Ep 10 – Netflix Comedy Specials & Heidi Heilig’s YA Duology

Lin has been enjoying Netflix comedy specials and she recommends a number of shows that tackle immigration and cultural translation with humour and panache. Such as Maz Jobrani’s Immigrant, Vir Das’s Abroad Understanding and Losing It, Gabriel Iglesias’s I’m Sorry For What I Said When I Was Hungry, Hari Kondabolu’s Warn Your Relatives, Mo Amer’s The Vegabond, Ali Wong’s Baby Cobra and Hard Knock Wife, Gina Yashere’s Laughing to America and Skinny Bitch, and Tig Notaro’s Happy To Be Here and TIG.

Margrit talks about Heidi Heilig’s fantasy duology, The Girl from Everywhere & The Ship beyond Time. Heilig weaves myth & history from all over the world in these beautifully written books, thus taking the whole Eurocentric genre of fantasy in a global direction.

Question of the episode: What stories have you read that paints the world from a non-dominant point of view?

Join the conversation on Twitter at @World_ofStories or email us at worldofstoriespodcast@gmail.com. 

Transcript

Margrit 0:00
Welcome to World of Stories. I’m Margrit, and my pronoun is they.

Lin 0:03
I’m Lin and my pronouns are she and we’re here to talk about diversity in storytelling.

Margrit 0:08
So Lin, what stories have you been into lately?

Lin 0:11
I have been really enjoying some comedy specials on Netflix. There are tons of them. And some of them are specials that comedians have recorded elsewhere. And then Netflix’s has bought the rights to and then some of them are Netflix-produced ones and I’m particularly liking the ones by comedians from minority communities. And there’s again a lot of them, I haven’t watched all of them yet, but you know, comedy is–well, especially standup comedy is about making observations of the world and then sort of recasting them in a way that highlights the absurdity of the world.

Margrit 0:54
Right, right.

Lin 0:55
And the things that we take for granted and so I think comedians from minority groups, you know, they obviously see all the microaggressions and the not-so microaggressions that they have to deal with and marginalized people have to deal with on an everyday basis and, and then they make fun of that stuff. And so it’s kind of like okay, yeah, we can laugh about this. We can survive this. Maybe it’s not so, not so bad. Or maybe we can. Yeah, we can survive this.

Margrit 1:22
Yeah, no. And it’s a good, sort of barometer of how accepting of diversity a certain society is, right? Because when we, when we recorded our episode with Jackie Lau, we were talking about how bad stereotyping happens in comedies in which certain minorities are targeted for certain, you know, traits, right?

Lin 1:50
Mm hmm. Yeah, and this is sort of flipping it on its head and saying, like, listen, we’re gonna make fun of racism and we’re gonna make fun of homophobia and we’re gonna make fun of all these things that are, are bad in and of themselves, but we can show you how really absurd it is to be racist and to be homophobic and all of these things. Yeah. And I think the other thing with a lot of these shows, particularly these ones that end up being quite political, is that they can get really serious. So there’s a number of these shows that at one point, at some point in the show, it’s not funny anymore, and people don’t laugh because you realize, oh, it’s like funny up to a certain point. And then the comedian like, pushes it that like, just pushes it over the line. You’re like, oh, yeah, that’s, it’s funny until it’s not funny.

Margrit 2:43
Because it’s art and art sometimes makes you uncomfortable, right?

Lin 2:46
Yeah, yeah, exactly. So I, I figured I would run through a list of some of the ones I’ve really been enjoying and some of these I’ve actually rewatched because they’re so good. There’s a couple out there that are pretty big names and so I won’t bother with those. I’ll just go with ones that I hadn’t heard of before until I started sort of digging through Netflix.

Margrit 3:12
Right.

Lin 3:14
So the first one is Maz Jobrani and his special is called Immigrant. He is a Persian Muslim American, his family immigrated to the US when he was a kid. So he grew up in the US and he talks about being an immigrant in the current US administration.

