And uh.
Speaker 1: And it was in the midst of writing the book
Speaker 1: that and after our family reunion that Bear was assaulted
Speaker 1: while driving to work in the morning. They followed him
Speaker 1: into the parking lot of his job and tried to
Speaker 1: beat him to death with a baseball bat. Damn, Matt,
Speaker 1: I mean that that is so fucked up, even in
Speaker 1: the way in the book you describe Bear trying to
Speaker 1: downplay it to you guys, it's just so it's so devastating. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I actually remember you telling me that, Matt. Um. I
Speaker 1: want to to talk just one moment further about the
Speaker 1: idea of your family as a symbol of what's possible
Speaker 1: in the future of a country coming out of the
Speaker 1: Civil Rights era. I mean, this is a family that's
Speaker 1: being as symboled a word you use a lot in
Speaker 1: the nineteen seventies. In the nineteen eighties, a time when
Speaker 1: there's a Cold War, the Reagan era is pushing back
Speaker 1: against the gains of the Civil rights movement and this
Speaker 1: idea of color blindness and proximity and integration. We are children,
Speaker 1: all three of us, of the MTV generation, where the
Speaker 1: idea that simply sharing social and cultural space together would
Speaker 1: solve the world's problems, and that there wouldn't be such
Speaker 1: a thing as structural racism any longer. And as your
Speaker 1: book and story unfolds, you gradually tell the reader that
Speaker 1: your parents idealism was not enough, that you couldn't defeat
Speaker 1: structural racism, as you say, with good intentions and heartfelt correspondence.
Speaker 1: And I think that's a really powerful message for someone
Speaker 1: who both lived this experience but also who has dedicated
Speaker 1: their career to writing about it. Did Did I get
Speaker 1: that right? I mean you you basically say that that
Speaker 1: all of these good intentions, even even and embodied in
Speaker 1: the closest of relationships that I have experienced, can't solve
Speaker 1: for this big issue. Yeah, I think you know. It's
Speaker 1: one thing to say that you you've created a family
Speaker 1: and that they love each other and they're committed to
Speaker 1: each other. But it's another thing to say that you've
Speaker 1: created a family as a symbol and it's meant to
Speaker 1: win the war of hearts and minds. And I don't
Speaker 1: I don't know that our family was able to do that,
Speaker 1: and to a certain extent, it wasn't able to hold
Speaker 1: up under the real extraordinary burdens of that moment, you know,
Speaker 1: as you as you all have described on your show
Speaker 1: and elsewhere, that decade, the nineteen eighties into the nineteen
Speaker 1: nineties was a critically dystopian one in terms of race relations.
Speaker 1: Not that there have been very many utopic ones, but
Speaker 1: the the eighties in particular, or a moment where everything
Speaker 1: goes sideways, and in this particular family, in our lives together,
Speaker 1: you know, it came to be that that white pick
Speaker 1: and fence wasn't enough, and stuff starts to seep in,
Speaker 1: and and we also go out into the world and
Speaker 1: start to have our own very individuated experiences with race.
Speaker 1: You know, I as as you know Khalil, I basically
Speaker 1: wandered around New Jersey like a like a drunk rascal,
Speaker 1: begging to be arrested and couldn't do it. Right. We
Speaker 1: had a beer can as a hood ornament, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's right. I tried. I tried so daring the New
Speaker 1: Jersey State State Police to uh to make something of it,
Speaker 1: and they wouldn't. They wouldn't. But but you know, for
Speaker 1: for Bear and for Eddie in particular, I think every
Speaker 1: every misstep, every every moment at which they might have
Speaker 1: been seen by the police, was a moment at which
Speaker 1: they were in fact seen by the police and by
Speaker 1: many others, many other elements of the state. Yeah, Matt
Speaker 1: and Khalil, we're going to take a break and we're
Speaker 1: gonna come back and talk more about your whiteness. Matt awesome.
Speaker 1: All right, back with Matt Guturall. He's got this new memoir,
Speaker 1: skin Folk Man. I want to talk more about you
Speaker 1: in your memoir and how you wrote yourself into it.
