Prachi Gupta (on the model minority myth)

Welcome, welcome, welcome to Armchair Expert, Experts. on Expert. I'm Doug Fairbanks and I'm joined by, hmm. Who am I today? What was the famous Mae actress?

story. Indian family. Yeah, but it speaks largely to token immigrants, basically. The.

model minority. Model minority, thank you. Yeah, the myth of the model minority. Yeah, and it's an important story. Although in your case, it's not a myth, I gotta say.

I didn't do any of the... Yeah, but I didn't, I did a much, I did a not model-y way to get there. Unconventional. Extremely. I didn't do any of the things that I was supposed to.

do to get there. And what else would you expect from Fanny Mae? That's right. Please enjoy.

little baby, Monica, safe her whole life. It did. We always had ADT and... You're here safely. Here I am.

ADT. Visit ADT.com today.

Isn't she wearing a cute jumpsuit? Yeah. Thank you. We love jumpsuits here. I love jumpsuits.

Yeah. They're the best. A full outfit in one. Exactly. Are you guys similar age?

August 24th. I'm 86.. Nice. Yeah. Well, you're a year and a half older than your brother.

Ashley? I don't really know what they're up to now, but when I was a kid, I did. Okay.

going to see if you like it. You're visiting from New York. Yes. Where do you live in New?

York? Brooklyn. What area of Brooklyn? Prospect Park. I don't know how well you know that.

area. I don't. I know Clinton Hill, because my favorite restaurant's there. Oh, what's.

your favorite restaurant? Emily Pizza. Okay. I've never been there. Emily Squared is what.

it's called. Oh, okay. They have amazing pizza, but we love the burger. I didn't have my first.

hamburger until I was like 20.. Oh, really? And I was like, oh, my God. This is really.

good. Life changing. It's hard to hate. My wife was vegetarian for what, like 32 years and ate a hamburger last year in Nashville and has eaten, this is an exaggeration, right?

Five, six a week since. Can't stop. Well, she definitely doesn't have an iron deficiency.

She doesn't any longer. She's going to have heart disease. now. She has some artery issues. Pulmonary health is in a nosedive.

podcast. I co-hosted a podcast called Big Time Dicks about the laws and lawmakers fucking up your life. It was at Jezebel. So it came for Politicon. This was several years ago.

to be honest. What side of the family was living in California? So my second cousin on my dad's side. Okay. So let's run through a brief history.

Pennsylvania, but in elementary school, I lived in Pittsburgh. Okay. And then you moved to kind.

of a nicer something. Valley? Lehigh Valley. Yeah. Is that where Carnegie lived?

clean. Yeah. There was certainly a certain part of Pittsburgh that was super nice and had all these like old mansions and the shady side area. But Lehigh Valley is on the other side of the state. Bethlehem Steel is also a steel town.

I don't think I know it. You do. And it starts with sounds of like. Yeah. Well, they're like industry sounds, but it's got an air horn.

Pennsylvania is a deceptively big state. It's about a six hour drive from one side to the other six and a half. And I moved to the Lehigh Valley when I was in eighth grade. So I was 13..

I love it when you get to call it the, like the Lehigh Valley. That's cool. The only,

the one and only. Sounds elevated. It really does. And your dad, was he a surgeon at this time yet?

He had finished his medical training. Yeah. So my dad was originally an engineer. I was born in California, in Silicon Valley, and then he decided to become a doctor. So that's when we moved across country, to New Jersey, then Pittsburgh, then main line area outside of Philly.

practicing surgeon. Oh, wow. So you had a lot of things that are very not desirable for a kid. First of all, you're other, you're Brown, but then you're also moving around nonstop. Cause, even if you're a tall honky like me, who moved to a lot of schools, the start over is rough.

But Philly has a big Indian community, doesn't it? It does. But where I lived,

not at all. It was very small. There was maybe a handful of other South Asian kids in high school. My brother and I were amongst the only ones that I knew. And it really was kind of isolating, but actually moving around a lot.

Brownness in a way. Your brother, Yush? Yeah. Yush, who's a year and a half younger than you. Yeah.

thriving. Yeah. We had always been really good students, but as a kid, I was the one who had naturally just loved school. I mean, I was super nerd. I was voted to student council every year.

remember. Probably Karen. Karen, Babysitter's Little Sister. That's your favorite series. Yeah, those are my favorite.

How did you fantasize? without fiction? I didn't stop reading fiction. So my dad banned me because I was reading fiction and I didn't know enough about simple machines and how they worked. So he grounded me from reading and then I was only allowed to read books about simple machines until, like he would like, quiz me and ask me questions about how they worked.

wasn't around as I kept reading. Rebellious. He must have been gone a lot though. Someone pursuing a medical degree and then practicing. Was he out most of the time?

and it was mostly my brother and I and my mom. We were kind of like a cohesive unit. And then, when he would come back, temperature would change? Yeah. When he came back, it was all business all the time.

Well, I did have to go. I did do a SAT prep, but that's just because I was bad at the SAT. So I did end up going to Kaplan class, but that's not Center for Talented Youth.

