June 13, 2023 • 43 mins
So excited to have author and co-host of NPR’s Pop Culture Happy Hour podcast, Aisha Harris in the #HERwithAmenaBrown living room this week talking about her NEW BOOK, Wannabe: Reckonings with the Pop Culture That Shapes Me. Her book Wannabe is out TODAY! Grab a copy of Wannabe from your favorite indie bookseller and listen in as we chat about snacks, TV, how to know when you’ve hit Auntie status and more of HER faves.
To stay connected to Aisha’s work and to get your copy of Wannabe visit www.aishaharris.com.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:32):
Everybody.
Speaker 2 (00:33):
Ooh, y'all, welcome back to a new episode of Her
with Amina Brown. I hope you are in some ways
getting into a little bit of a summer vibe as
you are listening to this episode, because we are here
in the living room with a guest, and I am
so excited to welcome writer, journalist, culture and arts critic,
co host of the hit NPR podcast pop Culture Happy Hour,
(00:57):
and author of Wanna Be Reckonings with the Pop Culture
That Shapes Me.
Speaker 1 (01:01):
Welcome, Aisha Harris.
Speaker 3 (01:04):
Hi Amla. Thanks so much for having me.
Speaker 2 (01:07):
I'm here clapping for us because in my mind, Aisha,
even though as you know, when we were podcasting, we
were recording for an audience of zero, you know, that's
present with us while we record, So I am always
imagining there are at least like thirty people here with
me live, even though it's just us here. So I
had to clap for myself and the other twenty nine
(01:30):
of us that are here live.
Speaker 3 (01:33):
I appreciate it. I love it. Get that energy, gut
that's it.
Speaker 1 (01:36):
That's it.
Speaker 2 (01:37):
So glad to have you on the podcast. So many
things I want to dig into. Well, I want to
start with something that's very important, which is next. So
a part of the premise of her with Amina Brown
living room comes from this idea that when my girlfriends
come over, especially if they're very close to me, sometimes
the conversation gets to a point where it's like, this
is not for a coffee shop, this is not for
(01:57):
a restaurant, Like we need to really be in each
other's house so we can fully talk our things. And
sometimes depending on one's busyness or one's financial availabilities, there's
like sort of an ad hoc snack situation. You know,
there's like a girl, I got three and a half
bell peppers I'm about to bring open air, and I'm like,
(02:18):
I got three fourths of this hummus that I started
a little bit, and we just bring our little snacks together.
So I want to know, when you get together with
your friends, when you're in this living room situation, what
is your snack that you would see yourself bringing to
the living room.
Speaker 3 (02:37):
I'm going to sound a bit like an alcoholic, but
probably the alcohol I was nice. I have an abundance
of alcoholic in my apartment right now. My partner subscribes
to a monthly wine club, and he kept forgetting to
put it on pods because we don't drink that much wine,
Like these are cases of wine, and I'm just like,
(02:59):
where are we gonna put this? We live in a townhouse,
we don't have a wine cellar or anything. It makes
for a very good party favor, Like if you, I'm
now in my thirties, so dinner parties and all that
are the things that are my friends and I are doing.
And so instead of having to be like, oh what
should I bring, I'm just like, grab a bottle of wine.
I don't even know if it's good, but that's what
(03:20):
we're bringing. So wine usually or some sort of beer
cocktail mix.
Speaker 2 (03:25):
I feel that this is a correct choice. This feels
like the right thing to do. I mean my first,
like what I felt was my first grown birthday gift.
I think I was like twenty four to twenty five
and this man bought me like a bottle of wine
for my birthday and I was like an adult, I'm
like officially grown. Now was it a bottle of yellowtail?
Speaker 1 (03:47):
Sure?
Speaker 2 (03:48):
Does that matter at this moment? No, it was that
bottle that really matter. I feel like you just in
most situations you gon win. It feels very sophisticated.
Speaker 3 (03:56):
Bringing a bottle of wine Yellowtaiale in your twenties is
totally totally fine, but you know, even in your thirties,
just do what you gotta do. If you like it,
you like it. That's how I feel.
Speaker 2 (04:07):
I feel if you like it enough to drink it,
you'll do that. If not, it goes great in a
spaghetti sauce. It's like, there's always going to be a
use somewhere for that bottle of wine. So I give
a shout out to that. I also want to know
do you have a favorite writing snack When you were
writing your book or generally when you're writing, do you
have a snack or some set of snacks that you're like,
(04:29):
this is what I have to have for my writing process.
Speaker 3 (04:32):
No, actually, I'm not really a snacker, or at least
not in that way. I tend to snack when I'm
watching something or reading, but actually, just like what I'm writing,
snack is just one more thing, Like trying to eat
while writing is just one more thing that's going to
distract me. And I'm already a very huge procrastinator, so
(04:54):
adding and trying to actually feed myself at the same time,
it just doesn't work, so I usually have tea with
me or some sort of beverage of some sort. You know,
I'm not gonna lie. I will sometimes also have got
some wine or something. It's get the brain a little
lubricated and loose and not all hung up in my
thoughts as I can be when I'm completely sober. But yeah,
(05:14):
I'm not really a snacker while working. Yeah, I can't
say that I am.
Speaker 2 (05:20):
I feel you on the use of snacks as procrastination
because I like to ask other writers this, because that's
definitely a thing for me of like, oh man, I
sat down to write, but I feel like I probably
need some brownies. I probably need to bake those brownies
from scratch. I probably need to bake two batches so
I can give some just anything to not sit there.
Speaker 3 (05:42):
Yes, you know how I know that it's gotten really bad.
It's when I decide, oh, I think I'm just like
clean right now instead of right.
Speaker 2 (05:49):
Yeah, because I'm like, in what other world would I
worry about a base board?
Speaker 1 (05:52):
Never?
Speaker 2 (05:53):
Never, I don't care except when I stare at the
cursor and I'm like, you know, anything's better than this.
Speaker 3 (06:02):
Let me get to that grount in let's see what
the tile's doing.
Speaker 2 (06:07):
Anything but right, please please, okay. I will also want
to ask you, when you were approaching what is now
want to Be? How did the idea of the book
arrive to you? And I'm always curious about this when
I'm talking to other authors, because for those of us
and this was me once and is many you know,
future book authors where they are sort of on the
(06:29):
other side of that, like I've always dreamed to write
a book, or I hear a lot of people telling
me to write a book, but not always knowing like
what is the actual process?
Speaker 1 (06:38):
So how did want to be as an idea arrived
to you?
Speaker 3 (06:43):
Yeah? I was kind of in a similar boat where
for a few years I had editors and agents approaching me,
is like he should write a book. You know, they'd
seen my work and slay to the New York Times,
which is where I was previously, and I, you know,
I met with some agens and I talked about that,
and I know I ever really came upon the right idea.
(07:03):
It took me a while. At first. I thought, Oh,
is there some movie that has been ignored or something
where I can kind of like bring it to the
surface in a new way and heavy interview style sort
of history digging. One of my favorite authors and one
of my favorite books that I've been I don't read
too many books more than once, but one that I
(07:23):
have read many, many, several times is Mark Harris's Pictures
Out of Revolution. First of all, no relation to him,
but I do respect him, and that book is basically
a history of the nineteen sixty seven sixty eight Academy Awards,
and it covers the five Best Picture nominees, and he
(07:44):
does this great job of sort of putting together this
a thesis around how this was sort of where Hollywood
was dividing in between the old and the like the
classic Hollywood, the studio style Hollywood, and the new Hollywood,
which was you know, the Scorsese years and those sorts
of things. And it's really really fascinating. It's deeply reporting,
deeply researched, and at first I thought, oh, I want
(08:06):
to do something similar to that, but I kind of
find the right subject, and who knows, maybe somewhere down
the line the right subject will come along where it's
a little bit more nerdier, not like not that my
book isn't nerdy. It's very nerdy, but nerdy in a
different way. And so ultimately, just before the pandemic, I
had another editor reach out to me, Daniella, who is great,
(08:30):
and you know, she said, you know, have you thought
about writing a book. I'm like, yes, I have, but
I haven't stumbled upon the right thing. And she put
me in touch with an agent, and my agent, Aaliyah,
also wonderful, really kind of helped me sort of figure out, Okay,
here here are things you could do, and like, what
is one thing that like, what kind of themes or
what kind of format do you keep coming back to
(08:52):
when you think about yourself writing a book? And I
said to myself, you know, well, like so much of
my work is about writing an essay form, critical essays, reviews,
that sort of thing. Maybe I should just do that.
And I decided I wanted to sort of talk about
make it personal, deeply personal, but also critical and kind
(09:13):
of assessing how pop culture has had such a huge
influence on me. Yes, it is what I do in
my my you know, professional life, but it's also very
much just always been a part of my life since
I was out, like came out of the womb. So
and I wanted to make something that people, especially millennials
(09:35):
who are my age, you know, and who grew up
in the eighties and the nineties, they can relate to.