Speaker 1: You're so smart about these issues. You're so careful in
Speaker 1: thinking about even how you can't speak for somebody else,
Speaker 1: how you can't speak for your siblings. So much of
Speaker 1: the book then becomes about your sense of how you're
Speaker 1: experiencing this because you've put these natural limitations on not
Speaker 1: talking into somebody else's perspective. And you do this really
Speaker 1: artfully in many ways in the book, where you bring
Speaker 1: in lots of artifacts, photographs and other things. Sometimes you
Speaker 1: write in second person. You want the reader to imagine
Speaker 1: being in that space. But but you don't imagine yourself
Speaker 1: into Bug and Eddie space. You do some interviews with Bear,
Speaker 1: your other brother with Anna two at times, and his
Speaker 1: mom and Mark and Mark and your mom and your
Speaker 1: father has passed away. So much of the book, or
Speaker 1: a lot of the book, is also you wrestling with
Speaker 1: what it means to be a white guy, to be white,
Speaker 1: even amid this family, and maybe especially amid this family.
Speaker 1: And you write about the ways that you're implicated in
Speaker 1: Americans racism, and I would say in especially anti blackness.
Speaker 1: And there's a story that I'd like you to tell
Speaker 1: if you can, from the book. You get in a
Speaker 1: fight in high school and then Bear sticks up for
Speaker 1: you and sort of it brings a lot of racial
Speaker 1: issues to the surface. Can you tell that story? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I mean, I think one of the one of the
Speaker 1: challenges for me growing up was that I had two
Speaker 1: black brothers, and one of them was a kind of ideal.
Speaker 1: He was an all state linebacker, straight as student, you know,
Speaker 1: very charming and garrulous person. Is Bear. That's Bear. And
Speaker 1: then Eddie, my younger sibling, was was more more challenging
Speaker 1: in some ways. So my physically smaller physically smaller and
Speaker 1: also got in trouble a little bit more and had
Speaker 1: a more difficult upbringing as difficult as Bears was being
Speaker 1: from from Saigon at that moment, I think Eddie's background
Speaker 1: was even more difficult and different, very different and powerfully
Speaker 1: different ways. And also somehow they're wired differently. You write
Speaker 1: about Bear showing up at the house and just like
Speaker 1: I'm here, guys, and running around the house and being
Speaker 1: joyous like like here. There's just something about his affect
Speaker 1: right like his DNA. So so Bear had earlier in
Speaker 1: my life, as Bear was a kind of role model,
Speaker 1: he had failed to stick up for me on the
Speaker 1: bus because he had he commanded the respect of older siblings.
Speaker 1: And on the way home from the bus a few
Speaker 1: years prior to this story, I got I was getting
Speaker 1: roughed up in the back and older boys were doing
Speaker 1: what older boys do, and they took my shoes and
Speaker 1: threw them out of the window, but they made sure
Speaker 1: to check to see that Bear didn't mind first, and
Speaker 1: he didn't say a word. He was in his own head,
Speaker 1: doing his own thing. And when we got off the bus,
Speaker 1: I chewed him out because he had totally left me
Speaker 1: to dry it hadn't stuck up for me. So a
Speaker 1: few years a few years later, I'm older now, and
Speaker 1: I'm a teenager, and I've made some terrible decisions about friends.
Speaker 1: And we're sitting in the backyard of my parents' house.
Speaker 1: My parents are away somewhere. My mom, by the way,
Speaker 1: reading this passage, was wondering where we were and couldn't
Speaker 1: believe that we had a party. That's fine, that's what
Speaker 1: she read. Yeah, that's how she read the whole day.
Speaker 1: So we're sitting on the back porch and it comes
Speaker 1: to Bear's attention that the weekend prior this, uh, this
Speaker 1: very large Italian American kid from Big Joey Big Joey,
Speaker 1: had punched me upside the head among other friends. Big
Speaker 1: Joey was from Scotch Plains. He was like a world
Speaker 1: class wrestler, fighter, scrappy kid, and he was being used
Speaker 1: as a doorkeeper at a party and wouldn't let me in.
Speaker 1: Me and my friend's end. And so Bear, after hearing
Speaker 1: this story from us that Big Joey had punched me
Speaker 1: in the head, grabs a kind of mouth breathing dude
Speaker 1: from down the street and they get in Bear's classic
Speaker 1: two forty z Primer Greg remember that car and race
Speaker 1: down the driveway to go find Big Joey and kick
Speaker 1: his ass. And in that moment, I, of course, I'm
Speaker 1: super proud because Bear has failed to stand up for
Speaker 1: me the past, and here, here I am thinking, and
Speaker 1: now he's going to do it. He's going to go
Speaker 1: stand up for me. And it's at that moment that
Speaker 1: my my friends decide to call Bear the N word.