No, that doesn't sound nearly as good. That's like very lame. And they were not calling Duluth the Duluth. I know. Yeah, okay.

were both born in colonized India and then watched India's independence as teenagers, got married, raised a family. And then I think my grandfather must've been in his thirties or so. They both decided they were going to leave India. So they were already settled, and he was successful. And he gave all of that up.

That's a really flawed experiment, because even if I go to three different cities, I'm going to get three dramatically different service times.

Yeah, this is not scientific at all.

If I go to the South, it's going to take a fucking year to get something done.

Well, especially though, especially if you're brown at that time.

Yeah, and this is the 1960s. So Canada had shorter wait times. So he noticed that servers were a little bit nicer. Not that Canada is this utopia or anything, but that's why he decided to move to Canada. My father was about nine when that move happened.

Okay. So he wasn't born in California. I thought I heard you say he was born in California.

No, I was born in California.

You were born in California. Thank you. Okay. And then your mother, what age did she come?

So my dad grew up in Canada. And then, when he was, I guess, in his early 20s, he decided he wanted to have an arranged marriage. I didn't know that story until much later. I just assumed that my grandparents forced him to have an arranged marriage. But my grandfather was actually very opposed to the institution of arranged marriages.

the wife he got saddled with? I wouldn't put it that way.

So his own parents actually had a love marriage, which is what we call.

Right. I don't like that verbiage.

I don't either. I think if we're going to say arranged marriage, that's just marriage in the context of our history. So if we're going to specify that it's a specific type of marriage, then I think it makes sense to say love marriage.

For sure. It's good to differentiate. It's just such a weird. It is.

Because, since it's being positioned as antithetical to the other one, the arranged one doesn't have love, right? Exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But most certainly the arranged marriage didn't have love, as the impetus. Correct.

Yeah. Well, love of stability.

Stability and love of wanting to have a family. Yeah. So your grandfather, though, he wasn't up for that, but he did oblige your father.

Yeah. So then my dad went to India to find a bride.

Have you heard the details of that story? How does one go to India and procure this?

From my understanding of it, basically they put out some matrimonial ads. I wish I could see what that ad looked like. Yeah. But then also there was family networks involved. So you put out the call to all the relatives and then they put out the call to all the people they know.

Because you're shopping within your social strata. Yeah, yeah.

That's very important in an arranged marriage.

Yeah.

Where in India?

North India. So my dad's from the Delhi area.

And from her point of view, what was that experience like? Terrifying? You're getting a husband you've not met and you're going to another country you've never been to.

I mean, it must have been absolutely terrifying.

Yes. Unless. she's like you and she loves a new star.

Yeah. You know, she's the only one of her siblings who made that choice. Everyone else had strong roots in the city. I always wondered why she made that choice and why she decided that this is what she wanted to do.

Is it possible she didn't make the choice that her parents did?

No, she wanted to because she was actually previously engaged to somebody else. And her father had helped broker this. But then, when she saw how their family treated the future husband's sibling who had mental illness, she didn't like that. So she actually broke off that engagement. Okay.

Yeah. And not false advertisement.

I would say that it kind of is false advertisement.

Oh, so, like your father, your grandfather, the dream they were pursuing, they achieved.

They did. But what is sort of eclipsed by that? There's a couple of things. One is that in America, that dream is not accessible to most people. We see the massive wealth inequality and racial inequality and the gap there.

They wanted educated professionals.

Exactly. So. it was a creation of this professional class, chosen from people who have social privilege back home as well. Then they're coming into a country that has a serious history of slavery and racial segregation. Growing up, I didn't know this history and I didn't really know how I fit in.

Yeah, high, achieving academically, financially, the family values, they don't get divorced.

Exactly.

That's tricky, though, because that's a stereotype and a statistical reality.

Here.

Yeah, yeah. Asians over index on all other ethnicities in this country.

Yeah. But the difference is that it's not because it's some innate.

Oh, right. Yes. And that's the part. Genetically, we're not different. Exactly.

And that's the part that gets eclipsed. The systems have changed. There have been so many more ways of immigration since then. So we have such a diverse population.

Kids. I mean, so many generations.

And so Asian-Americans have also the highest income inequality and disparity of any ethnic group.

Meaning within. Within, yeah. There's a bunch of very, very impoverished groups. And then there's some really high achieving groups within this enormous, blanket statement of Asians.

Right. Yeah.

I mean, as we get further and further away from that first wave, the stereotypes become less and less relevant at all. Everyone just becomes ultimately American, but the stereotype still hangs.

Yeah.

Which is a problem.

Exactly. Because that stereotype was used in the 1960s to argue, and it's still used to argue, that, look, if this group of people of color can succeed, then why can't the rest of you?

Well, I think that's a great point. And then you quote in there from U.S. News and Reports, where we get our. We get so much. On the list.

Yeah. And so that's why there's that caveat about the American dream, because when you use the ability to climb the hierarchy for one group of people and you use that to deny rights for others, it's maintaining the status quo. It's disabling people from achieving that idea of the American dream.

I had one curiosity about your kind of overarching thought. Sometimes I interpreted what you were saying as this was a game plan that has been executed, as opposed to, in my opinion, where life is chaotic and we are all self-organizing, complex systems. That first thing that happens is like, well, if we're going to let people in, let's let people in. that could benefit the country. So then you get this really lopsided entry from highly educated Asians coming here.