Margrit 3:32
Oh, wow.

Lin 3:34
Yeah, he does a lot of sort of like singing and dancing type of stuff. That’s great.

Margrit 3:38
I love that.

Lin 3:40
Yeah. Another one is Vir Das. He is Indian, like Indian Indian comedian, and he has two specials on Netflix. The first one is called Abroad Understanding, which is really cool because it’s shot in New Delhi and in New York. It’s the same set that he performs in both places. And then in the Netflix show they switch back and forth between the two audiences. So you can see how the same joke plays differently in the two audiences. It’s really cool.

Margrit 4:08
That sounds so cool.

Lin 4:09
Yeah, yeah, it’s really cool. And then his other special is called Losing It. And he talks about a lot of inequalities both in the US and in India and how some of the inequalities are the same and some of the inequalities are different.

Margrit 4:23
Right.

Lin 4:27
Gabriel Iglesias, he’s got one called, I’m Sorry for What I Said When I was Hungry.

Margrit 4:35
I think Netflix has suggested this one to me.

Lin 4:38
He’s hilarious, and he’s super cute. He’s like an adorable, adorable man. He’s Mexican American, and he makes a lot of like, wholesome jokes, but also dirty jokes, and he somehow manages to balance the two. And it’s great. He talks about being Latino in America generally and under the current administration. He’s got this bit about a racist gift basket which is really hilarious–

Margrit 5:05
What is a racist basket, Lin?

Lin 5:08
So he and a friend of his played a practical joke on another comedian friend, who is Black, and they put together this basket with stereotypically Black things, or things that Black people would enjoy, like fried chicken and watermelon and like, like cornbread or I don’t know, other things. And then they like send it to his hotel room. And then they waited outside his door and they could hear him opening it and like really enjoying all of these things as he pulls out each item, he really enjoys it. And then at the end, he’s like, wait a minute, these things are like all stereotypical. And so he like chases–he goes and like chases after the, the like, I don’t know the like, the person who brought the like the hotel staff who brought the basket to him. And then he like opens his door and like there are two of his Latino friends like laughing hilariously in the hallway. So that’s a racist gift basket.

Margrit 6:09
Okay.

Lin 6:12
There’s more to that joke but I won’t ruin it because he goes on with that.

Margrit 6:17
Okay.

Lin 6:18
Okay, so another one is Hari Kon–oh god, I’m sorry going to butcher his name–Hari Kondabolu is Indian-American, his special is called Warn Your Relatives. And he talks a lot about racism and how Indians really like mangoes, which I did not know about. And about traveling as a comedian, a person of color, because they have to travel a lot. So traveling as a person of color going through security and going through immigration and things like that. It’s pretty funny.

Mo Amer, his special is called The Vagabond and he is Arab American and his family is actually are refugees from Kuwait. And he talks about that in his show, and about how his family fled Kuwait to the US and how he lived in the US for a long time, under refugee status. And even as he was embarking on his career as a comedian, he had to travel internationally with a refugee passport and, and, you know, the challenges of having to do that.

Margrit 7:29
Right.

Lin 7:32
And his mom was in the audience, and that was really, really sweet when he was telling some of those stories. Yeah.

And then, moving on to Ali Wong is an Asian American comedian. She’s got two specials on Netflix, both of which were filmed when she was heavily pregnant. She’s ike a petite Asian woman. She’s like nine months pregnant in both of the shows and she gets really physical in her comedy. So she’s like, getting down on all fours. And she’s like gyrating on stage. And I’m just like, maybe you should take it easy, should you really be doing that. Do you need, like a doctor on standby, just in case.

Margrit 8:12
That’s hilarious.

Lin 8:13
Yeah, she’s great. So the first special is called Baby Cobra. And she talks about being Asian American, particularly in Hollywood and the challenges of being a woman and an Asian American in Hollywood. And the second one is called Hard Knock wife. And then by then she’s got one kid and she’s pregnant with her second and so she talks a lot about motherhood and being a mom while trying to have a career and things like that.