Speaker 1: They're like that he's going to go get him. You know,
Speaker 1: we set that N word loose and um and it
Speaker 1: was just such a and that hadn't happened before with them.
Speaker 1: It wasn't a comment they'd made about Bear. It wasn't
Speaker 1: it wasn't something that had It was probably a very
Speaker 1: predictable moment, but it wasn't one that I myself had predicted.
Speaker 1: And it just floored me that I had a that
Speaker 1: I had chosen such a terrible set of friends, but
Speaker 1: b that we had just unleashed Bear in his two
Speaker 1: forty Z to go find Big Joey and Scotch Planes
Speaker 1: and kick his ass and and the Wii and the
Speaker 1: Wii we just set him loose, meaning like you're you're
Speaker 1: on the side of those guys. Yeah, no, I I am.
Speaker 1: I am a white guy sitting there. Um. And the
Speaker 1: and the way in which the three of us were
Speaker 1: suddenly estranged from Bear. Um, you know, that's a That's
Speaker 1: another one of those very powerful moments where I felt
Speaker 1: like Bear was family. But but there was a line
Speaker 1: that that weird Chris cross of skin and kin that
Speaker 1: I haven't been able to figure out for much of
Speaker 1: my life. Fortunately, you know, as you guys know, Bear
Speaker 1: was just enjoying a country ride and really didn't have
Speaker 1: any intentions of going to Scotch Plains and taking Bear
Speaker 1: is a really smart dude there too, smart smart. It's
Speaker 1: like going to Kunarsi right to look for subcat who
Speaker 1: who has threatened your younger brother? You don't do that
Speaker 1: as a black guy going to an Italian neighborhood in
Speaker 1: the nineteen eighties. Yeah, no, he was, He had other
Speaker 1: things in mind. I think he just wanted to go
Speaker 1: for a ride. So, Matt, I'm thinking about moments in
Speaker 1: my life too. I have obviously don't have this with
Speaker 1: like a brother, and Khalil and I never experiences together
Speaker 1: where somebody like you know other you know in that way.
Speaker 1: Although not to interrupt, you. You did get you did
Speaker 1: get robbed once with some other friends. And when they
Speaker 1: took your old chain and punched you in the face
Speaker 1: and gave you a double black eye. I came over
Speaker 1: like the next afternoon. He opened the door, and you
Speaker 1: looked at me like I had done something wrong because
Speaker 1: I wasn't with you. That was that was just my
Speaker 1: standing as kicked face. I wasn't looking at you that way. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Out all all my friends stood and watch. They were like,
Speaker 1: damn got beat up? Is not me? Yeah, but Matt,
Speaker 1: I was thinking, like, so you haven't experienced too of
Speaker 1: going to college. When I went to college. You know,
Speaker 1: I grew up in a mostly black neighborhood in Chicago.
Speaker 1: I go to college it's predominantly white. I got some
Speaker 1: friends on the basketball team who are white guys. You know,
Speaker 1: I befriend them because I'm so great at basketball. They
Speaker 1: want to be my buddy. Um. They all pledge a fraternity,
Speaker 1: a white fraternity, and they're like, why don't you come?
Speaker 1: It's free beer, you could hang out. I'm like, man,
Speaker 1: I'm you know, I'm eighteen or whatever, nineteen. I'm like, great,
Speaker 1: this sounds amazing. It is free beer. I'm hanging out.
Speaker 1: You know, it's great. I go back a second time
Speaker 1: and I hear guys in the basement just like playing
Speaker 1: a game. They're like running around and shouting the N word.
Speaker 1: It's like part of a game they're playing. And like,
Speaker 1: from my own white experience, I had never nothing like
Speaker 1: that had ever come across my experience before. And I
Speaker 1: decided that moment, I'm like, well, I will never come
Speaker 1: back to a fraternity again in the history of my
Speaker 1: college experience. And I never did. That was freshman year.
Speaker 1: I like cut off this whole social avenue because I like,
Speaker 1: I was like, I can't, I can't be part of this,
Speaker 1: and I sort of probably extrapolated and thought, like any
Speaker 1: white person in an all white space might be doing this,
Speaker 1: I'm just going to avoid them. I'm really proud of you, man,
Speaker 1: as the first time I've heard that story, but that
Speaker 1: makes me really proud. I had a very similar experience myself,
Speaker 1: you know, growing up in this particular family. Even my
Speaker 1: high school, which was largely white, was kind of West
Speaker 1: Side story high school, like white Italians versus white Irish
Speaker 1: kids with a couple of African Americans and Latino's mixed in.