I think you're right. It's not this diabolical scheme. I mean, another part of it was the pressure in the Cold War. The Soviet Union was pointing to American racism and saying they're so hypocritical. They call themselves a democracy, but look at the racism there.

The government funded, like jazz, expeditions to send around the world to say, look at how we're treating black folk.

Yeah.

And the response is so wild.

There was a big push. I think that that actually came from a positive place. It was a well-intentioned policy and idea to open up the borders and change that. And I think the story that was created, though, was based on observations about this professional class, but the way stereotypes work, it became the entire story. And it just flattened all the history and removed all of that.

So I think it might be interesting to first start with your brother, since that is the chronology of how you decide to write this book, which is like you first decide to open up about your brother's story and then, based on the response of that, you recognize, okay, I'd like to tell the even broader story. Let's go over some of the pressures. It's very interesting to learn your story and then also to know Monica's really intimately and how much they're different.

Although the thing is, what's unfortunate, you know, the details of my life intimately, and now we're learning the details of your life, so we can see the difference. But anyone else who's just looking at us would say, we're the same. Oh, we're both doing well. And we...

Both hot.

We both look great. We both like jumpsuits.

wrong. Obviously, there's some enormous expectation. Do we think it's fair to say of all first generation or no? We think it's specific.

I think it's probably fair to say that in general, immigrants and their children feel...

Most immigrants went through hell to get here. Yeah, exactly.

Regardless of race, I can only speak to my experience. But I imagine that all immigrants and their children feel an immense pressure to belong and then also to maintain the connection. You gotta live out your parents' dream.

Yeah, there's a guilt.

Yeah, there's a guilt. And you're the embodiment of all of their hopes and their dreams for coming to this country and what they gave up to be here. And I think, as children of immigrants, we feel that. Sure. It's pretty universal.

Now, your brother, though... Can we tell your brother's story? Yeah. And, by the way, I would really encourage people to read stories about my brother that you wrote in Jezebel. It's really, really beautifully written.

I mean, he was everything that I wanted to be. He turned into my role model. We were very high-achieving kids, but then, when I got into high school, I sort of burned out and I started to rebel. And I was this artsy kid. I realized I had a talent for running, so I was really into cross-country.

So I was going to ask, was the rebelling was just your interest? you were pursuing?

So the rebelling came from not being allowed to do those things and the anger that I had, that I had to be this thing, that I wasn't.

What did they want for you?

My dad wanted me to go into something very professional, business or law. I don't think I was really ever going to be smart enough to go into medicine or engineering, so I don't think that was the pressure for me, but it was the next best thing.

There's a lot, even within that.

Yeah, there were tears.

There's like a little maybe misogyny. I can't imagine your brother was truly smarter than you. I'm sure you guys are pretty comparable.

Yeah, it was a different type of intelligence, I would say, and he would definitely have agreed with that. But he also just had this brilliance that he could just create things that were science fiction to me. So I burned out, and I was angry too, and there was misogyny. Being an Indian girl, there were a lot of pressures on me that my brother didn't deal with. Like he was allowed to date, I wasn't.

From your mom too?

It was really more from my dad. My mom was actually really liberal and open, and my dad was a lot more conservative, which is interesting because he grew up here, and I think there's a perception that people have that like, oh, in America-.

You become so progressive.

Yeah, but I found the opposite can also be true because of the way that race can be gendered.

Oh, for sure.

So a lot of Asian-ness can be feminized. And so from the male perspective, like if there's a threat to that, then you want to use that power and kind of get that out elsewhere. So I feel like that dynamic was also at play.

Were you on the side talking to boys or doing anything?

Oh, yeah. I was like sneaking them into my basement, and I was like, I forged my report cards. I lied about my grades. I was failing at school.

Oh, wonderful.

So I got a C in pre-cal. My brother was two grades ahead in math, so he was in pre-cal too at the same time. And he's a year and a half younger. Yeah, and he's a year and a half younger. And I got a C in it, which means they made me retake it, which, like a C, isn't-.

C in pre-cal is kind of a win, actually.

So I retook it. And the next year, because I was so annoyed at both the administration and my dad, I sat in the back of the room and I read the play Faust. That's all I did the whole year. And I got a C. I think I got a C plus.

Oh, University of Pittsburgh. Okay, so that's not in the same stratus, Penn.

No, but I really loved Pitt and I'm so glad I went there.

And what did you major in there?

So I studied English writing and finance.

Okay. Finance was to appease your parents?

When I got to college, I was like, okay, I'm going to straighten out, but now I'm going to try to do it for me. I was sort of out of my father's control and was like, I want to do well, but I also want to do what I want to do. So I was trying to figure out how to do both. So I sort of became this overachiever, but it was an effort to prove to him that I was capable of taking control of my life.

Being spectacular on yet a different route.

Exactly. So. it was still kind of playing into these expectations, but like trying to do it a little bit differently.

Yeah, it's weird. It's like you want to send a big fuck you to him. Which would really just to be like a barista and write poems. Yeah. Yet, you're like, well, I'm still going to be fucking exceptional.

But I still really want to be great.