But I think also there are plenty of themes within
this story that so many people can kind of understand
and relate to, regardless of their background, you know. And
when I say talk about sort of the fatigue of
the franchise, vacation of everything, and how I would and
(09:55):
how everything needs a spin off, and how everything needs
a gritty reboot or a prequel, and I think that
for me, it's important to sort of acknowledge that even
if you are not like me, and you're not you know,
a pop culture reporter, an arts reporter or whatever, we
are all affected by it. And I was hoping that
(10:16):
people would get a sense of how we can maybe
change a relationship to how these things affect us, or
just think about how these things make us respond to
ourselves and also to each other, especially on social media.
It's just like it's really interesting to think about how
we are in this weird moment where there's like more
(10:38):
more things to uh consume than ever before. Things are
at our fingerchips, movies, TV shows, you can find pretty
much the most niche uh, you know, interests or fetishes
or whatever you can find some version of it somewhere,
and how does that affect us, and how does that
make us sometimes go a little like do things that
(11:02):
we maybe should like do or say things that we
maybe shouldn't, or how does that make us feel bad
about ourselves or you know those sorts of things. So
it really kind of evolved out of my desire to both,
you know, share a little bit more of myself and
my upbringing and where I've come from, but also, you know,
look at where we are now on a larger scale
(11:24):
in terms of the culture and how we talk about
these things.
Speaker 2 (11:28):
I really loved that you chose pop culture as the
lens for your book. I thought that was so it
just like it made it really interesting to me because
it kind of felt like I felt like it had
these like concentric circles almost that at the center is
your life, your story, your experiences, and then in part
the pop culture that you experienced and how that shaped you.
(11:49):
And then even this wider lens of and even if
you're not me, you know, here are the other ways
these things affected many of us. Right, So I loved
just getting to get that lens inside of a book
this way. That was such a great that's such a
great lens that you chose. I also really identified with
the chapter about your name. I too have a name
(12:09):
that comes from very interesting origin and is also considered
to be a Muslim name because of the language that
it well, it's in many languages because it's derivative of Amen.
But I go go all sorts of places, and people
have various feelings. They have various different feelings right with that,
And You're like, it's just my name. I'm just growing
(12:30):
up as a person. But now I'm here trying to
get some copies made, and apparently the employee there is like,
that's a Muslim name, and I'm like, yes, okay, mm hmmm,
all right, sure you know they're like, that's the way
we say amen in my country.
Speaker 1 (12:43):
Yes, okay.
Speaker 2 (12:45):
So I really identified with just the beauty of the
Stevie Wonder story that you told, of the actual origin
of how you became Ayisha, and the ever present song
and pop culture phenomena of another bad creation. Also yes
singing this like, could you give us some thoughts about
(13:08):
what was it like to write that. I thought it
was a wonderful introduction to you in the book, like
talk to us more about that.
Speaker 3 (13:16):
Yeah, that was the very first essay that I wrote,
and it was the one I actually included in my
proposal to my editor to land the deal, and it was,
to be honest, it was one of those things where
I thought about, you know, what my name has meant
and how people have you know, reacted to it over
(13:39):
the years, And now even now I'm still dealing with
it in the sense that I've realized that I don't know,
this is just a hunch I have, but uber and
lyft when I'm trying to get them, a lot of
times they will cancel on me, and I wonder if
it's because of my name. I stopped putting in my faet,
like I have a photo of my dog not there,
but like now it's I'm wondering if my name is
(14:00):
also a concern. And then you know, the ones who
usually do pick me up tend to be Muslim or
people who have Arabic names that sound like mine. So anyway,
so I'm still in this weird push and pull with
that sort of thing. But it's I still love my name,
but basically what the chapter is about, is that I
(14:21):
had sort of these two songs that were connected to
my name, one in a way that I liked, and
that Stevie wonders, Isn't She Lovely? And in that song
this is of course on Songs of the Key of Life,
and he wrote it for his daughter, whose name is Aisha.
And I feel like a lot of people don't like
it's not one of his most famous songs, but it
(14:42):
is on one of his most famous albums. And I
think people know the song, but if you're not listening
to the lyrics closely, the lyrics where he mentions her
name could just glide run over you like no one's
really thinking. Oh left the song where he calls her Ayisha.
And then I came of age at a time when
another bad creation who were what I like to call
(15:03):
the New Edition Babies. They were kind of a spin
off of New Edition and they were they ranged in
age from like eight to twelve years old. There were
five or six of them, and they were kind of
a boy group who had a hit song as a
top ten hit Billboard hit in nineteen ninety one or
ninety two, I can't remember, and it's called Ayisha, and
(15:26):
I it's so anyone who's my age or a little
bit older, it still happens to me to this day
where they might like if I meet them for the
first time, they'll be like, have you heard this song?
Like I know which song your talk? Actually sometimes it's
that song and in other times it's like a French song.
It's kind of I think a Middle Eastern performer and
(15:49):
it's called Ayisha, and it's just kind of like Aisha Aisha.
It's either that song or that song. I didn't want
that part in the book, but like there are other
songs no one thinks of this Stevie wonder one, but yeah,
I kind of went on a journey with how I
reconciled the two of like Ayisha being another back creation
(16:09):
being a I don't know it. It's not the most
embarrassing song, Like it's not like I'm named Broxanne and
then like I have that song hanging over my head.
But Ayisha was also one of those things where it's
just like, ah, I wish people knew that there were
other songs that have my name in it. So it
was kind of a journey, And where that journey leads
(16:31):
me is to sort of realizing how so much in
my resistance to another back creation was built in you know,
anti like just like self hatred to some point, or
just not feeling comfortable about being a black person, especially
a black person who grew up going to school with
mostly white kids, and then having a deal with everything
(16:51):
that comes with that and what your name signifies, and
how I felt as though, like, oh, my name is
kind of quote unquote get it's not a term that
I use anymore, but back in the nineties, in the
early two thousands, that was everywhere, especially among white suburban kids.
So it's it was for me. It was it felt
(17:12):
like a great sort of introduction to sort of where
I was going with this piece, which is shining a
light on sort of this, I think something that every
like a lot of people have had experiences with with,
which is just the name that you're born with and
not feeling comfortable with it, and then sort of the
myths that we tell ourselves, the cultural myths that we
(17:32):
tell ourselves more broadly. So yeah, that was it was.
It was quite interesting to go on that journey. I
you know, my dad, who is featured heavily in this
first essay, helped me out a bit with some of
my memory of things, but he appreciated it.
Speaker 1 (17:54):
I think, yeah, yeah, no, I love that.
Speaker 2 (17:57):
I really identified with that section the books so much,
not even now that I think about it as much
related to my name, but my face. By the time
I got to be in my twenties, I would always
at that time be confused with cousin Pam or people
would walk up all the time and be like, you know.
Speaker 1 (18:16):
Who you look like? You look like.
Speaker 2 (18:19):
It was either it depends on their age, if they
would say cousin Pam from The Cosby Show or if
they would say Maxine from Living Single. And I went
through like a long period of my twenties that I
was just like, I.
Speaker 1 (18:31):
Myself am not that scene. I am not don Ama.
Speaker 2 (18:35):
And then I would like get annoyed, like how many
Uber and Lyft cars I would get in, and it
would be the.
Speaker 1 (18:41):
You know who you look like?
Speaker 2 (18:43):
I'm true, you remember that show and I know where
it's going, but I'm like, I'm not going to help you.
Speaker 1 (18:49):
I'm not going to help you. Think of this.
Speaker 2 (18:50):
I feel like I had to just have like a
little come together meeting with myself and be like, okay,
first of all, being accused of looking like Erica Alexander. Girl,
that's that's actually could be a great viot for you, Yes.
Speaker 3 (19:03):
The great and good Erica Alexander. Like, yes, it's not
a bad vit for you.
Speaker 1 (19:07):
But I don't know why.
Speaker 2 (19:08):
It just just really got under my skin. I don't
know if it felt this like sense of like you
feel like now you can't just be who you are,
because now that has to be the introduction conversation, you know,
like I just took me so long of just finally
being like, okay, girl, if you look like well, of
course now they would say you look like Erica Alexander.
(19:29):
They wouldn't say because of or Maxine either.
Speaker 3 (19:33):
Well can I when I can, I ask you? Were
these mostly black people?
Speaker 2 (19:36):
Yes?
Speaker 1 (19:36):
They were mostly black people.
Speaker 3 (19:37):
Yeah, because I don't know how many not black people
were familiar. Well they might have been familiar with the
Cosby Show, but probably maybe not living single. But I
can understand that frustration because for me, when people were
coming at me and like singing another bad creation at me,
it was a mixture of like I had, you know,
(19:58):
a forty plus year old agent du he knew this song?
Like it's like I guess because it was a top
ten hit in the nineties, and I think it's you know,
especially in that era, white kids and white people were
getting into hip hop more. But you know, it's it's
tough because it does feel like people are telling trying,
(20:18):
like unintentionally telling you your identity and when really you're
just like I just I just want to be me.
(20:43):
That's the other thing is that what I hope to
sort of lay out in the book is that so
much of how we relate to each other is through
pop culture. Like it's sports and it's pop culture. Those
are the things where you can reasonably be able to
carry on a complete conversation with a stranger at a
bar about like, you know, and not know anything else
(21:04):
about them, but like, oh, I overheard you're talking about succession,
blah blah blah. You know, like I think that they're
just trying to relate to you in some way, and
even if it's annoying, right, it's like, you know, that's
it's human nature to some extent.