Speaker 1: But I went to West Virginia University, which was way
Speaker 1: too much college for me. Crazy. I mean, I'm talking
Speaker 1: about University of Rochester, you're talking about West Virginia. It
Speaker 1: was the number one party school in the country at
Speaker 1: the time, and I was such a terrible high school student,
Speaker 1: so West Virginia made a lot of sense to me.
Speaker 1: Is really one of the only options that would take
Speaker 1: me at the time. And I have to say it
Speaker 1: caught me off guard the casualness with which people use
Speaker 1: the end word, both both in the sort of dramatic
Speaker 1: way that you were describing, but then also just like
Speaker 1: in everyday speech, as if it was a descriptor, like
Speaker 1: the color blue, or to call the wet you know,
Speaker 1: call it windy outside or something like that. It's just
Speaker 1: a regular thing. And I hated it. I absolutely hated it.
Speaker 1: And my reaction was to like check out, to be
Speaker 1: not part of the culture, which also is not I'm
Speaker 1: not saying that's an ideal thing to do. I wasn't
Speaker 1: trying to change it. I wasn't trying to confront people.
Speaker 1: I just was like avoidance. I don't want to be
Speaker 1: part of that world. Well, I agree, I checked out completely.
Speaker 1: I was I left the university after the first semester.
Speaker 1: I went home and went to community college rather than
Speaker 1: to return. I won't I won't make it entirely principled.
Speaker 1: I mean I was also a way stroll and a drunkard,
Speaker 1: and you know, basically bombed out of the college. But
Speaker 1: I think a large part of it, the sense of estrangement,
Speaker 1: the sense of distance, and the sense of alienation from
Speaker 1: the culture, was that it just felt like I was
Speaker 1: in a in a black and white movie about Jim Crowland.
Speaker 1: This is this is why I love you guys so much,
Speaker 1: because I imagine that all the white guys in my
Speaker 1: life who are colleagues or like, you know, some kind
Speaker 1: of friend from back in the day, would just not
Speaker 1: admit to being in the circumstances that you guys have
Speaker 1: just described being surrounded by people using in word at
Speaker 1: one point, Matt, you describe it is like, you know,
Speaker 1: these people know the worse so well they can go
Speaker 1: bubbles out of it in their mouths. But I just
Speaker 1: love the turn of phrase. But but this is this
Speaker 1: is really important for black people in general, and it's
Speaker 1: certainly important for me because I think it explains a
Speaker 1: lot about the country. We live in just in terms
Speaker 1: of attitudes and perspectives and why our politics are so
Speaker 1: fucked up. And I don't I don't want you to.
Speaker 1: I don't want us all to sit with the idea
Speaker 1: that this is an old fashioned thing. Either like it.
Speaker 1: This continues to be true. And I don't know if
Speaker 1: it is for Ben or not. But if I'm alone
Speaker 1: in a room with a white person and that person
Speaker 1: has a grievance, I could just be sitting there eating
Speaker 1: my lunch and the grievance is going to come out,
Speaker 1: and I continue to play the play the role of
Speaker 1: the person who is in the room with the person
Speaker 1: who might not use the N word, but who will
Speaker 1: say I got passed over for a job, or that
Speaker 1: really should have come to me, or I think my
Speaker 1: work is better, or I think I'm more important. And
Speaker 1: we're talking about adult you know, male academics, Khalil, who
Speaker 1: work in our industry. This is, you know, a part
Speaker 1: of the every day that's still still very much with us.