Another one is Gina Yashere, she is British, she’s Black and she’s queer. And she talks about all of those things, particularly about being Black in the UK and then coming to America. Her two shows on Netflix are called Laughing to America, which is really hilarious. I’ve watched that and then Skinny Bitch, which I have not seen yet, but I’m, it’s on my list of things to be watched. And so she makes a lot of observations about being Black in the UK versus being Black in America and the differences there. Her family, her mom is originally from Nigeria. So she talks about her mom immigrating from Nigeria to the UK.

Margrit 9:26
Right.

Lin 9:28
And then the last one I’ll mention is Tig Notaro. She’s also got a couple of specials on Netflix. I’ve only seen one. It’s called Happy to Be Here. And she’s a queer woman. And she talks a lot about her home life with her wife and her kids. And it’s not so much about being queer, but it’s, because it’s part of her life, it just sort of comes out in her jokes.

Margrit 9:54
Right.

Lin 9:54
She is talking about a joke about her wife because this is her spouse.

Margrit 9:59
Yes.

Lin 10:00
It matters less that her wife is a woman. Or her spouse is a woman, but more that it’s her spouse. And then her second one is just called TIG. And I haven’t seen that one, but it’s supposed to be really good. So I’m looking forward to catching that. And there’s plenty more that I haven’t mentioned on here. But yeah, Netflix is a goldmine for, like, stand up comedy. So if that’s something you’re interested in, I highly recommend digging into some of these minority groups, or comedians from minority groups.

Margrit 10:34
right. And the interesting thing about that algorithm is once you start watching one or two, they figure it out. And so they start recommended more of that, the same to you.

Lin 10:43
Yeah, yeah, definitely.

Margrit 10:45
That’s really cool. I’m looking forward to watching some of these. For some reason, I have not delved into the comedy specials at all.

Lin 10:52
Yeah, well stand up comedy is not for everyone. I know some people who are just like, they don’t get it.

Margrit 10:58
I used to love it, actually. I used to watch The Comedy Network and they had all kinds of stand up comedy, but then it got so repetitive and yet another white guy making fun of, you know, staring

Lin 11:11
It’s always like a dick joke or something or a masturbation joke, and it’s like, okay, that’s only so funny.

Margrit 11:16
You see this, whatever, like, yeah, the white, white male gaze is something that I was not interested in anymore. And so it kind of fell off my radar. But yeah, it’s good to know that there’s other stuff that I can delve to.

Lin 11:32
Yeah, definitely. And I’m very particular about which comedy shows I’ll or I’ll watch because if I start it, and I, you can get a sense pretty quickly about the type of comedy that this comedian is, you know, has.

Margrit 11:44
Yeah.

Lin 11:45
And if it’s not, like, if it’s all just like sex jokes, and like, like, just tons of swearing and, and people laughing because of this guy swearing a lot on stage. Then it’s like, that’s not really funny. That’s been done before.

Margrit 11:59
Yeah.

Lin 11:59
I want someone who’s like insightful, who can look into, you know, the little nuances of life. And like, pull the jokes out of those things.

Margrit 12:08
And like, expose them. And you’re like yeah, and it’s relatable and super funny because it’s like, oh, yeah.

Lin 12:15
Yeah. Yeah, it’s funny until it’s not funny.

Margrit 12:19
This is the thing when, when their comedy is based on belittling others to elevate themselves, then it’s not funny.

Lin 12:26
Yeah, no, exactly. Yeah. What have you been enjoying?

