 ThinkTecAway, civil engagement lives here. Oh, welcome to Quok Talk, kind of. This is Crystal here, and today my topic is about a disruption, like a disruptive thinker. What is one? Well, I'm one, because today I'm going to reverse the lens and talk about myself in a way that pulls out and extracts really, really important conversations about history. I wanted to share this documentary that I'm making, and I have Jay here, because Jay is the ultimate kind of supporter of historical facts, digging, digging into silent spaces. And so I think he should be interviewing me. And so we'll kind of like just disrupt this whole situation and talk about it. Yeah, Jay? Let's disrupt each other. OK, good. Where do you want to start? I want to talk about your project at UH. You know, you left us, what was it, a year and a half ago or so, two years ago, and you went there. And I knew it was for a good reason, but I didn't know exactly what it was. Why don't you tell us? OK. So basically, this stems from my personal story of my grandmother, who grew up in the Deep South of Augusta, Georgia. Now, she's Chinese. So the Chinese family moving to the Deep South, not just the Deep South, but in the African-American neighborhood to set up grocery stores to cater to their needs. Why did they go to Georgia? So this is the historical thing that people don't know about. Long story short on the history of slavery. After that, with the plantation owners and the white community would open up commissaries to provide provisions for black people. And they didn't want to do it anymore, basically. And so the Chinese who started coming in there thought, oh, this is a niche market, there's potential. So they brought all their kind of friends and family who usually were in San Francisco because most of the Chinese immigrants were there at that time. And so they brought them over. And so my great-grandfather was one of those families who uprooted his whole family to go and do that. San Francisco, which had its own issues. Yes, exactly. Georgia, which had more serious issues. Yes. Terms of race. Yes. Did they know at the time what they were getting into? I don't think so. That's a great question. Because first of all, what was their position, right? What was the Chinese position between a black and white binary? They didn't see beyond those two colors. They were either black or white. And historically, I think in 1860s, there was a law that categorized Chinese as being white. And then like 10 years later, they changed it to being non-white. Oh, how interesting. Do you have any speculation about why the shift? It all goes back to the white supremacy, yeah? It's the threat of power. So if they see somebody as threatening their power, they will say, you are the other. But when it serves them economically, which is why they've kind of embraced them in the beginning, they're like, yeah, be a part of us and help us grow. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Let me offer a thought. This is reconstruction in the South after the Civil War. It's a fair amount of bitterness of the people in the South, the whites. And I think, as you say, they were developing the Ku Klux Klan. They were fighting with reconstruction. They were trying to find a way to get leverage again. And white supremacy sounded like a great way to go. If the Chinese weren't white, they would naturally drift to consider them black. Let me ask you something. Where do you think the Chinese sat on the segregated bus? Do you think they sat in the back with the blacks or in front with the whites? It depends on what period of time you're asking. We're talking 1930s, because this is the time when they were there. Or which fountain did they drink from? That's easier for you. OK, I think it's easier for the white supremacists to say, sip with the blacks and drink from the black fountain. OK, so you're wrong on both. Apparently, so my grandmother's sister's husband, who was a soldier at the time before the American Army, went on the bus. And he was in his uniform. And he went to the back. And the bus driver saw him in uniform. So I guess he labeled him as American. And he said, soldier, you come back up front. So his position was blurred by who he represented. So he was in front of the blacks and perhaps behind the whites. Now, for the water fountains, they drank from the white fountains. And they went to white schools, which is interesting. Interesting. I have some photos. I want to show you one, just an idea of the women, because I'm disrupting this with the perspective of the Asian women. It's not just the Chinese. So look, this is the type of women. Look, do they look American or do they look Asian? I mean, just their whole outer appearance to you. Well, they're Americanized, for sure. So they're very Americanized Asians. Did they represent America? I mean, that's where it's blurred, the boundaries of their identity. Find it fascinating. But this is happening on the West Coast, too. Yes. And they wound up in internment camps, the Japanese did. Oh, that's another good interesting point. So when that time came during the wars, were you Chinese or were you Japanese? And sometimes, if they