Yeah. Okay. Now your brother, so he goes to Carnegie Mellon and he does major in computer science. Exactly what we would hope for any young Indian boy to follow the computer science route. And he does, and he's spectacular at it.

Yeah. So, unlike me, Yush, he hit all the boxes. I was the black sheep of the family. He was like the golden boy. What I didn't understand then, and what I see now, is that I think that pressure of that really crushed him, because he didn't know what it was like to fail at something and be okay.

Well, if he failed at something, he would be valueless because his value proposition was succeeding academically or professionally. And the cracks start to materialize in college, right? A roommate of his discovers a suicide note and then brings that to your attention.

Right.

Is that an enormous shock?

It was completely out of left field. So when I graduated college, I went into management, consulting, my dad's vision for me. And my first week on this new project that I just started at the consulting firm. and I got this call at midnight and I ignored it because it was a number I didn't recognize. And then I got a call again and I answered, and it was one of my brother's close friends.

Of course you didn't. I don't know my own license plate. Right.

And at the time I was like, oh my God, I'm so stupid. How could I have forgotten his license plate? After that, I made a point to remember.

You know, tattooed on your wrist.

Right. And I was alone in this hotel room just pacing around. I called my boyfriend at the time and woke him up and was like, what do I do? Do I call my parents? And he was like, yeah, of course you call your parents.

Yeah.

And I did call them, of course. And then they drove in the middle of the night and went to Pittsburgh. I mean, I honestly don't know how much time passed, but I called my brother and left him so many voicemails. And he called me back and he was just like laughing. His voice sounded like it wasn't coming from his body, like it was coming from somewhere else.

Oh, Jesus.

The logic that happens.

I know, I know. When you're trying to control something you can't control.

Exactly. And so, when we hugged, my brother was sobbing in my arms and I was holding him so tight and tears were falling down my face, but I refused to let him see me cry. And now I wonder, in that moment, what we were teaching him about his own mental health. And the fact that he had gone so far down this path and struggled so much with thoughts of suicide, the pressure that he felt to keep that in, and the way that, even in the aftermath, he learned that he couldn't express those feelings and he couldn't be sad. He couldn't admit that he needed help.

Or show your own vulnerability.

Exactly. And now I know statistically, like at the time, we thought, how could this happen? Everything was so perfect. He was doing all the things that we're supposed to do. to be happy.

I did something wrong, obviously, if I'm not happy right now.

Exactly. And I think we were all dealing with that. And we didn't understand that these things that we were accomplishing, they did give us stability and they did give us status, but they didn't give us inner peace. They actually hindered our ability to be ourselves with each other, because what we had learned to do was block out anything that was seen as a flaw or a vulnerability, because we were constantly trying to project this image of success and fit into this image of success. It was heightened as brown people, as people who wanted to fit in and belong.

Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert, if you dare.

Yeah, I like that. Have you heard? the one, comparison is the thief of joy?

Yes.

That's a good one, too. It is.

If you want to give therapy a chance, start with BetterHelp. It's entirely online and designed to be convenient. To get started, all you have to do is fill out a brief questionnaire and you'll be matched with a licensed therapist. So stop comparing and start focusing with BetterHelp. Visit betterhelp.com slash dax today to get 10% off your first month.

I show this dynamic in the essay and in the book, I really explore how this happened and why. In our home, the dynamics were not great. We projected this image that we were supposed to project, but my home was volatile and it was chaotic. And we witnessed and experienced things. It's hard for me to talk about, even though I wrote a book about it.

Can I tell you something? Yeah. That's so common. Yeah. You feel very safe in your room writing the book, and then you're out in public and you don't have control of this situation.

It's harder.

Yeah.

But I hope you know, of all places, this is the one.

And I've heard you speak candidly about your experiences and home life as well. So I know that this is a good environment.

I like people more who've seen some nice violence in their household. I relate a lot better to people who have felt that atmospheric pressure change on a dime. And how do we appease this out of control rage man right now so that he doesn't further?

harm us? It's more common than people think. I think a lot of people have some level of experience. Even if it's not full-blown violence, at least the temperature change.

Well, let's just look at the statistics in Body Keeps the Score. 25% of all romantic relationships have physical violence in them. 40% of all children have experienced physical abuse. So it's not a fringe experience. In fact, it's-.

This is why it's so important to talk about.

This perception that defined my existence adds this pressure that makes it even harder to talk about. I'm very aware, one, of the perception of this model minority that I'm supposed to maintain. And then two, just being brown, being a person of color in America, I'm very defensive about wanting to- Like, I know that people look at you and they expect a certain thing, and I feel the pressure of that.

Well, I would imagine that you have to innately and intuitively know that if we are not succeeding and having happy families, we're going to join the other groups in this country that are minorities and the view that goes along with that.

Exactly, yeah.

Stakes are quite high, because you can visually look in the media and see how black folks are getting treated.

Right. And I mean, that's also part of why we have to talk about all this stuff. Keep maintaining that status quo. Maintaining that hierarchy is messed up for everybody. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Can I maybe just state it for you? Yeah. Dad was really mercurial and he was physical. He was very abusive to mom. You're very careful to not use the word abuse until quite late in the book.