Margrit 12:30
Oh, well, I’ve been really loving. Heidi Heilig’s duology. So, two novels interconnected. The Girl from Everywhere and The Ship Beyond Time are the titles of the two novels. And I really love these books for many, many reasons. They, they built a beautiful story, and it’s very well written and very well paced. So usually when you have a like, an adventure story is very fast and things happen all the time, but Heilig has this very, very nice pace to it, where you have time to breathe and to take in the atmosphere and the world building and all of these other things. The characters are very vivid and well done, and it’s got super nicely done emotional depth.

So all of the things that I, that I really enjoy in a book,

Lin 13:22
Is this a YA novel? Or…

Margrit 13:25
Yes.

Lin 13:26
Okay

Margrit 13:27
Yes, it’s YA.

So Nix is a 16-year-old girl of mixed race. And she was born in Honolulu in 1869. But when the book first opens, she’s in a bazaar in India in 1774. Getting ready to go to 21st century New York, which is her her father’s native time.

Lin 13:50
Oh, okay.

Margrit 13:52
And so the complexity is right there from the beginning, right? And so the premise is that her father is a navigator. He can travel through time and arrive anywhere if he has an accurate map from that exact day. So he’s a captain of The Temptation, which is a fast ship that carries a ragtag crew of four people. So, Slate, Nix’s father, pines for her mother who died in childbirth.

So bearing Nix. So, basically, they’re traveling through history and geography to find a map that will carry them to Honolulu at a time before Nix’s mother’s death.

Lin 14:31
Okay.

Margrit 14:33
But there will be a problem because this world would also be before Nix’s birth. And so and so, you know, there’s this paradox where saving Nix’s mother might interfere with Nix’s actual living,

Lin 14:47
Right, yeah, yeah, yeah. This is the time travel like paradox. You change history, then it’ll have like a butterfly effect, right?

Margrit 14:57
Yes. And what is the effect–and the effect is unknown, right?

Lin 15:00
Yeah.

Margrit 15:01
This is the tension and the conflict there. So the the premise itself is pretty tense. But, but she writes such a beautiful, at such a beautiful pace that it enriches, so it doesn’t slack in attention at all, but it enriches it. And for me, as someone who does not necessarily like agnst and tension, it was very well done. There’s time for like countless side stories and all of the characters to shine through in different ways and their backstories to emerge organically. And it also showcases history and myth, which is something that Nix excels at. So she is–she’s read many, many books on mythology, because navigators can travel not only through real historical times, but also through mythical ones, as long as there’s a map. So this is a very interesting, you know, wink wink nudge nudge to all of the fantasy books that start with a map, right?

Lin 15:57
Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Margrit 15:59
And so one of the things that I liked very much about these two books is how she, Heilig weaves non-European mythologies into her elaborate stories and how organically she meshes history with myth.

Lin 16:12
Yeah, that’s amazing. I really like that idea because I think we are all so well-versed in European and Western mythologies like the Greek gods and the Roman gods and like the Nordic myths, to a certain extent. But, I mean, I know, sort of the Chinese myths, because that’s what I grew up on from stories from my parents, but there are obviously, there’s like myths from all different kinds of cultures that I have no idea about. Yeah.

Margrit 16:44
Humanity’s traditions run on stories.

Lin 16:48
Yeah, yeah.

Margrit 16:49
So there’s–you’re ri ght–there’s a whole branch of publishing, especially in young, young people’s literature’s that relies on rewriting myth, and primarily Western European, like you mentioned, you know the Norse ones or Greek or Roman. So, for example, Rick Riordan is a powerhouse and he now has his own imprint at Disney Hyperion and his books are all based on European mythology. Neil Gaiman favors Norse mythology. Yeah, he has a book that’s called Norse Mythology. While, for example, Holly Black has many books with Irish myth, fairies and trolls and the like. Right? So honestly, the entire tradition of fantasy ever relies on rewriting Western European medieval history.

Lin 17:32
Yeah.