misidentified you, they would actually select you mistakenly and take you away. So they have all these kind of publicity things within the Chinese community and to educate the Americans that Chinese look like this. Japanese look like this. We are not Japanese. Quick, stop talking Mandarin. So it's kind of crazy times. They were very unclear their position. Were there Japanese in Georgia? I'm sure there were. But my focus on the dissertation was on this particular Chinese family, my grandmother's family, who grew up in that particular Black neighborhood of Augusta, Georgia. Oh, so it's so interesting. This is really an interesting topic. And as you said, it hasn't been covered. Yeah. So we need to know what kind of lives they led, what it meant to be sort of Black for some reasons and white for other reasons. Well, so let's break it down. In the grocery store where they worked, they had the power because they were the storekeepers. And how did they treat Black people? For me, I interviewed, I went to Georgia several times to interview both sides. For this project. Yes, so I have. I'm glad to hear that. And the Black community would admit that there were some hierarchies within the colored realm. And yet they agreed that sometimes they were discriminating, but at the same time, they were very sympathetic to their oppression. So for example, when they didn't have enough money to buy food, they would let them go on credit because they knew they just didn't have the cash. And they wouldn't be too calculating about that. I have a story. It's a big business, too. Yeah, see, OK, that's the thing. You understand the Asian mentality. Chinese were pretty accommodating because for their own purposes. My great-grandmother didn't speak a word of English. And so when she gave credit to them, she didn't know how to mark down the items that they took first. And so she would just write a sum and write the word item. So it shows like, you know, it's OK. It's cool. Were they successful in their effort of the grocery store? I think so because the legacy was really when they started in the, they moved over in the late 20s. And then my grandmother grew up there in the 30s. So get this. They're mostly girls. My grandmother's family, there were nine out of 11 of them were daughters. And so you imagine all these teenage girls running a grocery store in the African-American neighborhood and the delivery boys were white. So I hear stories of like flirting with the white guy. Things were blurred in that way, too. Yeah, what about that? I mean, it's interesting. You know, I mean, Asian women are very attractive to howly men in the South, I guess. Orientalism, right? Orientalism, like young old fever. OK, well, you know, it's an aesthetic thing, I guess. You've married two nations. It's also a racial thing. So, you know, was there what are called misogynation? Misogynation was actually the law against interracial marriage. And yes, there was. And so I have two relatives who married interracially. I think I have a picture of one. It's my uncle who is my grandfather's, the other picture of this. Yeah, so that's my uncle Walter. He's my grandmother's youngest brother. And that's his wife, his first wife, and their mixed-race daughter, Andrea. Now, when he got married, they had to go across the states to North Carolina. What state did they go to? I believe it was South Carolina across the way, which was legal, strangely enough. What year was this? This was probably in the, he was younger, so it was probably in the early 50s. That's not that long ago, actually, yeah. You know, misogynation laws did not get abolished until 1967, I think it was. That's really not that long ago. I was born already. Is that scary or what? So was there, aside from the laws that used to put you in jail, what about the way people treated a hapahole couple? Yeah, so I interviewed my cousin, that little girl in that photo, and she said because her dad's store was in an even more sketchy kind of ghetto area. It was like the equivalent of the projects today. And so she had black friends because she grew up in that kind of community. But when she went out to play with white kids, the parents wouldn't let their kids come to her house, but she could go to their house to play so that the parents would watch her. For what reason, right? What was the fear? Racism. What was the fear of that, though? I don't know, and the funny thing is, I'll tell you a short story of my own. Oh, please. When I was in the service, I represented a black, I was a Coast Guard, a black accused, and so I decided I was going to go to his town and see his family for purposes of establishing who he was on extenuation and mitigation in the court martial. So I went to Greensboro, North Carolina. Yes, yes, yes. Very nice city. And I thought, I mean, I had my biases, I suppose, I thought that I was going to wind up in a black slum in that city. Wrong. It was middle class. And the houses were neat and clean and people were living nice lives and they care about their families. This was in the 60s. Okay. Civil rights time. They were having a nice life. They were respectable. Yes, educated. Educated, they cared, they had all