Speaker 2 (21:20):
Right, right, Okay, I want to ask another Favorites question here,
and this is about in a way, it's about what
will become throwback concerts. And this came up because a
friend and I were out a concert recently. We were
kind of looking around and being like, Okay, I mean,
I feel like the definition of auntie is a thing
I would like other people to discuss with me sometimes
(21:40):
of like, I didn't think I was going to be
an auntie at this age. That feels like it's coming
down for us younger and younger, all those things. But
we were like, what will it be? Like, what will
our throwback concert be when we're in our sixties? My
friend asked me this, And I remember my last college
homecoming watching the women who graduated college in like the
(22:02):
seventies and eighties.
Speaker 1 (22:04):
It was brick House for them, Like.
Speaker 2 (22:06):
When brick House came on, they were like, yeah, it's
all the shake it everything. And I remember my friends
and I in that moment looking at each other and going,
is that going to be juvenile for us?
Speaker 1 (22:15):
Like? Is that us? In ours?
Speaker 3 (22:17):
That's already happening?
Speaker 1 (22:18):
Is that us now?
Speaker 2 (22:20):
We're going to be for the nine to nine and
the two thousand? So when you think of yourself, like
in true Anti Season Aisha, what are what are the
songs or artists do you imagine yourself still shaking it
to or what's the concert you could see yourself going
to at that point?
Speaker 3 (22:41):
Okay, So I feel like the way that nostalgia happens
happens even faster these days. So I think we're already
in that era for by concerts. I mean, what is
Usher's Lovers and Friends Door but a complete throwback right
to my era, Like Count is a decade older than me,
but that sort of he crosses multiple generations at this point.
(23:03):
And you know, when Confessions was out, I was a
junior or senior in high school. So I think it's
already happening. I've also there's this, uh, this party that
I loved going to back when I lived on the
East Coast. It was like a it happened pretty often,
like a few times a year, and they they've toured
(23:24):
around the country and it's called Grits and Biscuits and
it's like all just Southern hip hop. It's turned into
a heat. It started like over a decade ago and
then it turned into this huge thing. But one show
I went to, they had Juvenile show up, and he
did back that back that ass up thing up. I
don't know if I can curse them here, yes all
the time, Yes, and uh, it was. It was magical,
(23:46):
So I that that is what I've been shaking stills.
I still love going to this thing. I'm also I'm
seeing Janet again this summer, which I'm very excited for
now granted like her Heyday well because again she's also covered.
I mean, the first time I saw her was the
offer you tour with my mom, which I shout out
to my mom for taking thirteen year old me to
(24:08):
see all for you. You know, may may or may
not have been that appropriate to see, but it's fine. Yeah,
I so that would be my answer probably any kind
of southern hip hop, you know, if Brittany and Christina
were to tour together, which like I doubt will ever happen,
(24:29):
and I want Brittany to just be healthy and happy. Right,
doesn't sound like she wants a tour, but that would
be another one where I'd be like, yeah, I'm going.
Speaker 1 (24:37):
To be there, like yes, So I like these choices.
Speaker 2 (24:41):
I told my friend, I said, I feel we might
be fifteen to twenty years away from this Destiny's Child
Reunion tour like that, like them either them in their
sixties or me in my sixties. That's my rolling stones.
I feel I feel like the pigs come. I don't
care how old I am. I'm be like we getting
(25:02):
the tickets right now. I'm gonna go there and lose
my breath and everything else.
Speaker 3 (25:06):
I'm I'm just waiting. I want that to happen so badly.
I saw The only time I saw Destiny Child was
when they opened for TLC on their fan mail tour,
and this was literally like two months before they did
the whole lineup change. So it was the original Destiny
Child whoa yes yep like writings on the Wall had
(25:33):
just come out like a few weeks earlier. And then
of course everything changed very quickly.
Speaker 1 (25:38):
So so many things change.
Speaker 3 (25:41):
Yeah, but I would love to see the the legendary lineup,
the you know, the most lasting lineup in concert.
Speaker 1 (25:48):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (25:48):
I will pay. I will pay good money. I will
pay good money for that. Okay, I want to talk TV.
I want to know when you think about your young self,
could your young self have imagined that watching television would
actually be a part of your job?
Speaker 1 (26:03):
Ayisha, I think.
Speaker 3 (26:05):
About this very often. How I'm just like all those
hours I spent in front of the TV as a
kid who paid off. It's like like I and I
know I would not have imagined it. I don't think
I would have imagined it, even like fifteen twenty years
ago when I was in college. Well I'm not bat old,
(26:26):
but like when I was in college, like, I don't
think I would have imagined that. I thought I was
going to be a like a Broadway performer, or like
at least like doing regional theater somewhere. And I did
do that for a very very hot second after I graduated.
I do have a degree in theater. But it's so
(26:47):
weird to me to think about how I've been able
to parlay this into a career, and I consider myself
very lucky to be able to do so, and right aback,
movies and all these things like these are the things
that I love to do, and I realized that a
lot of people, especially in journalism, are not able to
(27:10):
do that, or at least not do it to the
extent that I am. And you know, media is crumbling
before our eyes. So who knows what my future holds.
But for now I'm feeling feeling good and thankful, and
I just want our profession to get even to be better,
like just even like following these writers' strikes, it's very
(27:34):
disheartening and frustrating to see that people who make the
things that we love can't get paid what they're worth. Right, So, yeah,
you know, I definitely I didn't pursue theater in part
because I didn't want to be a starving artist. Granted,
being in media is not It's not like I'm rolling
(27:55):
in dough and I'm still paying off my student loans
and probably will be until I'm fifty years aig, until
Biden finally does the right thing and just so lets
us all, you know, right right, Yeah, yeah, but yes,
very lucky, very thankful.
Speaker 2 (28:10):
I really loved about your book, just getting to getting
to read you and know more about you as a person,
but getting to read you even deeper as a journalist,
writer as a critic, and even getting to read you
writing about why why critics are important to what we're doing,
and some of the sticky conversations that you know people
(28:35):
in your profession end up in. I just I really
appreciated getting to hear some of that lens from you.
I had a mentor once when I in my other life,
when I was writing more music journalism, and he would say,
study the culture. He would say, if there's a thing
I would tell you, study, study that, And I think
in reading this book it was so wonderful to read
(28:55):
someone very studied on pop culture, on what you like
and what you enjoyed, but also on the greater ramifications
of the TV we're watching, of the films we like
or don't like, of the film and TV we feel
we should like even if we don't like it. So
I want to ask you a couple of TV things.
(29:16):
I want to know, do you have a favorite TV
guilty pleasure or not so guilty pleasure?
Speaker 3 (29:25):
Well, so we've actually done an episode on Popcornsure Happy
Hour about this before. But I love court TV shows. Okay,
So Judge g D even though I recognize that she's
very problematic, you know, for various reasons, including just being
very pro police sometimes where it doesn't necessarily warrant that
(29:46):
at least from my outside perspective, and also judging Leon
on People's Court. I love that show. I in my
earlier years, I definitely dabbled any other court shows like
Judge Math and those sort of things. But yeah, I
prefer my my my Judy and my my Judge Leon.
Uh So, yeah, it's it's definitely a guilty pleasure of mine.
(30:11):
It's just I don't I don't know too many people
my age who watched the thing is is like I
started watching Judge Judy when I was a kid because
my nana, my my great grandmother, who you call nana,
Like when she would come over and stay with us,
like during the day, Uh, she would have Judge Judy on.
And so I got into Judge Judy and and and
(30:31):
now she's I gotta say, she's the one who more
or less introduced it to me, and I love her.
She's no longer with us, but uh yeah, that was
something she imparted me that, And like she always had Murder,
she wrote.
Speaker 1 (30:45):
In uh, matt Lock on the background.
Speaker 3 (30:47):
And I just started watching Murder, she wrote, like in
earnest because I knew like it was in the in
the you know, in the ether. But I am now
watching it on whatever stream. I think it's on Peacock.
So I'm going through it now, and I'm like, oh
my god, I love this.
Speaker 1 (31:02):
And I know I can.
Speaker 3 (31:03):
Understand one of my nana loved it too, because it's
just it's got a formula. You get in, you get out.
You've got all these old classic Hollywood actors who are
now in their their later years and they just pop
up and like, oh look there's that you know, Hollywood
performer from whatever movie that I've seen. Yeah, So, anyway
to answer your question again, Judge g D judge melead
(31:26):
go to the pleasure.
Speaker 2 (31:28):
I respect this as a choice. I want to thank
you for bringing a murder. She wrote into the chat.
My my grandmother's show back in the day was the
People's Court with Judge Wapner. And actually it had a
really banging theme song, like I still remember the butt
ump bump Like it had a very theme song. Hmmm
that theme song, Yes, yes, that themes long did something.
(31:49):
He's the percussion. I was like, y'all really put some
letyers into this.
Speaker 1 (31:53):
Like I like that.