Speaker 1: So I read something in your book, I have to
Speaker 1: say brought me to tears. And this conversation we're having
Speaker 1: about the inward amongst white people is hard enough, but
Speaker 1: this was personal and so I first of all, the
Speaker 1: fact that you had been taunted part of your life
Speaker 1: just because you had black siblings. But another part is
Speaker 1: that somehow, as you describe, people associated you with blackness,
Speaker 1: could you tell the story of how you experienced being
Speaker 1: basically described as a black person because of some physical
Speaker 1: trait of yours. Yeah, I was about twelve years old,
Speaker 1: so this was. There were a series of incidents when
Speaker 1: I was younger, including one and I talked about in
Speaker 1: the book where I was chased through a small town
Speaker 1: in New Hampshire and a group of kids who had
Speaker 1: seen our family come into town were shouting the inn
Speaker 1: word at me and cornered me behind a general store,
Speaker 1: behind a strip mall. And that was dramatic enough. But
Speaker 1: by the time I was about twelve thirteen in middle school,
Speaker 1: had acquired a nickname end Lips, using the end word
Speaker 1: at the front, and it became a kind of it
Speaker 1: became a kind of drum beat in my every day
Speaker 1: when I was you know, at a very you know,
Speaker 1: middle school is hard enough, and nobody loves middle school,
Speaker 1: so and you certainly don't want to be on display
Speaker 1: when it was generally an all white school, So you know,
Speaker 1: The only experiences with color we had as a as
Speaker 1: a collective body were my siblings and me, and that
Speaker 1: nickname really became a thing like it it it was.
Speaker 1: It was a serial problem, meaning it happened daily. You said,
Speaker 1: you just show up in spaces and people would just
Speaker 1: start calling you that. Yeah. I I shut down, I
Speaker 1: stopped talking. I didn't I didn't want to leave the classroom.
Speaker 1: I didn't want to go to the classroom. I didn't
Speaker 1: want to go to school. It was very difficult. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, I I it's just a small taste, of course,
Speaker 1: of other people's reality, but it was difficult enough. It's
Speaker 1: so I mean, so now you're an adult and an
Speaker 1: intellectual and an academic, and you can think about the
Speaker 1: complexity of this. I mean, there's a way where you
Speaker 1: wanted to be even closer to bear and and like
Speaker 1: your sense of the racial differences to eclipse them in
Speaker 1: some way. But this is also you're being racialized by
Speaker 1: the white community and sort of you know, stricken out
Speaker 1: of that community. Could could you unpack that even more
Speaker 1: for us? Yeah, I mean, I'll tell you, you know,
Speaker 1: And I tried to be very candid about this in
Speaker 1: the book, as difficult as that might have been, my
Speaker 1: instinct at the time wasn't to where this as a
Speaker 1: badge of honor or or to say that that you know,
Speaker 1: people were seeing the similarity between Bear and I and
Speaker 1: that we were we were obviously connected, but instead to
Speaker 1: run in the other direction and to just you know,
Speaker 1: look for a kind of racial clarity and um and
Speaker 1: a resolution that would make this nickname go away forever
Speaker 1: and make the taunts in the hallway stop once and
Speaker 1: for all. So I think, you know, my parents were
Speaker 1: wise counsels. We had a lot of tearful conversations about this,
Speaker 1: and it didn't ever seem to get better or to
Speaker 1: go away. And eventually I asked for a surgical correction.
Speaker 1: So I was taken for a plastic surgery consultation and
Speaker 1: then given surgery on my on my lower lip to
Speaker 1: try to make it look wider. There's no other way
Speaker 1: to really say that, um, and you know, hold myself
Speaker 1: up in my room while it healed, and hoped that
Speaker 1: it would make the problem go away. And then, of course,
Speaker 1: as these things turn out, it didn't. In the and
Speaker 1: the nickname stuck with me really all through middle school
Speaker 1: until I left for a different high school. I love it,
Speaker 1: lips man that the lips are the best, the best
Speaker 1: lips on white dude that I have ever encountered. You're awesome.
Speaker 1: I don't even know what to say to that, but listen,
Speaker 1: this is this is such an amazing story. Did you
Speaker 1: and your siblings talk about this well? And I want
Speaker 1: to just ask you that quickly, like you spend a
Speaker 1: whole summer with a bandana around your face, as your
Speaker 1: as your mouth heeled, and and so what did your
Speaker 1: siblings say about all that was going on? You know,
Speaker 1: I was way too ashamed, ashamed of that first instinct
Speaker 1: right to sort of run in the other direction, way
Speaker 1: too ashamed of that to talk to any of my
Speaker 1: siblings about this. And I'm sure my parents came up
Speaker 1: with a an anodyne explanation for why I'd had a
Speaker 1: surgery like that. And what about today? What about unpacking
Speaker 1: about it with them today? Well, I'll see what they
Speaker 1: say when they read the book. Oh my gosh, are
Speaker 1: you kidding me? You guys, your mom and dad, I'm
Speaker 1: this is for real. You guys manage to pull this
Speaker 1: off without ever saying to your siblings what you've been through.