And it was the one thing that we didn't know how to talk about, and we began to talk about in very binary terms where, like I, began to use the word abuse, and my brother saw that as judgment. And I understand his perspective now, because we can't see the people that we love as black and white, because we love them. Yeah. And they hurt us. So how do you reconcile those two things?

Not to defend them, but also it's a deep, deep feeling of, if you threaten this image we've created, you're threatening our safety.

Yes.

So we're not safe if we're as fucked up as our neighbors because we're not permitted to have any flaws.

We're not allowed to be.

Exactly. And that invites in all sorts of things like surveillance, violence, gossip, being ostracized, humiliation.

Telling on each other, like the communist system, ratting each other out, exposing one another.

No, this is a stereotype. I was about to make a stereotype too.

I want to hear you finally make one.

I was going to say, it's a bit of a gossipy culture as well. In my experience with my grandparents and their circle, which is really the only Indian group dynamic, I knew, it was quite gossipy. But that could have just been my grandma.

Also, I think that's family. Families are very gossipy. My mother was just visiting. Let me fill you in on how we're basically outachieving the morally-.

And it becomes an extension of your family. when it's this small amount of people in white America. It's like, oh, these other Indian people, I guess, like act as your family.

There's all these rungs of competition. It's like you're competing with society at large, but then you're also competing within your own family network. You're competing against your siblings, against your cousins, your aunts and your uncles.

Plus, when you are in a family system where people don't talk about their feelings, they have to come out somehow. Exactly. So. instead of talking about your feelings directly, you talk about other people and what they're doing. And that's how we sort of signal what our values or our own feelings are in a safe way, rather than just telling somebody directly.

So you started pushing back and then your brother didn't appreciate that, didn't agree with your assessment.

Yeah. And I think this came between us because he saw his role in the family as the one to try to keep everybody together.

Yeah. He's got to take over where your dad leaves off. Yeah.

He learned how to be funny, to sort of fit in. So in our family, he was a peacemaker. So that's what he was trying to do was hold us all together.

He's like, why can't you just shut up about this?

Exactly. Exactly. It was kind of like that.

I'm thrown out of jokes to ease this tension with mom and dad.

I don't have any more jokes. Can you stop?

Fresh out of jokes. Could you take your foot off the gas? Yeah. Yeah.

And I was like, fuck, no. Right.

Fuck. no. I got a lead foot.

You're my best friend. Defend me. And he did to a point, but it just got too hard for him too. And then he had also then absorbed all these messages about masculinity. Like he was trying to belong in a culture where he learned you're not supposed to talk about your feelings.

Submissive.

Yeah.

Well, you point out in the book, which is good. It's like you have big bang theory as an example. Everything in the media thus far is yeah. The Indian dudes on a computer helping Schwarzenegger break into the compound.

Exactly. So. one of the things I do in the book is I tie in history and research to show how these stories and stereotypes came to be. This one came from when East Asian laborers were in this country in the early 1800s, the laws around the time pushed them into jobs that were mostly devalued by white men. So domestic labor type jobs.

I have a very fringe theory on all this. Just to add another layer, which is, I also think all these masculinity tropes are really, really present in how white America views the other ethnicities. So from the outside, I would say, of all the ethnicities, white folks seem to be pretty open to Asians being here and pretty supportive of that. White men feel very threatened by black men. They're fearful of them.

Yeah, absolutely. And I think this shows the relationship between racism and white supremacy and patriarchy. So the way in which these systems reinforce each other and replicate. So these pressures then create these gender dynamics within our own sub communities and cultures that are just the same exact things from, you know, white supremacy coming down. And then within our own communities, we're seeing that happen too.

Well, like colorism. as a result of this. I think we need to say that your brother gets what I would call pretty fringe male rightsy. Yeah. Like.

I mean, I didn't either. We became estranged. He turned into somebody I didn't recognize. And I will never know or understand the man that he became. I didn't like that person.

Well, his final act is really telling of how he was feeling.

Yeah. He pursued a leg lengthening surgery and we had been estranged at the time. So I didn't even know that he was doing this. He told me that he was in Italy working on some new startup company. And I was like, well, that's a little weird that you're in Italy for that.

I think what's really, really interesting about that whole last chapter is the correspondence that you uncover about people challenging his decision to go pursue this.

Yeah.

And how dangerous it is to be smart, truly, because he is pushing back and he's acknowledging, I can see where you would think this, but actually it's not about that. It's about this. He has whipped himself into an explanation of this, that he believes, which no one around him believes. And that, to me, is the really heartbreaking moment of all, because who isn't guilty of a delusion that you're smart enough to create and out of fear of just saying out loud what you're afraid of or what makes you feel vulnerable and scared to live in this world?

Yeah. You can obviously speak better to this than I can. I feel like men are often pushed into that kind of space where, when we don't give them the ability to talk about their emotions, we tell them it's not safe to talk about your emotions. You have to intellectualize everything in your decisions. And I think, as a South Asian man, as a Brown man, that pressure doubly existed because then you're taught through the model minority myth that hard work can solve any problem and that your intellect is innate to you and is your way out of all your problems.

Well, and he was on and off SSRIs, which I'm sure he thought was a weakness when he was on them and then he wasn't following the best program probably to help.