Speaker 2 (31:54):
I also appreciated you even bringing a murder, she wrote
into your book when you were talking about you had
a chapter on I'm sure i'm gonna I'm not gonna
say the name of the chapter correctly, but you had
a chapter on just the expectations of procreation on women,
and you talked about this character in murder, she wrote,
(32:15):
and how we're just watching her live her fancy free
life until somebody gets murdered, and now she got to
like stop her wonderful, you know, child free life and
get over here and try to figure out who murdered
this person. I just like appreciated those little Eastern eggs
throughout the book.
Speaker 3 (32:33):
Yes, Jessica Plencher was one of our few representations of
especially an older woman who did not have kids and
seemed to be really happy about it, you know, or
just no hang ups about it. She had plenty of
nieces and nephews who would always come on the show
and then like sometimes they would be somehow involved with
(32:54):
a murder or whatever. But like, you know, she was
literally an auntie. She was just like, I don't have kids,
I'm living my life. I'm sure the show has been
made so many times. I often wonder at what point
did she start going places and just wonder, okay, so
who's going to get murdered at this new place that
I'm visited?
Speaker 2 (33:13):
Everywhere she went, she on vacation, she going shop with somebody,
it's murdered. Yes, Now that you have taken this book
idea from conception to now, at the listening of this
your book will be out. What has been your favorite
thing about working on this book that you can think of.
Speaker 3 (33:36):
Oh, I'm such a tortured writer. I find it so
tedious and stressful and anxious. I do think being done
with it is probably my favorite part. But that's the
thing is, like I don't this is it's not just
(33:58):
unique to this book. Although this is by far the
greatest undertaken on this single project that I've had to do,
and it's taken me the longest time. This is like
two ish years out of my life, and some of
that was during the pandemic. So like add on all
those stressors of what was happening at the very beginning
of the pandemic, it was it was a lot. But
(34:19):
I'm just generally speaking, even if I only have to
write like an eight hundred word review, it stresses me
out to no end. So but what why I keep
doing it and why I keep coming back to it
is because I like the feeling of accomplishment once it's done,
and I like the I enjoy. I actually like the
(34:40):
editing process as well. I like being able to work
with an editor to sort of refine things or to
make things clear, or you know, sometimes just like completely
ditch a whole idea and be like this isn't working
and just being afraid to kill your darlings. But yeah,
I think it's just a it's just nice to have
out in the world and know that people, you know,
(35:04):
the small feedback I've gotten so far from people who
were not at all associated with the book, I think
it's been really heartening and it makes me realize why
I wrote the book in the first place.
Speaker 1 (35:15):
So yeah, it's it's been a journey.
Speaker 2 (35:18):
I love that, and I very much identify with you
saying the part about being done with it.
Speaker 1 (35:22):
Yes, book writing. Book writing be hard. Out here, it
be hard. It's like it's beautiful.
Speaker 2 (35:27):
When you can get to the end of it and
say that you finished it. But all of them thanks
leading up it'd be hard. Like when I finished my
first book, my husband was like, you finished, let's go celebrate.
I literally sat down at the kitchen table and was like, like,
just started crying. I can't even tell you why I
(35:49):
was crying. I just like, I'm sorry, I can't do
the brownies because I really need to see that and
cry for a few minutes.
Speaker 1 (35:56):
Like it is hard.
Speaker 2 (35:58):
So I'm just really shout out to you, Ayisha, for
doing something that is as difficult as writing in general
and now writing this book, and I really hope that
you take all the opportunities to celebrate yourself because you
deserve it.
Speaker 3 (36:15):
Yes, I've mostly just been like relaxing a lot more,
which is not usually my mood anyway. I'm a very
kind of naturally anxious person, which I'm trying to work on.
But you know, I didn't take any book leave from
my NPR job. I took a day or two here
and there, but I didn't take an extensive book leave,
and so I was working all day and then trying
(36:38):
to gear myself up to work like to write at night.
And I don't recommend it, zero out of ten stars.
Would not do again.
Speaker 1 (36:47):
Do not visit that restaurant.
Speaker 3 (36:49):
Yeah, but I also, you know, I needed to, you know,
keep keep making money right right.
Speaker 1 (36:57):
Right for sure?
Speaker 2 (36:58):
Okay, last question for you you, and then I want
everyone to get all the information they can about how
to follow you and how to make sure they can
buy this book buy lots of thing.
Speaker 3 (37:08):
Yes.
Speaker 2 (37:08):
So my last question is when the reader, if they
have a physical copy, gets to the end, they close
this book. If they have their e copy, they've swiped
through the pages, they've gotten to the end of this book.
What do you hope readers feel or gain from having
read your book.
Speaker 3 (37:27):
I hope they feel a little bit smarter, a little
bit more I can go to this party or hang
out with these people and then have some talking points
to bring to them. And I also hope they had
a chance to laugh a little bit and really think
(37:47):
about the things that they love when it comes to
pop culture and what their own relationship is to it.
And I don't know if that type of the type
of person to be very hostile on social media is
going to read this book. But if you think that
might be you and you do read it, maybe you
(38:08):
come away and say, maybe I don't need to get
upset when a critic says that they don't like this
piece of pop culture that I really like. I quote
him and I'm going to paraphrase this, but you know,
I mentioned a moment from the Kenny g documentary where
he's like explaining in part and this is why I
(38:30):
kind of this is why I respect this man, because
he the whole point of the documentary sort of wrestle
with how this best selling musician is also one of
the most critically reviled artists and He's very aware of this,
and he explains it like you know, people will say like,
I like this, don't you? And then that person says, no,
I don't like this. You do, and he basically says,
(38:53):
like it makes you feel it hurts you, it makes
you feel like it's personal, and I want people to
take away, Yes, it is personal, but it also doesn't
have to be all the time, and we can like
the things that we like to a degree. I mean,
I'm not advocating for certain things that might actually physically
(39:14):
hurt or just cause harm or in any way. I'm
not advocating. I'm not playing, you know, the Devil's advocate here.
I'm just saying you don't need to take everything so personally,
and I think it would be well. I'll just feel
better yea about that. You know, if I say something
about Marvel, I don't need people getting really upset with
(39:34):
me about it.
Speaker 2 (39:35):
That two things can be true. You could love that
and this other person just doesn't. And that's ok Factly,
it's okay. That's what pro exists.
Speaker 1 (39:46):
Where can the people follow you?
Speaker 2 (39:48):
And where can the people buy five copies of this
book and listeners? This why I'm saying five copies. Number one,
buy five copies supports an author. Okay, number two, you
got your copy, you got four more to give away.
You got four more in case somebody comes to the
house and they're like, oh, I always wanted to read
her book. Now you don't have to give away your
copy because you bought five of them.
Speaker 1 (40:10):
You can just be like, here you go.
Speaker 2 (40:11):
It's a constant gift. It keeps on giving. So where
can the people buy five copies of Ayisha Harris just
want to be reckonings with the pop culture that shapes me,
and where can the people follow tell us everything?
Speaker 3 (40:24):
Oh my goodness, that's such a great Yes, I love it.
Encourage the five copies. So of course I want to
say support your local bookstore. I'm not sure when this
is dropping, but if you pre order it from a
Leak bookstore, which is in my current place, my current
place of dwelling in Oakland, California. It is the oldest
black owned independent bookstore in the country. And if you
(40:47):
pre order it from them, they will ship it to
you wherever you are and it will come signed by me.
So that's an option. But also your local book seller
go to them request it, and of course Amazon. I
did an audio book. Okay, okay, I recorded the audiobook,
which is interesting because like recording audio, like reading is
(41:09):
very different from reading a book for audio is very
different from writing for audios. So but you'll get to
hear me do my best impression of Dave Chappelle. So
if you want to get the audiobook, you can. You
can do that and Amazon and all the other you know,
no Bards and Noble, all those other places, and then
you can follow me. I'm still on Twitter for the
(41:31):
foreseeable feature. We'll see I spend a time. The ship
is still hobbling along, So you can find me on
Twitter at crafting my Style and on Instagram if you
want to see both me promoting my book, but also
keep photos of my dogs at AHA eighty eight. So
that's AHA, the number eighty eight. And yeah, that's that's
(41:55):
where I am these days. I'm a little too old
to be on TikTok, so you won't find me there,
but yeah, that's that's that's it. Well, and of course
on NPR doing all the all the culture things and
pop Culture Happy Hour, we are not on every episode,
but we've got four co hosts and it's a great time,
(42:16):
and if you're ever looking for that movie, TV, show,
book album that you are excited about or want to
hear us discuss we are. We're trying to cover a
lot of things, so we cover Marvel, we do. I'm
not usually on this episode, but we do, and we
cover a lot of things. So that's where you can
find me.
Speaker 2 (42:37):
Love it, y'all, make sure I'll go to there. All
of these things will also be on the show. Notes
to y'all at aminabrown dot com slash Her with Amena Ayisha.
Thank you for sharing your story and your life with
us in this book. Thank you for giving us intelligent
things to say at dinner parties and at other sundry
networking events. Thank you for giving us this wonderful lens
(42:59):
on pop culture, how it motivates us, how it upsets us,
how it changes us, how it inspires us. Just appreciate
your work so much. Thanks for joining us well.
Speaker 3 (43:10):
Thank you and thank you for creating this sort of
space for authors like myself to talk about the things
that we love in our writing. I really appreciate it.