the right social structures. I was very impressed with that and I realized that we walk around with these historical biases and we think that everything's a ghetto, it's not. Exactly. There may be racial things and we saw a voting, for example, in Georgia. That was awful a few weeks ago, but the reality- How do you feel about that, by the way? How do you feel? Were you rooting for her? I think it's disgusting. Okay. With a capital D. Okay. Okay. And I hope Abrams is able to elevate herself politically and I think she will too. She's a hero. Yes, yes. So anyway, so I think that people have the wrong perception of the ways a lot of these black communities are developed. Yes. And even back in the 30s and the 40s, they were perfectly reasonable places to live. And people were friendly, it was warm, there was no racial hatred going on, not from the black community anyway. Yeah, there was more amiable kind of atmosphere then than there is now. Ironically, during the segregated times, because people kind of like just did their own thing in their own pockets of communities and they didn't have those sensitivities of assumptions. It's a few old hangar oner people who were the racist people and sometimes they're in positions of power as in Georgia. But did you see the book? I mean, sorry, the film recently called The Green Book. Yes, they did last week. Good. Fabulous, fabulous movie, fabulous movie. But you think about that, people don't know about this part of history, that they had a book to show African American people where to stay in the segregated areas where they were life were literally in danger because they were black. Yeah, that's a very, a good historical review of how things were in those days. The year was 1962. It wasn't that long ago. Exactly. Fair amount of racism. I love the way it worked out. Yeah. Go see the movie. See, that's disruptive thinking. It's a reversal of the lens. It's like, why are you assuming that all black people are uneducated and dangerous? You know, I love the scene in the car when he's eating a fried chicken and he doesn't know how to eat the fried chicken with his fingers. But speaking of fried chicken, so when I went down to the South, I went there and the first thing that my Chinese Georgian Southern Bell family gave me to eat was fried chicken. I said, is this all you eat there? And they're like, pretty much. So I was hoping for them to kind of deconstruct that stereotype, but no. They ate that. They had black eyed peas for me. They had collared greens. They're Chinese, but they're a Southern. You might as well get used to it. So how did the Chinese react to that? How did the Chinese react to the racism? How did the Chinese react to the problem misogynation and so forth? How did the Chinese react to the way the skinheads were treating them? How did the Chinese react to the blacks, the relations with the blacks? And that's my whole exploration and my documentary. So how about this? With that loaded question, let's take a quick breather break. I think I need some water before we come back to that happy topic, but don't go away. We'll continue talking about the concept of the position of the Chinese within the segregated South and what it says about a whole concept of racism and the historical representation. Don't go away. Aloha, I'm Marcia Joyner, inviting you to come visit with us on cannabis chronicles, a 10,000-year odyssey, where we explore and examine the plant that the muse has given us. And stay with us as we explore all of the facets of this planet on Wednesdays at noon. Please join us. Aloha. Aloha, my name is Mark Shklav. I am the host of Think Tech Hawaii's Law Across the Sea. Law Across the Sea is on Think Tech Hawaii every other Monday at 11 a.m. Please join me, where my guests talk about law topics and ideas and music and Hawaiiania all across the sea from Hawaii and back again. Aloha. Hi, welcome back to Quok Talk. I'm Crystal talking about the Chinese and the segregated South. And the theme today is disruptive thinking because sometimes you need to kind of pick apart what is represented and look at it from a different angle. And today we are. And Jay's my great co-host today, talking about this juicy subject. You asked me a lot of questions. I have a question for you. Okay, how did the Chinese react to the racism, you know, to extent to experience that are from the white community and how did they react to the blacks? I'll break it down. Let me ask you first about how they reacted to the whites. Were they angry? Would they feel, you know, imposed upon and to what extent? And how did they express that? Well, you know, they went to white schools and they would drink from the white fountains and they sat with the white. So they think they're on the privileged color line and yet they were discriminated within the white groups. I mean, but they don't want to openly admit that. Nobody wants to feel discriminated, right? And so by privileging themselves against black people, it made them feel better, I think. I interviewed this one guy in my film and he actually said it. He says they played, they meaning maybe white supremacy, they played the Chinese against the blacks so that