Yeah, there's a big gap in our mental health system for Asian Americans, for people of color in general.

You said they're three times less likely to go to therapy.

Yeah, to seek therapy. And then, even when they do, I mean, 85% of psychiatrists in this country are white. Most don't have the cultural competency to understand the experiences or even begin to really do the kind of effective work that you can do in therapy. So I think, for all of these reasons, he couldn't get the help that he needed and didn't have the kind of role models or support that would have helped him, I think, go down a different path. And even though I could have been one of those people, because I had been diminished within the family system as a woman and as a woman seen as breaking the family, I was the last person that he would have accepted help from in that regard.

Yeah, might've felt to him like he was conceding. you were right the whole time.

Oh, my God.

It's so heartbreaking.

I'm so sorry.

One part of it I got curious about was what was happening for him, mate selection wise, because I feel like that's such a driver of why we do anything.

I think his perception was very different from the reality of it. It's interesting. When I interviewed his friends and asked them about this, a lot of his friends saw him as a sort of God. They were like, he could talk to women and they all wanted to date him, and it was so easy for him and we were all so jealous. And then, like one of our good friends who's Indian origin said, Yash was sort of the epitome of what I thought that I could be one day, like in my best self, maybe.

The high water mark.

Yeah. And it was so interesting the contrast between that and how Yash saw himself. So he couldn't see that. All he saw was the tall, somebody who looked like-.

You say me.

Yeah, like it's actually you. He saw you and was like, that guy can get all of this and I can't get that and I'll never be able to get that. And I understand that experience, because as a brown girl, I felt that way too. When I saw a tall, blonde, white woman, I could see the power that she had in a room that I would never have. I had people say things like that to me and I don't know if like- A hundred percent.

Yeah. These are things you just will never unhear too. Like you can't unhear that.

Yeah, her parents worked at Dairy Queen.

Yeah. My parents worked at Dairy Queen. They didn't, but like that was enough. Dad was an engineer. Mom was a computer.

They're not real and yet then they shape our realities and you internalize that. Whereas I think Yash had internalized a lot of these messages. The reason that happened was because he fit so many of the quote unquote tropes as his natural self. Like he was smart at science and math. He was naturally brilliant and he was so many things that conform to the stereotype.

It wasn't enjoyable.

It wasn't enjoyable. You get this little bit of validation and then that goes away.

You're living for the day the grade comes out and it's an A. Yeah. Or the day the acceptance letter arrives. But nothing before those moments is pleasurable or necessarily fun.

And those things also depend on other people's assessments that are kind of made up in a way, right?

Yeah, it's all made up.

These are all metrics that somebody decided mattered. Now we're competing to be seen this way. But like getting a good grade doesn't mean that you are a kind person. It doesn't mean that you're happy.

It doesn't mean you'll be successful necessarily.

Right. It cannot define your whole worth. And I think so many of us are raised to see these things as that.

Let me ask you, though, do you think this problem just inherently solves itself, in that all second and third generation kids will be liberated from that? Or do you not think so?

I don't think that those pressures will really go away. But what I do think is that they also don't have to be as intense as they are. Like. I think that we're in a moment where we have now a couple generations here. We have the ability to understand the history, the context, how these stereotypes were created.

Yeah, it's just so much is stacked against all of us. I mean, you look at what's happening on dating apps and how 93% of women are choosing these 4% of men. There's all these crazy forces that you would hope to transcend, but are still very much a part of our reality. Like what your income is, is going to dramatically shape who you're with and your academic achievement is going to do. The force of mate selection is not stopped.

I think it will. But at the same time, you know, that dating advice, it would always kind of annoy me, but it was like, well, if they don't choose you, it doesn't matter. Like you got... Spared. Yeah, exactly.

But the only thing, if we believe this data, that's out right now, like Scott Galloway's toting, and a lot of different behavioral scientists are talking about, 96% of males can't just decide, well, then, who cares that? I don't have a date?

But here's the thing. You don't need. to date 96% of people. You only need to find one or two people who get you. And it's just so hard in general to meet somebody who you connect with like that.

Yeah, it's just interesting. The prevailing advice right now for young men is they used to be in college at a rate of 75% of the population of colleges was men. Now it's under 40%. So less are going to college. Dating has transitioned to not the workplace, but these apps.

It's not go to college and achieve some stuff. It's be a person worthy of a relationship. It used to be the opposite, where men had complete control and power. So they just picked, I want this hot girl and he got her. And now that is changing, because women have a lot more power and a lot more agency.

I think it's gotten worse, Monica. I think what you're seeing from at least the data of the apps is that the 4% who have the money and the height, they're getting now all of the women as opposed to...

It's not just money and height, though. I've looked at these apps. What is this person going to offer? Not money and height, personality. Because I do think for a very long time, men didn't put that much effort into a personality, because we all did value other things.

You think women have stopped valuing that?

I think women who are successful on their own don't care if the guy has a ton of money because they have money. So they just need a good partner.

But again, there's all this very, very conclusive data that women only date laterally and above. So I disagree with that. Statistically, that's not actually what's happening. Men date laterally and below. Women date laterally and above.

Yeah, I don't know.