Speaker 2 (43:31):
Hear with Amina Brown is produced by Matt Owen for
Solography Productions as a part of the Seneca Women Podcast
Network in partnership with iHeartRadio. Thanks for listening and don't
forget to subscribe, rate, and review the podcast.
Everybody.
Speaker 2 (00:33):
Ooh, y'all, welcome back to a new episode of Her
with Amina Brown. I hope you are in some ways
getting into a little bit of a summer vibe as
you are listening to this episode, because we are here
in the living room with a guest, and I am
so excited to welcome writer, journalist, culture and arts critic,
co host of the hit NPR podcast pop Culture Happy Hour,
(00:57):
and author of Wanna Be Reckonings with the Pop Culture
That Shapes Me.
Speaker 1 (01:01):
Welcome, Aisha Harris.
Speaker 3 (01:04):
Hi Amla. Thanks so much for having me.
Speaker 2 (01:07):
I'm here clapping for us because in my mind, Aisha,
even though as you know, when we were podcasting, we
were recording for an audience of zero, you know, that's
present with us while we record, So I am always
imagining there are at least like thirty people here with
me live, even though it's just us here. So I
had to clap for myself and the other twenty nine
(01:30):
of us that are here live.
Speaker 3 (01:33):
I appreciate it. I love it. Get that energy, gut
that's it.
Speaker 1 (01:36):
That's it.
Speaker 2 (01:37):
So glad to have you on the podcast. So many
things I want to dig into. Well, I want to
start with something that's very important, which is next. So
a part of the premise of her with Amina Brown
living room comes from this idea that when my girlfriends
come over, especially if they're very close to me, sometimes
the conversation gets to a point where it's like, this
is not for a coffee shop, this is not for
(01:57):
a restaurant, Like we need to really be in each
other's house so we can fully talk our things. And
sometimes depending on one's busyness or one's financial availabilities, there's
like sort of an ad hoc snack situation. You know,
there's like a girl, I got three and a half
bell peppers I'm about to bring open air, and I'm like,
(02:18):
I got three fourths of this hummus that I started
a little bit, and we just bring our little snacks together.
So I want to know, when you get together with
your friends, when you're in this living room situation, what
is your snack that you would see yourself bringing to
the living room.
Speaker 3 (02:37):
I'm going to sound a bit like an alcoholic, but
probably the alcohol I was nice. I have an abundance
of alcoholic in my apartment right now. My partner subscribes
to a monthly wine club, and he kept forgetting to
put it on pods because we don't drink that much wine,
Like these are cases of wine, and I'm just like,
(02:59):
where are we gonna put this? We live in a townhouse,
we don't have a wine cellar or anything. It makes
for a very good party favor, Like if you, I'm
now in my thirties, so dinner parties and all that
are the things that are my friends and I are doing.
And so instead of having to be like, oh what
should I bring, I'm just like, grab a bottle of wine.
I don't even know if it's good, but that's what
(03:20):
we're bringing. So wine usually or some sort of beer
cocktail mix.
Speaker 2 (03:25):
I feel that this is a correct choice. This feels
like the right thing to do. I mean my first,
like what I felt was my first grown birthday gift.
I think I was like twenty four to twenty five
and this man bought me like a bottle of wine
for my birthday and I was like an adult, I'm
like officially grown. Now was it a bottle of yellowtail?
Speaker 1 (03:47):
Sure?
Speaker 2 (03:48):
Does that matter at this moment? No, it was that
bottle that really matter. I feel like you just in
most situations you gon win. It feels very sophisticated.
Speaker 3 (03:56):
Bringing a bottle of wine Yellowtaiale in your twenties is
totally totally fine, but you know, even in your thirties,
just do what you gotta do. If you like it,
you like it. That's how I feel.
Speaker 2 (04:07):
I feel if you like it enough to drink it,
you'll do that. If not, it goes great in a
spaghetti sauce. It's like, there's always going to be a
use somewhere for that bottle of wine. So I give
a shout out to that. I also want to know
do you have a favorite writing snack When you were
writing your book or generally when you're writing, do you
have a snack or some set of snacks that you're like,
(04:29):
this is what I have to have for my writing process.
Speaker 3 (04:32):
No, actually, I'm not really a snacker, or at least
not in that way. I tend to snack when I'm
watching something or reading, but actually, just like what I'm writing,
snack is just one more thing, Like trying to eat
while writing is just one more thing that's going to
distract me. And I'm already a very huge procrastinator, so
(04:54):
adding and trying to actually feed myself at the same time,
it just doesn't work, so I usually have tea with
me or some sort of beverage of some sort. You know,
I'm not gonna lie. I will sometimes also have got
some wine or something. It's get the brain a little
lubricated and loose and not all hung up in my
thoughts as I can be when I'm completely sober. But yeah,
(05:14):
I'm not really a snacker while working. Yeah, I can't
say that I am.
Speaker 2 (05:20):
I feel you on the use of snacks as procrastination
because I like to ask other writers this, because that's
definitely a thing for me of like, oh man, I
sat down to write, but I feel like I probably
need some brownies. I probably need to bake those brownies
from scratch. I probably need to bake two batches so
I can give some just anything to not sit there.
Speaker 3 (05:42):
Yes, you know how I know that it's gotten really bad.
It's when I decide, oh, I think I'm just like
clean right now instead of right.
Speaker 2 (05:49):
Yeah, because I'm like, in what other world would I
worry about a base board?
Speaker 1 (05:52):
Never?
Speaker 2 (05:53):
Never, I don't care except when I stare at the
cursor and I'm like, you know, anything's better than this.
Speaker 3 (06:02):
Let me get to that grount in let's see what
the tile's doing.
Speaker 2 (06:07):
Anything but right, please please, okay. I will also want
to ask you, when you were approaching what is now
want to Be? How did the idea of the book
arrive to you? And I'm always curious about this when
I'm talking to other authors, because for those of us
and this was me once and is many you know,
future book authors where they are sort of on the
(06:29):
other side of that, like I've always dreamed to write
a book, or I hear a lot of people telling
me to write a book, but not always knowing like
what is the actual process?
Speaker 1 (06:38):
So how did want to be as an idea arrived
to you?
Speaker 3 (06:43):
Yeah? I was kind of in a similar boat where
for a few years I had editors and agents approaching me,
is like he should write a book. You know, they'd
seen my work and slay to the New York Times,
which is where I was previously, and I, you know,
I met with some agens and I talked about that,
and I know I ever really came upon the right idea.
(07:03):
It took me a while. At first. I thought, Oh,
is there some movie that has been ignored or something
where I can kind of like bring it to the
surface in a new way and heavy interview style sort
of history digging. One of my favorite authors and one
of my favorite books that I've been I don't read
too many books more than once, but one that I
(07:23):
have read many, many, several times is Mark Harris's Pictures
Out of Revolution. First of all, no relation to him,
but I do respect him, and that book is basically
a history of the nineteen sixty seven sixty eight Academy Awards,
and it covers the five Best Picture nominees, and he
(07:44):
does this great job of sort of putting together this
a thesis around how this was sort of where Hollywood
was dividing in between the old and the like the
classic Hollywood, the studio style Hollywood, and the new Hollywood,
which was you know, the Scorsese years and those sorts
of things. And it's really really fascinating. It's deeply reporting,
deeply researched, and at first I thought, oh, I want
(08:06):
to do something similar to that, but I kind of
find the right subject, and who knows, maybe somewhere down
the line the right subject will come along where it's
a little bit more nerdier, not like not that my
book isn't nerdy. It's very nerdy, but nerdy in a
different way. And so ultimately, just before the pandemic, I
had another editor reach out to me, Daniella, who is great,
(08:30):
and you know, she said, you know, have you thought
about writing a book. I'm like, yes, I have, but
I haven't stumbled upon the right thing. And she put
me in touch with an agent, and my agent, Aaliyah,
also wonderful, really kind of helped me sort of figure out, Okay,
here here are things you could do, and like, what
is one thing that like, what kind of themes or
what kind of format do you keep coming back to
(08:52):
when you think about yourself writing a book? And I
said to myself, you know, well, like so much of
my work is about writing an essay form, critical essays, reviews,
that sort of thing. Maybe I should just do that.
And I decided I wanted to sort of talk about
make it personal, deeply personal, but also critical and kind
(09:13):
of assessing how pop culture has had such a huge
influence on me. Yes, it is what I do in
my my you know, professional life, but it's also very
much just always been a part of my life since
I was out, like came out of the womb. So
and I wanted to make something that people, especially millennials
(09:35):
who are my age, you know, and who grew up
in the eighties and the nineties, they can relate to.
But I think also there are plenty of themes within
this story that so many people can kind of understand
and relate to, regardless of their background, you know. And
when I say talk about sort of the fatigue of
the franchise, vacation of everything, and how I would and
(09:55):
how everything needs a spin off, and how everything needs
a gritty reboot or a prequel, and I think that
for me, it's important to sort of acknowledge that even
if you are not like me, and you're not you know,
a pop culture reporter, an arts reporter or whatever, we
are all affected by it. And I was hoping that
(10:16):
people would get a sense of how we can maybe
change a relationship to how these things affect us, or
just think about how these things make us respond to
ourselves and also to each other, especially on social media.