Margrit 17:06
Right. And so that’s, that’s where fantasy comes from as a genre, as a publishing branch. And so I think Heilig does a really really cool thing in following this tradition of weaving myth with contemporary life. But the mythology that she brings to the table is truly global because she shines a light on Hawai’ian and Chinese storytelling traditions. There’s also a very subtle commentary on how blurred the lines are between fiction and what is generally accepted as capital H history, right? Since the characters can go to a historical time and place or to mythological ones.

Lin 17:06
Okay, so does that mean that she presents, like myth–mythological events as actual history in the book?

Margrit 18:26
Oh, not necessarily. So it’s, it’s sort of very subtle. So for example, one of the crew on the ship The Temptation is a young man, Kashmir, who joined them after they took a trip to, I think a Persian myth, or Persian mythological setting.

Lin 18:49
Okay.

Margrit 18:50
So he is from a story.

Lin 18:52
Oh, okay, and then he becomes like a real person.

Margrit 18:56
He is because when they traveled to those places, those places are real.

Lin 19:01
Oh, I see.

Margrit 19:02
And so especially in the second book, there’s, the bulk of that book happens in a mythological place that another navigator has gone to and sort of presented himself as the King of that place. And so it’s very visited not at all tell-y, right, everything is enacted and everything is sort of a living setting and with very clear, well-rounded characters that all have a history and very clear motivations and stuff like that.

Lin 19:31
Cool. And you know if the author is like, what her what her background is?

Margrit 19:37
I think, well, she’s from Hawai’i.

Lin 19:40
Okay.

Margrit 19:41
And I think she is mixed race and partly East Asian, but I’m not exactly sure, you know, to what degree or…

Lin 19:50
Okay, cool.

Margrit 19:51
Yeah. So it’s definitely an own voices kind of a book from somebody who has lived in Hawai’i. So Hawai’i truly shines. It’s gorgeously presented, but also not in a idealizing way. So there’s a whole part of the narrative that deals with colonization and the appropriation of indigenous resources in Hawai’i that is, you know, continues to be an issue there.

Lin 20:20
Yeah, it’s really sad. I was in Hawai’i for a friend’s wedding a little while ago and went to a couple museums there and learned a bit about Hawai’ian history that I had no idea about before. And it’s really really sad.

Margrit 20:37
Right.

Lin 20:37
Yeah, yeah. They just like, got annexed and they’re like, okay, now you’re part of this other country. And they had no say.

Margrit 20:45
No, exactly. And they have such a rich history because they’re right in the middle of so many trading routes and a really well-developed society with an interesting, you know… This in itself sounds weird to say, sort of assess an indigenous place like that. But yeah, just–

Lin 21:08
Yeah. So one of the kings, one of the last kings, apparently was a big fan of Thomas Edison. And so in his palace, they had electric light bulbs before the White House had electricity and before like Buckingham Palace have electricity. So it’s like something you wouldn’t expect because normally you think, oh, if this place is colonized, it means they were less developed than the colonizers, but that certainly was not the case here.

Margrit 21:40
Right.

Lin 21:41
Because they had electricity and light bulbs and all that.

Margrit 21:45
So yeah, if you enjoy a complex story with well rounded characters and emotional depth, and like really interesting political statements that are not overt. Yeah, go and read to Heidi Heilig’s duology. The Girl From Everywhere if the first book and The Ship Beyond Time is the second book.

Lin 22:05
Great. So our question of the episode is, are there any stories that you’ve read or watched that casts the world or views the world from a non-dominant point of view? So from a minority point of view, or from a perspective that we don’t often see, and how might that perspective be different from what we are used to seeing in everyday media?

And as always, you can comment on this or previous episodes on Twitter at World_of Stories, or you can email us at WorldofStories Podcast@gmail.com We would love to hear what you think.

Margrit 22:46
Be sure to subscribe to our podcast to get new episodes as they drop. And if you like our show, please leave us a review on iTunes, Google Play or wherever you’re listening to us. And thank you so much for listening.

Lin 22:57
Thank you.

Margrit 22:59
Bye

Lin 23:00
Bye