they were a little bit better than the blacks and they played the Chinese against the whites where the whites were a little bit better than the blacks. So it's all this hierarchy. Oh, the old. Color line. It's the color line. Yeah, the dividing people. Yes. Polarizing them. So by associating themselves with white, they didn't feel they were on the other side of they weren't the other. Yeah, a very tricky business. Yeah. They're probably subconscious. You know, it probably wasn't an expressed strategy, an explicit strategy. It was just what people did. It was implied and it was embedded in the structure of racism. And your question about how they felt about black people, when I started interviewing my family, their answer was, you know, I just didn't think much about it. So is that a denial or an ignorance? Or why is there a lack of awareness of that discrimination? Well, it could be, there's a classy answer. It's a classy answer. Like, I don't want to talk about this because by not talking about it, it didn't happen. Well, no, I think, you know, they're suppressing any kind of racial distinction. Yeah. They're saying, we don't deal in race. Sorry, we don't do that. So you're not getting anything from me on that because I do not think in those terms. Yeah. But things are blurred. Let me give you an example. One of my favorite stories that I imagine as a film account of a scene is that my grandmother had a, not a relationship, but she enjoyed, she liked, she had a crush on this white boy. She wanted to have a secret date with him. But obviously within the Chinese traditional family, she wasn't allowed to date outside of Chinese, first of all, so she had to sneak out. Where did she sneak out to? She used her black neighbor's house. Her black neighbor invited her to her house and set up a secret romantic dinner. It was a safe haven. Is that, I'm interested to blend the colors of this white boy going to a black house to see this Chinese girl. She got safer there. Gosh, it says so much. But what about, what about? Suppose now a member in the family, a young woman wanted to go out with a black guy. Yeah. And, oh. There were, I have a couple of cousins who did there. And maybe even get married in violation of the law, right? Yes. At the time. How did the Chinese family react to that? Were they okay with that? No, of course not. And even today, talk about the relevance today. I interviewed another cousin of mine. She said, growing up, she had black friends. She's my age. So we're talking only like 20, 30 years ago. Her father, when she brought her friend over to visit, after he left, the father like cleaned, sanitized the sofa after he left. We laughed, but it's really scary. That's in the green book. Remember that? The fellow threw the glasses away. The black guys drank from the glass. Exactly. And it's real today. This is the scary part. It's so relevant. Yeah. Well, you know, the question is whether this is over. So let me update you. Do you think it's reversing? Do you think we're going backwards in time in terms of the situation? Yes, I do. And I think, sorry, I don't mind saying this in public. I think it's because Trump has unleashed it. Trump has given license to that, given permission. And people who are at that level. Yeah. They take the license and they go to racism. Yeah. Anyway, so I just wonder if you could update us, because you went there and you looked at it how it is now. Yes. You're trying to find out what it was like then. Yes. How is it now? What's it like now? You know, I don't sense that type of discrimination when I'm there, but then again, everything's separate. And for me, even the process of filming there, I question. Like, when I go into this African-American museum or interview the black community, am I the outsider? And do I have the right to ask them these questions? If I were black, how does that affect how they answer the question? Or if I were white, would they even open the doors for me to ask these questions? So it's very relevant, even in my process. It's really interesting. So you felt some resistance on that? No, actually, no. I feel... Well, it's you, though. You know, because you... What's that mean? Well, let me tell you a little about Crystal. She was a beauty queen in California. Oh, God, stop that. Sorry, I said that. And then she spent a lot of time in Asia as a celebrity, a newscaster, a radio host, a television host. So she's been everywhere. She's a global person. And so when you... You're different, sorry. You're different. You're completely, you know... So it's the way you approach something, right? And so I think if you talk to me, and I'm in the South, make me a holly skinhead in the South, if you talk to me, I'm gonna feel that level of confidence that you have. You're getting my face right away. And you're able to articulate views that maybe other people would be reserved about. Or not see beyond certain frameworks. Yeah, so I think when you go down there, you're gonna get different reaction than somebody else. Well, that's why I think it's kind of groundbreaking work to be able to have a conversation between the Chinese and the Black community about how racism kind of