It's just like it's really interesting to think about how
we are in this weird moment where there's like more
(10:38):
more things to uh consume than ever before. Things are
at our fingerchips, movies, TV shows, you can find pretty
much the most niche uh, you know, interests or fetishes
or whatever you can find some version of it somewhere,
and how does that affect us, and how does that
make us sometimes go a little like do things that
(11:02):
we maybe should like do or say things that we
maybe shouldn't, or how does that make us feel bad
about ourselves or you know those sorts of things. So
it really kind of evolved out of my desire to both,
you know, share a little bit more of myself and
my upbringing and where I've come from, but also, you know,
look at where we are now on a larger scale
(11:24):
in terms of the culture and how we talk about
these things.
Speaker 2 (11:28):
I really loved that you chose pop culture as the
lens for your book. I thought that was so it
just like it made it really interesting to me because
it kind of felt like I felt like it had
these like concentric circles almost that at the center is
your life, your story, your experiences, and then in part
the pop culture that you experienced and how that shaped you.
(11:49):
And then even this wider lens of and even if
you're not me, you know, here are the other ways
these things affected many of us. Right, So I loved
just getting to get that lens inside of a book
this way. That was such a great that's such a
great lens that you chose. I also really identified with
the chapter about your name. I too have a name
(12:09):
that comes from very interesting origin and is also considered
to be a Muslim name because of the language that
it well, it's in many languages because it's derivative of Amen.
But I go go all sorts of places, and people
have various feelings. They have various different feelings right with that,
And You're like, it's just my name. I'm just growing
(12:30):
up as a person. But now I'm here trying to
get some copies made, and apparently the employee there is like,
that's a Muslim name, and I'm like, yes, okay, mm hmmm,
all right, sure you know they're like, that's the way
we say amen in my country.
Speaker 1 (12:43):
Yes, okay.
Speaker 2 (12:45):
So I really identified with just the beauty of the
Stevie Wonder story that you told, of the actual origin
of how you became Ayisha, and the ever present song
and pop culture phenomena of another bad creation. Also yes
singing this like, could you give us some thoughts about
(13:08):
what was it like to write that. I thought it
was a wonderful introduction to you in the book, like
talk to us more about that.
Speaker 3 (13:16):
Yeah, that was the very first essay that I wrote,
and it was the one I actually included in my
proposal to my editor to land the deal, and it was,
to be honest, it was one of those things where
I thought about, you know, what my name has meant
and how people have you know, reacted to it over
(13:39):
the years, And now even now I'm still dealing with
it in the sense that I've realized that I don't know,
this is just a hunch I have, but uber and
lyft when I'm trying to get them, a lot of
times they will cancel on me, and I wonder if
it's because of my name. I stopped putting in my faet,
like I have a photo of my dog not there,
but like now it's I'm wondering if my name is
(14:00):
also a concern. And then you know, the ones who
usually do pick me up tend to be Muslim or
people who have Arabic names that sound like mine. So anyway,
so I'm still in this weird push and pull with
that sort of thing. But it's I still love my name,
but basically what the chapter is about, is that I
(14:21):
had sort of these two songs that were connected to
my name, one in a way that I liked, and
that Stevie wonders, Isn't She Lovely? And in that song
this is of course on Songs of the Key of Life,
and he wrote it for his daughter, whose name is Aisha.
And I feel like a lot of people don't like
it's not one of his most famous songs, but it
(14:42):
is on one of his most famous albums. And I
think people know the song, but if you're not listening
to the lyrics closely, the lyrics where he mentions her
name could just glide run over you like no one's
really thinking. Oh left the song where he calls her Ayisha.
And then I came of age at a time when
another bad creation who were what I like to call
(15:03):
the New Edition Babies. They were kind of a spin
off of New Edition and they were they ranged in
age from like eight to twelve years old. There were
five or six of them, and they were kind of
a boy group who had a hit song as a
top ten hit Billboard hit in nineteen ninety one or
ninety two, I can't remember, and it's called Ayisha, and
(15:26):
I it's so anyone who's my age or a little
bit older, it still happens to me to this day
where they might like if I meet them for the
first time, they'll be like, have you heard this song?
Like I know which song your talk? Actually sometimes it's
that song and in other times it's like a French song.
It's kind of I think a Middle Eastern performer and
(15:49):
it's called Ayisha, and it's just kind of like Aisha Aisha.
It's either that song or that song. I didn't want
that part in the book, but like there are other
songs no one thinks of this Stevie wonder one, but yeah,
I kind of went on a journey with how I
reconciled the two of like Ayisha being another back creation
(16:09):
being a I don't know it. It's not the most
embarrassing song, Like it's not like I'm named Broxanne and
then like I have that song hanging over my head.
But Ayisha was also one of those things where it's
just like, ah, I wish people knew that there were
other songs that have my name in it. So it
was kind of a journey, And where that journey leads
(16:31):
me is to sort of realizing how so much in
my resistance to another back creation was built in you know,
anti like just like self hatred to some point, or
just not feeling comfortable about being a black person, especially
a black person who grew up going to school with
mostly white kids, and then having a deal with everything
(16:51):
that comes with that and what your name signifies, and
how I felt as though, like, oh, my name is
kind of quote unquote get it's not a term that
I use anymore, but back in the nineties, in the
early two thousands, that was everywhere, especially among white suburban kids.
So it's it was for me. It was it felt
(17:12):
like a great sort of introduction to sort of where
I was going with this piece, which is shining a
light on sort of this, I think something that every
like a lot of people have had experiences with with,
which is just the name that you're born with and
not feeling comfortable with it, and then sort of the
myths that we tell ourselves, the cultural myths that we
(17:32):
tell ourselves more broadly. So yeah, that was it was.
It was quite interesting to go on that journey. I
you know, my dad, who is featured heavily in this
first essay, helped me out a bit with some of
my memory of things, but he appreciated it.
Speaker 1 (17:54):
I think, yeah, yeah, no, I love that.
Speaker 2 (17:57):
I really identified with that section the books so much,
not even now that I think about it as much
related to my name, but my face. By the time
I got to be in my twenties, I would always
at that time be confused with cousin Pam or people
would walk up all the time and be like, you know.
Speaker 1 (18:16):
Who you look like? You look like.
Speaker 2 (18:19):
It was either it depends on their age, if they
would say cousin Pam from The Cosby Show or if
they would say Maxine from Living Single. And I went
through like a long period of my twenties that I
was just like, I.
Speaker 1 (18:31):
Myself am not that scene. I am not don Ama.
Speaker 2 (18:35):
And then I would like get annoyed, like how many
Uber and Lyft cars I would get in, and it
would be the.
Speaker 1 (18:41):
You know who you look like?
Speaker 2 (18:43):
I'm true, you remember that show and I know where
it's going, but I'm like, I'm not going to help you.
Speaker 1 (18:49):
I'm not going to help you. Think of this.
Speaker 2 (18:50):
I feel like I had to just have like a
little come together meeting with myself and be like, okay,
first of all, being accused of looking like Erica Alexander. Girl,
that's that's actually could be a great viot for you, Yes.
Speaker 3 (19:03):
The great and good Erica Alexander. Like, yes, it's not
a bad vit for you.
Speaker 1 (19:07):
But I don't know why.
Speaker 2 (19:08):
It just just really got under my skin. I don't
know if it felt this like sense of like you
feel like now you can't just be who you are,
because now that has to be the introduction conversation, you know,
like I just took me so long of just finally
being like, okay, girl, if you look like well, of
course now they would say you look like Erica Alexander.
(19:29):
They wouldn't say because of or Maxine either.
Speaker 3 (19:33):
Well can I when I can, I ask you? Were
these mostly black people?
Speaker 2 (19:36):
Yes?
Speaker 1 (19:36):
They were mostly black people.
Speaker 3 (19:37):
Yeah, because I don't know how many not black people
were familiar. Well they might have been familiar with the
Cosby Show, but probably maybe not living single. But I
can understand that frustration because for me, when people were
coming at me and like singing another bad creation at me,
it was a mixture of like I had, you know,
(19:58):
a forty plus year old agent du he knew this song?
Like it's like I guess because it was a top
ten hit in the nineties, and I think it's you know,
especially in that era, white kids and white people were
getting into hip hop more. But you know, it's it's
tough because it does feel like people are telling trying,
(20:18):
like unintentionally telling you your identity and when really you're
just like I just I just want to be me.
(20:43):
That's the other thing is that what I hope to
sort of lay out in the book is that so
much of how we relate to each other is through
pop culture. Like it's sports and it's pop culture. Those
are the things where you can reasonably be able to
carry on a complete conversation with a stranger at a
bar about like, you know, and not know anything else
(21:04):
about them, but like, oh, I overheard you're talking about succession,
blah blah blah. You know, like I think that they're
just trying to relate to you in some way, and
even if it's annoying, right, it's like, you know, that's
it's human nature to some extent.