I don't know. I just, I want the same solution. Yeah. But I think some of the questions aren't really being addressed. I think there's very strong forces that were kind of, oh yeah, that'll work itself.

I certainly don't have the answer to how we address that. I will say, though, that one of the things that I want to try to do with the book is show how we have these large systems at play that shape our realities. Maybe this is overly optimistic of me, but I do believe that, in our personal lives, when we start to make slightly different choices, when we start to hold the people we love accountable, when we start to make decisions that like, okay, I'm going to date beyond these criteria. When we start to make small decisions like that, they do have ripple effects. And I do think that that is how we begin to change these larger cultural issues and systems that you're talking about.

Yeah. I wish actually personality was obvious on an app. I don't think it's really that easy.

That's why I hate apps.

Yeah. How does one know if someone's really funny and a great listener by looking at their profile on an app? I just think the technology is like kind of compounding an already terrible problem.

Yeah. I wonder what the percentages of people currently in relationships that are from apps.

Yeah, I would love to know that too.

Because I think that makes a difference.

My mom is in the app category, as you know.

It's working out.

Yeah, she's very happy. Last thing I would like to ask you about is, once you write stories about my brother and you see the reaction, I imagine it was very scary to publish that.

It was.

But then again, I bet you had had the experience where so many people felt seen by this article and related.

I was blown away by that response. I heard from immigrant moms who said, I had no idea my kids might be struggling with their mental health, and now we're going to start talking about mental health in my household. I heard from Asian boys and men who said, I was going down a very similar path as your brother. And this essay convinced me not to and to find a different way. And now I'm talking about my mental health and my friends and I are talking about it with other boys.

What is it, do you think, Monica, if you had to explain why your father, Ashok, was so not stereotypical towards Nurmi and you?

It's all I keep thinking about.

Because I feel like within there is some hopeful recipe of confronting it.

Yeah, my dad is not like your dad. I have to just be very honest about that.

And he came in his 20s, early 20s?

Yep, for his master's. And I guess we'd have to ask him. I think he would say he was in love with his mom.

His own mother.

Yes, and really with such deep respect, and still speaks of her that way. And he has an older sister. He very much respects her too. And she was super successful, and he was the baby and kind of, which I think is funny now, he was sort of the black sheep.

The goofball.

Yeah, like he was sort of the Wobby Wob rascal type.

Okay, I love Wobby Wob, so I'm gonna love his show.

But he was not the one achieving the other people in his world.

So maybe he had already surrendered that he wasn't gonna be the big star of the family?

Well, I think he just probably early on.

It wasn't his identity?

It wasn't his identity. Because I think even when he moved to the States, it was kind of like, I guess I'll try this type thing. I'm definitely going to the United States and I'm doing this. It's just his personality. I think I got lucky.

He seems very egalitarian.

And maybe also being the youngest, he's had to just kind of bop around with what other people are doing and not care. I don't know. But I mean, sometimes he does like yell and stuff.

Everyone's gotta yell occasionally.

I guess.

I mean, your dad sounds awesome.

Thank you. He is very lucky.

Her mom's fucking radical too, though.

Well, she's not taking any shit. Not that anyone lets anything happen when they're in an abusive relationship. It's so complicated. But she's running the ship.

I think there are a couple things. So in my family, I think it's very interesting that, like my grandfather, for example, started identifying as a feminist when he was in his 80s. He was sort of the traditional Indian patriarch. When I became a journalist, he would start calling me up. He would tear up when he talked about Malala.

You're not the one woman hype squad for all.

We would talk about feminism, and he was, like, God's, a misogynist. He would say really radical things. And this is my dad's dad. I think what's so interesting with this dynamic is I always felt like I couldn't tell my story because I was so afraid of confirming stereotypes. But in telling my story, what I realized is that those stereotypes also formed roadmaps for members of my family.

What was the age difference?

There's no age difference. Yeah, same age. But there is that power differential, right?

She's joining his life. He's not joining her life.

You don't have your family here. You don't have a job. You don't have the ability to have a job because of immigration status at first. And so there were all these factors at play that created this. And then it sort of confirmed socially the roles.

Well, the book is so beautifully written. You're such a great writer. I'm sure you already know that, but it's just very elegantly and beautifully written. And I don't think it could have been easy. I didn't start telling stories, probably about my dad, until he was passed.

It's essentially a love letter to my mom. My parents are still alive.

And are they together still? Yes.

I agonized over this so much. I'm struggling right now with a lot of shame over talking about this and exposing it. So if my brother were still alive, I would not have written this book. I would have hoped that we would find a way to reconcile or at least just whatever relationship we could have had. I would not have been willing to sacrifice that.

But also imagine there's an additional pressure on you, which is this notion that, well, Indian Americans should be very grateful at all times because they've come here and, as you say, they've become the wealthiest ethnicity. And so they should be grateful, and to be critical of anything here seems ungrateful.

There is that.

Like that, you don't have the right to be critical.

So in that pressure, I think it's just like continuing to increase. So I think we need to like deflate that a bit and begin opening up about these issues, because I'm not the only person in the world or in the community who's dealing with them. And I do struggle too with the estrangement aspect. I find that there's so much stigma and shame around estrangement. It's also really common.