played out in their lives during that era and how it reflects on where we are today. Yeah. Well, you know, I really wonder, when my wife and I were thinking about making a trip, you know, this is way back when... You wanna go down South? We've been married 50 years, yeah. Yeah, that's great. And we were thinking about where to go. And one of the places that came up in our discussion was, should we go to the South? And she's Japanese, my wife. Yes. And she said, no! I don't wanna deal with that. I don't wanna find out. I don't wanna know about it. I don't wanna have the risk of people treating me, you know, in a racial way. You see? I don't want that, yeah. We say isolated in places because we fear that, because we know what exists. Yeah, we know it, doesn't it? Yes. I mean, the South is full of this kind of stuff. And query, and we talked with John David and last hour about how civil wars, including especially our civil war, don't end. They're baked in. Yes. And so this kind of cultural problem stays baked in. Unfortunately. In the U.S. And I guess the question is, how do you solve that? And maybe the answer is you kind of ignore negative things. You play above the noise. I think you need to disrupt. I think you need to open up those uncomfortable conversations and keep talking about it. So I hope when my documentary full one comes out, we can talk about it again. Yeah. But I think, you know, we're at it. You know, I'm sorry I'm disrupting you and I'm disrupting my own show, but we need to stop it because I have like a few minutes, I need to disrupt you more with some more disruptive concepts. Well, tell us the takeaway on your project. What are you trying to show? How are you trying to show it? We don't have enough information about that yet. Well, you can check out my website. It's under www.crystalquac.com. It has all the information on my film. It's called Not Black and White and it's basically a feminist lens into the segregated south. And so please check it out. And I will be sharing my project as it progresses because I think it's important. So what's the great lesson? You know, if I thought about the green book, I could come up with what the great lesson was. What about your project? Like I said, you need to disrupt. You need to see it from outside. So from a female lens, we'll learn history through those small stories that I'm exploring. Tell me something I didn't know about it that you're learning that you're going to expect. I'll tell you more. You're holding back. I know you're holding back. Because this takes a whole other interview. We are out of time, so I want to just leave that thought with you. I'm glad you're asking for more. Jay, I want to thank you so much for your time, but we just don't have enough of this loading. But don't go away, have a quick break and I have like a special guest who's going to disrupt us with some more feminist thinking for just a little bit, okay? Don't go away. Hey, Loha, my name is Andrew Lanning. I'm the host of Security Matters Hawaii. Every Wednesday here on Think Tech Hawaii, live from the studios, I'll bring you guests. I'll bring you information about the things in security that matter to keeping you safe, your co-workers safe, your family safe, to keep our community safe. We want to teach you about those things in our industry that may be a little outside of your experience. So please join me because Security Matters, Loha. And Loha, my name is Calvin Griffin, the host of Hawaii in Uniform. And every Friday at 11 o'clock here on Think Tech Hawaii, we bring you the latest on what's happening within the military community. And we also invite your response to things that's happening here. For those of you who haven't seen the program before, again, we invite your participation. We're here to give information, not disinformation. And we always enjoy response from the public. But join us here, Hawaii in Uniform, Fridays, 11 a.m. here on Think Tech Hawaii, Loha. Welcome back to Clock Talk. Why is this not over? Because I told you I kept saying that we're disruptive because today is a very disruptive topic. Disruptive thinking takes disruptive guess. And so after Jay and me talking about historical disruptions, I have this feminist disruptor who's in town who is here for a marathon. She's here for a music gig. And she has a lot to say about the empowering voice of a female. And so without further ado, I'm gonna introduce Karen, Madam Gandhi, who is this disruptive thinker who is a musician by career choice, I believe, but very, very educated and intelligent and rebellious in her views of the world. So thank you for coming, Madam Gandhi. Oh, it's a pleasure. Actually, when I ran the London Marathon a couple years ago and the story went viral, it was Think Tech Hawaii who had first found the story. One of the early folks who got on board. Oh, wow. I called in and did an interview about a month after the story went viral, which is how I even found out about you all. So thank you for having your ear to the pulse. Thank you. What was this marathon, and what does it mean to be a free bleeding marathon runner? Well, I guess in the moment, I sort of discovered what it means. I