Speaker 1: I think so I don't. I don't know, I don't
Speaker 1: know what they said. I think. So that's incredible, amazing, man,
Speaker 1: I mean, this is this is another reason why this
Speaker 1: book is so incredible, because the complexities, the absurdity. This
Speaker 1: is our show, the absurdities and the complexities and challenges
Speaker 1: of race in America. It's all on display in this
Speaker 1: incredibly intimate but also you know this public family that
Speaker 1: is variegated, as you say, racially. Um, I want to
Speaker 1: ask you something about your sister Anna, and it's something
Speaker 1: I've been thinking about from the book. So you go,
Speaker 1: your whole career in some way is dedicated to the
Speaker 1: history of race in America and in some ways studying
Speaker 1: African American history. And I can see it coming out
Speaker 1: of your dynamic with Bear in a lot of ways
Speaker 1: and thinking about you know, so much of your experiences
Speaker 1: confronting anti blackness. But there's another way where from your
Speaker 1: own family experience, you could have become a historian of
Speaker 1: either Asian history or Asian American history. Two of your siblings,
Speaker 1: are you know, two and a half of your siblings
Speaker 1: or from you don't have Asian heritage, and and you
Speaker 1: don't that's not what you study, and there are these
Speaker 1: moments in the book where Anna is like, hey, guys,
Speaker 1: what the fuck what about me? You want to know
Speaker 1: what I'm experiencing? And you know, so she's Korean and white,
Speaker 1: so she's like, I'm out in the world and like,
Speaker 1: Korean people think I'm not Korean, they make fun of me.
Speaker 1: Japanese people hate Korean people, so I get it from them.
Speaker 1: I'm not even sure what she gets from white people.
Speaker 1: But there's like these two moments in the book where
Speaker 1: it just erupts, and I wonder, like that says so
Speaker 1: much about about beyond the black white dad, which is
Speaker 1: something you call it in the book. You know, many
Speaker 1: of us don't see this third way, whether you're Latino, Asian,
Speaker 1: something else, Like you're sort of admitted from the conversation
Speaker 1: a lot of times, and your book and your family,
Speaker 1: I would say, also illustrates that. Yeah, I think that's right,
Speaker 1: you know, Anna. Anna is the moral voice of the
Speaker 1: story in several critical moments, and most particularly in that
Speaker 1: chapter towards the end of the book where you know,
Speaker 1: we've all grown too comfortable and too sloppy, using race
Speaker 1: as a kind of comedic subject in house, as if
Speaker 1: as if the family itself allows us or gifts permission
Speaker 1: to us to be cheeky with the subject. But we've
Speaker 1: also grown too far apart in a way. We've been
Speaker 1: out of the house for a while now, and and
Speaker 1: it's a moment of of of great challenge for me
Speaker 1: personally when when we're we're in a dark space commiserating
Speaker 1: about our father's passing and Anna calls me out on
Speaker 1: something I say that's anti Asian, not anti black, And
Speaker 1: at the time I'm a I'm a thirty year old man,
Speaker 1: Like I'm not a twelve year old boy any longer. Um, well,
Speaker 1: let me ask you about this, Matt, because there's like
Speaker 1: there's a moment in your life when you're like, I'm
Speaker 1: going to study the history of race in America and
Speaker 1: I'm imagining that emerges from your family. Can you talk
Speaker 1: about that and talk about why it becomes it's more
Speaker 1: centered on blackness then say on Asian nous. It's a
Speaker 1: great question, Ben, thank you, That's all I wanted, And
Speaker 1: the show we're done for the day. Guys, I mean,
Speaker 1: I don't I don't think, Um, I don't know that
Speaker 1: I would necessarily say that's true about my own work. Yeah,
Speaker 1: tell me, tell me I didn't want to. I made
Speaker 1: an assumption, you know, in the um in the earliest
Speaker 1: stuff I put together, I was much more interested in
Speaker 1: people who didn't fall inside the white black binary. So
Speaker 1: somebody like gene tumor. You know that the first book
Speaker 1: I wrote, Coloration in America, was all about gene tumor
Speaker 1: and all about tumors determination to be outside that diet. Yeah.