Speaker 2 (21:20):
Right, right, Okay, I want to ask another Favorites question here,
and this is about in a way, it's about what
will become throwback concerts. And this came up because a
friend and I were out a concert recently. We were
kind of looking around and being like, Okay, I mean,
I feel like the definition of auntie is a thing
I would like other people to discuss with me sometimes
(21:40):
of like, I didn't think I was going to be
an auntie at this age. That feels like it's coming
down for us younger and younger, all those things. But
we were like, what will it be? Like, what will
our throwback concert be when we're in our sixties? My
friend asked me this, And I remember my last college
homecoming watching the women who graduated college in like the
(22:02):
seventies and eighties.
Speaker 1 (22:04):
It was brick House for them, Like.
Speaker 2 (22:06):
When brick House came on, they were like, yeah, it's
all the shake it everything. And I remember my friends
and I in that moment looking at each other and going,
is that going to be juvenile for us?
Speaker 1 (22:15):
Like? Is that us? In ours?
Speaker 3 (22:17):
That's already happening?
Speaker 1 (22:18):
Is that us now?
Speaker 2 (22:20):
We're going to be for the nine to nine and
the two thousand? So when you think of yourself, like
in true Anti Season Aisha, what are what are the
songs or artists do you imagine yourself still shaking it
to or what's the concert you could see yourself going
to at that point?
Speaker 3 (22:41):
Okay, So I feel like the way that nostalgia happens
happens even faster these days. So I think we're already
in that era for by concerts. I mean, what is
Usher's Lovers and Friends Door but a complete throwback right
to my era, Like Count is a decade older than me,
but that sort of he crosses multiple generations at this point.
(23:03):
And you know, when Confessions was out, I was a
junior or senior in high school. So I think it's
already happening. I've also there's this, uh, this party that
I loved going to back when I lived on the
East Coast. It was like a it happened pretty often,
like a few times a year, and they they've toured
(23:24):
around the country and it's called Grits and Biscuits and
it's like all just Southern hip hop. It's turned into
a heat. It started like over a decade ago and
then it turned into this huge thing. But one show
I went to, they had Juvenile show up, and he
did back that back that ass up thing up. I
don't know if I can curse them here, yes all
the time, Yes, and uh, it was. It was magical,
(23:46):
So I that that is what I've been shaking stills.
I still love going to this thing. I'm also I'm
seeing Janet again this summer, which I'm very excited for
now granted like her Heyday well because again she's also covered.
I mean, the first time I saw her was the
offer you tour with my mom, which I shout out
to my mom for taking thirteen year old me to
(24:08):
see all for you. You know, may may or may
not have been that appropriate to see, but it's fine. Yeah,
I so that would be my answer probably any kind
of southern hip hop, you know, if Brittany and Christina
were to tour together, which like I doubt will ever happen,
(24:29):
and I want Brittany to just be healthy and happy. Right,
doesn't sound like she wants a tour, but that would
be another one where I'd be like, yeah, I'm going.
Speaker 1 (24:37):
To be there, like yes, So I like these choices.
Speaker 2 (24:41):
I told my friend, I said, I feel we might
be fifteen to twenty years away from this Destiny's Child
Reunion tour like that, like them either them in their
sixties or me in my sixties. That's my rolling stones.
I feel I feel like the pigs come. I don't
care how old I am. I'm be like we getting
(25:02):
the tickets right now. I'm gonna go there and lose
my breath and everything else.
Speaker 3 (25:06):
I'm I'm just waiting. I want that to happen so badly.
I saw The only time I saw Destiny Child was
when they opened for TLC on their fan mail tour,
and this was literally like two months before they did
the whole lineup change. So it was the original Destiny
Child whoa yes yep like writings on the Wall had
(25:33):
just come out like a few weeks earlier. And then
of course everything changed very quickly.
Speaker 1 (25:38):
So so many things change.
Speaker 3 (25:41):
Yeah, but I would love to see the the legendary lineup,
the you know, the most lasting lineup in concert.
Speaker 1 (25:48):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (25:48):
I will pay. I will pay good money. I will
pay good money for that. Okay, I want to talk TV.
I want to know when you think about your young self,
could your young self have imagined that watching television would
actually be a part of your job?
Speaker 1 (26:03):
Ayisha, I think.
Speaker 3 (26:05):
About this very often. How I'm just like all those
hours I spent in front of the TV as a
kid who paid off. It's like like I and I
know I would not have imagined it. I don't think
I would have imagined it, even like fifteen twenty years
ago when I was in college. Well I'm not bat old,
(26:26):
but like when I was in college, like, I don't
think I would have imagined that. I thought I was
going to be a like a Broadway performer, or like
at least like doing regional theater somewhere. And I did
do that for a very very hot second after I graduated.
I do have a degree in theater. But it's so
(26:47):
weird to me to think about how I've been able
to parlay this into a career, and I consider myself
very lucky to be able to do so, and right aback,
movies and all these things like these are the things
that I love to do, and I realized that a
lot of people, especially in journalism, are not able to
(27:10):
do that, or at least not do it to the
extent that I am. And you know, media is crumbling
before our eyes. So who knows what my future holds.
But for now I'm feeling feeling good and thankful, and
I just want our profession to get even to be better,
like just even like following these writers' strikes, it's very
(27:34):
disheartening and frustrating to see that people who make the
things that we love can't get paid what they're worth. Right, So, yeah,
you know, I definitely I didn't pursue theater in part
because I didn't want to be a starving artist. Granted,
being in media is not It's not like I'm rolling
(27:55):
in dough and I'm still paying off my student loans
and probably will be until I'm fifty years aig, until
Biden finally does the right thing and just so lets
us all, you know, right right, Yeah, yeah, but yes,
very lucky, very thankful.
Speaker 2 (28:10):
I really loved about your book, just getting to getting
to read you and know more about you as a person,
but getting to read you even deeper as a journalist,
writer as a critic, and even getting to read you
writing about why why critics are important to what we're doing,
and some of the sticky conversations that you know people
(28:35):
in your profession end up in. I just I really
appreciated getting to hear some of that lens from you.
I had a mentor once when I in my other life,
when I was writing more music journalism, and he would say,
study the culture. He would say, if there's a thing
I would tell you, study, study that, And I think
in reading this book it was so wonderful to read
(28:55):
someone very studied on pop culture, on what you like
and what you enjoyed, but also on the greater ramifications
of the TV we're watching, of the films we like
or don't like, of the film and TV we feel
we should like even if we don't like it. So
I want to ask you a couple of TV things.
(29:16):
I want to know, do you have a favorite TV
guilty pleasure or not so guilty pleasure?
Speaker 3 (29:25):
Well, so we've actually done an episode on Popcornsure Happy
Hour about this before. But I love court TV shows. Okay,
So Judge g D even though I recognize that she's
very problematic, you know, for various reasons, including just being
very pro police sometimes where it doesn't necessarily warrant that
(29:46):
at least from my outside perspective, and also judging Leon
on People's Court. I love that show. I in my
earlier years, I definitely dabbled any other court shows like
Judge Math and those sort of things. But yeah, I
prefer my my my Judy and my my Judge Leon.
Uh So, yeah, it's it's definitely a guilty pleasure of mine.
(30:11):
It's just I don't I don't know too many people
my age who watched the thing is is like I
started watching Judge Judy when I was a kid because
my nana, my my great grandmother, who you call nana,
Like when she would come over and stay with us,
like during the day, Uh, she would have Judge Judy on.
And so I got into Judge Judy and and and
(30:31):
now she's I gotta say, she's the one who more
or less introduced it to me, and I love her.
She's no longer with us, but uh yeah, that was
something she imparted me that, And like she always had Murder,
she wrote.
Speaker 1 (30:45):
In uh, matt Lock on the background.
Speaker 3 (30:47):
And I just started watching Murder, she wrote, like in
earnest because I knew like it was in the in
the you know, in the ether. But I am now
watching it on whatever stream. I think it's on Peacock.
So I'm going through it now, and I'm like, oh
my god, I love this.
Speaker 1 (31:02):
And I know I can.
Speaker 3 (31:03):
Understand one of my nana loved it too, because it's
just it's got a formula. You get in, you get out.
You've got all these old classic Hollywood actors who are
now in their their later years and they just pop
up and like, oh look there's that you know, Hollywood
performer from whatever movie that I've seen. Yeah, So, anyway
to answer your question again, Judge g D judge melead
(31:26):
go to the pleasure.
Speaker 2 (31:28):
I respect this as a choice. I want to thank
you for bringing a murder. She wrote into the chat.
My my grandmother's show back in the day was the
People's Court with Judge Wapner. And actually it had a
really banging theme song, like I still remember the butt
ump bump Like it had a very theme song. Hmmm
that theme song, Yes, yes, that themes long did something.
(31:49):
He's the percussion. I was like, y'all really put some
letyers into this.
Speaker 1 (31:53):
Like I like that.
Speaker 2 (31:54):
I also appreciated you even bringing a murder, she wrote
into your book when you were talking about you had
a chapter on I'm sure i'm gonna I'm not gonna
say the name of the chapter correctly, but you had
a chapter on just the expectations of procreation on women,
and you talked about this character in murder, she wrote,
(32:15):
and how we're just watching her live her fancy free
life until somebody gets murdered, and now she got to
like stop her wonderful, you know, child free life and
get over here and try to figure out who murdered
this person. I just like appreciated those little Eastern eggs
throughout the book.