Yeah, I feel like the steps are kind of like you get the confidence to say, there's only one version of a relationship I want. Here are the rules by which I'll play by. And then, if that person refuses to meet you there, at that point for your own self-protection, sometimes the best option is to go like, well, then I'd rather not go down this pathway because I feel terrible after every time. I'm gonna prioritize me over you.

Yeah, because it really takes a toll on your mental health. I was destroying myself. Like I was having suicidal ideation. I was like fantasizing about suicide and I couldn't keep doing this to myself. And the reason that I wrote all this to my mom is because I have so much empathy for her and so much compassion.

It's funny, though, because I read an interview with you and the interviewer immediately wants to know like, well, has it been repaired? Like that? you cannot resist, right? Like over all that. That person's curiosity was immediately, then.

That makes people feel safe.

But it also, I think, perpetuates the shame and stigma over estrangement, because it makes people feel like the choices that they've made to create this distance are wrong.

And it's only an okay ending if there's a reconciliation.

Exactly.

This is counter to that, but it's funny, as I was at that point with my dad at one point and I had a therapist and I said, you know, I think I'm getting off this ride. And the therapist said, you're entitled to do that for sure. I think the only question you just have to ask yourself is are you the type of person that doesn't talk to your dad? And I was like, hmm, I don't think of myself as someone who won't talk to my dad. Like, oh, that's interesting.

That is interesting. I don't think my therapist would ever ask me that. And, to be honest, yeah. But I also think that these things, there's, no one size fits all solution. It's so specific.

And your mom's, not my dad and I'm not you.

I think around estrangement too, because we don't talk about it that much, I was always trying to find answers from other people. And ultimately you can only answer that for yourself.

Well, and as you said, part of the myth is really great family values, high overachieving in academic success and financial and professional. And so if you reject the academic and the professional, the last thing is, yes, you're dismantling yet the third kind of tenet to it all.

Yeah. There aren't that many estrangement stories in general. And a lot of the ones that we do have are either written after a parent has died or they've reconciled. I don't think that I could have waited emotionally. And maybe this is selfish of me, but I knew that I would never be able to move forward in my life, mentally, physically, emotionally, if I didn't write this.

It sounds like it's in defense of your brother's memory in a weird way. Yeah.

It is because his brilliance was really glorified and romanticized. Even at his funeral, that was the number one thing that people were talking about.

Yeah.

And I got up there at his funeral. Originally, I wasn't going to speak because I was like, I don't feel like I have a right to speak. He was estranged from me and was really angry with me. But then, when I started hearing everyone talking about how smart he was, I felt really angry because I was like, he was so much more than that as a person. And I think if he had really known that and known that he was valued beyond just his intelligence or his work ethic, then maybe he'd still be here.

Rhymes Pratchy Pratchy.

Welcome to the Pratchy Pratch was what it was called. It was just like saying my name in various ways over and over again. Welcome you to the Pratchy Pratch. So I just got up there and read that poem, and it was like my tribute to him.

Well, what I admire is that, and I often tell myself here, I'm really open about things after they've happened. or I've worked through them, or I've come to my conclusion, or I've resolved it or made amends. I'm very reluctant to say like, no, right now, today, I'm struggling with X, Y, and Z. It's much scarier for me to let you know. Oh no, currently I'm struggling, not just after I've resolved it all.

Yeah.

And it's hard.

It acknowledges the uncertainty, right? It like requires us to-.

Well, and it's antithetical to story. You and I are both storytellers.

Yeah.

And so story needs an ending, and this is not, this is up in the air. You and your mother could be eating fudge at Mackinac Island next year. You might not be, we don't know. Right.

That's what I wanted to do with it is show the honesty of what it feels like to live in this space. Because for many of us, when we are dealing with estrangement, that pain is ongoing and it's uncertain and it's unresolved. And we don't know when or how it will be resolved. Sometimes it goes until somebody dies, or right before they die. And then we tell that story afterwards and we can offer that resolution.

Yeah. Well, this has been incredible to talk to you and to meet you. And I, again, think the book's so beautiful. And I think so many people, as you say, one in four, are estranged. I think this will speak to so many different people.

Oh, good question. I wouldn't mind talking about therapy a little bit.

Yeah, let's do that. Yeah, let's do that. Yeah. So what has been your own journey with therapy? At what age did you look into that?

So when I was in management consulting, that was the year that my brother attempted suicide. And then, a couple months later, my dad attempted suicide and I needed help. I was at this job where I was severely depressed, and I didn't realize that I was severely depressed. But I was pretending like everything was okay. So I would go into work.

I came home. What's Yellowtail?

It's just this cheap, cheap wine. It was like 10 bucks.

I was going to ask how much you drink. You had different childhoods. We both love wine. Build a bridge on that.

I do love red wine. It was low class wine and cheese night. I would go home. I would turn on Law and Order, SVU. I would sit in front of the couch.

Wow. You know, I hate to say this, but as an addict, that sounds good to me. Like when I watch these movies where someone's down and out and they're down, I'm like, yeah, I kind of like that. Because you're doing everything. you know you're not supposed to.

I'm going to eat this bag of cheese. Yeah, but that's exactly right. Like, I don't give a fuck. I don't care about my life. I don't care about my health.