Speaker 1: But a black poet, well, yeah, that's not how you
Speaker 1: would discall himself like he he described himself as a
Speaker 1: sort of mixed race novelist, the first self conscious member
Speaker 1: of the American race, like he was, the comblination before
Speaker 1: Tiger would exactly. But that has to certainly come from
Speaker 1: your own sense of family. I mean, like even you
Speaker 1: describing that is is somehow the the dream and the
Speaker 1: experiment that your your family is engaged in. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: think I think you know you're onto something there. And
Speaker 1: I'll have to sit with this a little while. You know,
Speaker 1: we do live in a world where the white black
Speaker 1: dynamic dominates everything else. And I think a part of
Speaker 1: what I have really struggled with is why why, Like
Speaker 1: why that? Why? Why? That doesn't mean that I have
Speaker 1: to look away from it. I'm not, um, trying to
Speaker 1: provide an alternate narrative. I'm just trying to understand how
Speaker 1: we got to this fixation on white and black as
Speaker 1: the not just the two determining polls of the conversation
Speaker 1: about race, but but really the color scheme through which
Speaker 1: we understand it and talk about it. Yeah, yeah, you
Speaker 1: have this. Uh, it's this really powerful line near the
Speaker 1: end of the book where you say, the not so
Speaker 1: secret truth of white people is that most of us,
Speaker 1: deep inside hate people of color. Yeah, and that's just
Speaker 1: I mean, those those are strong words, but I think
Speaker 1: I have to say clear, the hardest word and that
Speaker 1: sentence to write, was the word us. Like I think, yes,
Speaker 1: I think the original draft of the book, I did
Speaker 1: not have the word us. I had you know, is
Speaker 1: they or yeah? Yeah, and uh. And you know it
Speaker 1: was only you know, revision as a as an important process.
Speaker 1: So it was only going back and reflecting on pronouns
Speaker 1: and thinking about where I am in the book that
Speaker 1: I've changed it to us because I am definitely you know,
Speaker 1: a part of that that tribe. Man. Matt, congratulations on
Speaker 1: this amazing book. It's courageous in a lot of ways,
Speaker 1: very courageous writing this, and even to hear that sort
Speaker 1: of whatever personal fallout is gonna it hasn't happened yet.
Speaker 1: You're still awaiting that, and I'm curious to hear about it. Well.
Speaker 1: Thank you both so much for having me on, thanks
Speaker 1: for your interest in the book, and thanks to your
Speaker 1: listeners for getting this far into the podcast. Hey man,
Speaker 1: I'm really proud of you. And like I said, we
Speaker 1: have a lot of drinking to do to catch up
Speaker 1: on some of these stories, so I look forward to
Speaker 1: that soon. I'll look forward to it. Love you guys,
Speaker 1: Love you too, Love you too. Some of My Best
Speaker 1: Friends Are is a production of Pushkin Industries. The show
Speaker 1: is written and hosted by me Khalil, Jibraan Mohammed and
Speaker 1: my best friend Ben Austin. This show is produced by
Speaker 1: Lucy Sullivan. It's edited by Sarah Knicks with help from
Speaker 1: Keisha Williams. Our engineer is Amanda Kawan, and our managing
Speaker 1: producer is Constanza Gayardo at Pushkin. Thanks to Leitao Mulad,
Speaker 1: Julia Barton, They're Fame, Carly Migliori, John Schnars, Gretta Cone,
Speaker 1: and Jacob Weisberg. Our theme song, Little Lily, is by
Speaker 1: fellow chicagoan the brilliant Avery R. Young, from his album Tubman.
Speaker 1: You definitely want to check out his music at his website,
Speaker 1: Avery R. Young dot com. You can find Pushkin on
Speaker 1: all social platforms at pushkin pods, and you can sign
Speaker 1: up for our newsletter at pushkin dot fm. To find
Speaker 1: more Pushkin podcasts, listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you like to listen. And if you like
Speaker 1: our show, please give us a five star rating and
Speaker 1: a review and listen. Even if you don't like it,
Speaker 1: give it a five star rating and a review, and
Speaker 1: please tell all of your best friends about it. Thank you.
Speaker 1: I was thinking how awesome it would have been if
Speaker 1: when Matt said he hadn't told the siblings yet about
Speaker 1: all that stuff and when they were kids. Yes, if
Speaker 1: we could have been like, all right, Matt, we brought
Speaker 1: them on the show. Here. They are some of my
Speaker 1: best friends. As Oprah, I love it