Speaker 3 (32:33):
Yes, Jessica Plencher was one of our few representations of
especially an older woman who did not have kids and
seemed to be really happy about it, you know, or
just no hang ups about it. She had plenty of
nieces and nephews who would always come on the show
and then like sometimes they would be somehow involved with
(32:54):
a murder or whatever. But like, you know, she was
literally an auntie. She was just like, I don't have kids,
I'm living my life. I'm sure the show has been
made so many times. I often wonder at what point
did she start going places and just wonder, okay, so
who's going to get murdered at this new place that
I'm visited?
Speaker 2 (33:13):
Everywhere she went, she on vacation, she going shop with somebody,
it's murdered. Yes, Now that you have taken this book
idea from conception to now, at the listening of this
your book will be out. What has been your favorite
thing about working on this book that you can think of.
Speaker 3 (33:36):
Oh, I'm such a tortured writer. I find it so
tedious and stressful and anxious. I do think being done
with it is probably my favorite part. But that's the
thing is, like I don't this is it's not just
(33:58):
unique to this book. Although this is by far the
greatest undertaken on this single project that I've had to do,
and it's taken me the longest time. This is like
two ish years out of my life, and some of
that was during the pandemic. So like add on all
those stressors of what was happening at the very beginning
of the pandemic, it was it was a lot. But
(34:19):
I'm just generally speaking, even if I only have to
write like an eight hundred word review, it stresses me
out to no end. So but what why I keep
doing it and why I keep coming back to it
is because I like the feeling of accomplishment once it's done,
and I like the I enjoy. I actually like the
(34:40):
editing process as well. I like being able to work
with an editor to sort of refine things or to
make things clear, or you know, sometimes just like completely
ditch a whole idea and be like this isn't working
and just being afraid to kill your darlings. But yeah,
I think it's just a it's just nice to have
out in the world and know that people, you know,
(35:04):
the small feedback I've gotten so far from people who
were not at all associated with the book, I think
it's been really heartening and it makes me realize why
I wrote the book in the first place.
Speaker 1 (35:15):
So yeah, it's it's been a journey.
Speaker 2 (35:18):
I love that, and I very much identify with you
saying the part about being done with it.
Speaker 1 (35:22):
Yes, book writing. Book writing be hard. Out here, it
be hard. It's like it's beautiful.
Speaker 2 (35:27):
When you can get to the end of it and
say that you finished it. But all of them thanks
leading up it'd be hard. Like when I finished my
first book, my husband was like, you finished, let's go celebrate.
I literally sat down at the kitchen table and was like, like,
just started crying. I can't even tell you why I
(35:49):
was crying. I just like, I'm sorry, I can't do
the brownies because I really need to see that and
cry for a few minutes.
Speaker 1 (35:56):
Like it is hard.
Speaker 2 (35:58):
So I'm just really shout out to you, Ayisha, for
doing something that is as difficult as writing in general
and now writing this book, and I really hope that
you take all the opportunities to celebrate yourself because you
deserve it.
Speaker 3 (36:15):
Yes, I've mostly just been like relaxing a lot more,
which is not usually my mood anyway. I'm a very
kind of naturally anxious person, which I'm trying to work on.
But you know, I didn't take any book leave from
my NPR job. I took a day or two here
and there, but I didn't take an extensive book leave,
and so I was working all day and then trying
(36:38):
to gear myself up to work like to write at night.
And I don't recommend it, zero out of ten stars.
Would not do again.
Speaker 1 (36:47):
Do not visit that restaurant.
Speaker 3 (36:49):
Yeah, but I also, you know, I needed to, you know,
keep keep making money right right.
Speaker 1 (36:57):
Right for sure?
Speaker 2 (36:58):
Okay, last question for you you, and then I want
everyone to get all the information they can about how
to follow you and how to make sure they can
buy this book buy lots of thing.
Speaker 3 (37:08):
Yes.
Speaker 2 (37:08):
So my last question is when the reader, if they
have a physical copy, gets to the end, they close
this book. If they have their e copy, they've swiped
through the pages, they've gotten to the end of this book.
What do you hope readers feel or gain from having
read your book.
Speaker 3 (37:27):
I hope they feel a little bit smarter, a little
bit more I can go to this party or hang
out with these people and then have some talking points
to bring to them. And I also hope they had
a chance to laugh a little bit and really think
(37:47):
about the things that they love when it comes to
pop culture and what their own relationship is to it.
And I don't know if that type of the type
of person to be very hostile on social media is
going to read this book. But if you think that
might be you and you do read it, maybe you
(38:08):
come away and say, maybe I don't need to get
upset when a critic says that they don't like this
piece of pop culture that I really like. I quote
him and I'm going to paraphrase this, but you know,
I mentioned a moment from the Kenny g documentary where
he's like explaining in part and this is why I
(38:30):
kind of this is why I respect this man, because
he the whole point of the documentary sort of wrestle
with how this best selling musician is also one of
the most critically reviled artists and He's very aware of this,
and he explains it like you know, people will say like,
I like this, don't you? And then that person says, no,
I don't like this. You do, and he basically says,
(38:53):
like it makes you feel it hurts you, it makes
you feel like it's personal, and I want people to
take away, Yes, it is personal, but it also doesn't
have to be all the time, and we can like
the things that we like to a degree. I mean,
I'm not advocating for certain things that might actually physically
(39:14):
hurt or just cause harm or in any way. I'm
not advocating. I'm not playing, you know, the Devil's advocate here.
I'm just saying you don't need to take everything so personally,
and I think it would be well. I'll just feel
better yea about that. You know, if I say something
about Marvel, I don't need people getting really upset with
(39:34):
me about it.
Speaker 2 (39:35):
That two things can be true. You could love that
and this other person just doesn't. And that's ok Factly,
it's okay. That's what pro exists.
Speaker 1 (39:46):
Where can the people follow you?
Speaker 2 (39:48):
And where can the people buy five copies of this
book and listeners? This why I'm saying five copies. Number one,
buy five copies supports an author. Okay, number two, you
got your copy, you got four more to give away.
You got four more in case somebody comes to the
house and they're like, oh, I always wanted to read
her book. Now you don't have to give away your
copy because you bought five of them.
Speaker 1 (40:10):
You can just be like, here you go.
Speaker 2 (40:11):
It's a constant gift. It keeps on giving. So where
can the people buy five copies of Ayisha Harris just
want to be reckonings with the pop culture that shapes me,
and where can the people follow tell us everything?
Speaker 3 (40:24):
Oh my goodness, that's such a great Yes, I love it.
Encourage the five copies. So of course I want to
say support your local bookstore. I'm not sure when this
is dropping, but if you pre order it from a
Leak bookstore, which is in my current place, my current
place of dwelling in Oakland, California. It is the oldest
black owned independent bookstore in the country. And if you
(40:47):
pre order it from them, they will ship it to
you wherever you are and it will come signed by me.
So that's an option. But also your local book seller
go to them request it, and of course Amazon. I
did an audio book. Okay, okay, I recorded the audiobook,
which is interesting because like recording audio, like reading is
(41:09):
very different from reading a book for audio is very
different from writing for audios. So but you'll get to
hear me do my best impression of Dave Chappelle. So
if you want to get the audiobook, you can. You
can do that and Amazon and all the other you know,
no Bards and Noble, all those other places, and then
you can follow me. I'm still on Twitter for the
(41:31):
foreseeable feature. We'll see I spend a time. The ship
is still hobbling along, So you can find me on
Twitter at crafting my Style and on Instagram if you
want to see both me promoting my book, but also
keep photos of my dogs at AHA eighty eight. So
that's AHA, the number eighty eight. And yeah, that's that's
(41:55):
where I am these days. I'm a little too old
to be on TikTok, so you won't find me there,
but yeah, that's that's that's it. Well, and of course
on NPR doing all the all the culture things and
pop Culture Happy Hour, we are not on every episode,
but we've got four co hosts and it's a great time,
(42:16):
and if you're ever looking for that movie, TV, show,
book album that you are excited about or want to
hear us discuss we are. We're trying to cover a
lot of things, so we cover Marvel, we do. I'm
not usually on this episode, but we do, and we
cover a lot of things. So that's where you can
find me.
Speaker 2 (42:37):
Love it, y'all, make sure I'll go to there. All
of these things will also be on the show. Notes
to y'all at aminabrown dot com slash Her with Amena Ayisha.
Thank you for sharing your story and your life with
us in this book. Thank you for giving us intelligent
things to say at dinner parties and at other sundry
networking events. Thank you for giving us this wonderful lens
(42:59):
on pop culture, how it motivates us, how it upsets us,
how it changes us, how it inspires us. Just appreciate
your work so much. Thanks for joining us well.
Speaker 3 (43:10):
Thank you and thank you for creating this sort of
space for authors like myself to talk about the things
that we love in our writing. I really appreciate it.
Speaker 2 (43:31):
Hear with Amina Brown is produced by Matt Owen for
Solography Productions as a part of the Seneca Women Podcast
Network in partnership with iHeartRadio. Thanks for listening and don't
forget to subscribe, rate, and review the podcast.
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