was at the start line of the London Marathon in 2015 and it was my first race and I realized that I was about to be on my cycle. And I remember kind of evaluating my options like any of us who have been called unprepared on our cycle, my experience. And I was like, you know, a pad is not gonna be good for 26 miles. A tampon didn't seem comfortable either. There's no privacy to change it out on an marathon course. I didn't have a cup. And so I kind of felt like, wow, it's so problematic that none of us have even talked about these issues publicly. People exchange ideas about running all the time. And so I felt a little bit disempowered in that moment. I was like, what am I gonna do? I've trained for a year, I don't wanna let this go. So I decided to just go for it and run bleeding freely. And I felt like that was for me the best choice in that moment. And I was like, you know, I used to play the drums for MIA and her work inspired me. I was like bleeding anywhere for 26 miles. Is a punk rock move, if you ask me. That's pretty radical. So yeah, the more I ran, honestly, it was a really freeing and beautiful, comfortable race. And I did a great job. You know, I ran with my two friends, we crossed the finish line. But when I crossed the finish line, I wanted to write about this experience. And I wanted to write. How did people know? Did people know? Were you like literally bleeding like as it was a dripping down your leg kind of thing? Sorry for that gritty. No, so I wore an amazing matching breast cancer care pink orange outfit because I had raised a bunch of money for breast cancer care. And I mean, honestly, it just looks like a kind of a simple stain. It just looks like a simple stain. And I think that's also part of de-stigmatizing. Even so many folks who don't bleed don't know kind of what the experience is like and what it even looks like. So when I crossed the finish line, I wrote about the experience on my own personal blog. But I think maybe it was the combination of writing and then the radicalness of it. But then the elitness of it. How can you shame a marathon runner? That's where the power lied. I kind of knew that. And so when I wrote about this, I wrote about how it was also a privileged position for me to even choose how I wanted to run that race and bleed freely. And millions of women and girls and people who bleed around the world do not have that same choice. It's expensive to take care of yourself. In the past 500 years, there's only been three innovations with regards to women's periods as opposed to the thousands and thousands that exist for sort of men's health and men's care. When it comes to women's health, we tend to put our own needs at the bottom of the sort of totem pole. And I think it's also about looking at how those products are taxed as a luxury item. Yeah, that's so crazy. We talked about feminine hygiene on my previous show a few weeks ago. And you know, there is, there is such a lack of respect for the obvious kind of needs that we have as women. So your period disrupted your marathon and in a way you used that to disrupt how people kind of conceive how we embrace it. Definitely, and I think, you know, for anybody watching, one takeaway that I would hope that anyone would listen is sometimes when we're brave just for ourselves, without the intention of being brave for anybody else, you have enormous power to make change in the world. And I wasn't trying to do that for anybody else except for me to cross the finish line in a way that felt good. And in doing so, it started this viral, global conversation about how we treat menstruation and stigma in various parts of the world. How do you use that in your music? Lyrically, you know, I have a song, The Future Is Female, and one of the lines is, you know, the system mis-make room for all that we do, we've been bleeding each month to we gave birth to you. You know, it's just fact. And so all this stigmatization, it doesn't even make sense logically. It's just a beautiful part of the human anatomy. So that's definitely one way. And then I think it's about teaching confidence. Like, I really felt confident as a marathoner. I don't know if I could have had that same bravery in another scenario, but I knew that there was power in the fact that I was doing this elite thing. So how can someone from the sidelines point and laugh? I'm like, why don't you come try and run 26 miles? And similarly, women and people who bleed all around the world are doing amazing things on our cycle and on top of that, we have to be quiet about it and on top of that, we have to suffer. How did that happen? It's ridiculous. We should actually be celebrated as such fierce fems that we can be doing something that's painful and difficult, but also living our daily life. How do we do that though? How can we do that in this? I think the simplest step is for each of us to take responsibility for our own sphere of influence. So instead of being quiet when you talk about your cycle, talk about it comfortably and with elegance and with simplicity. Like, hey, I'm in pain today. And instead of lying and say you're in pain because of a fever or because of an illness, being open, you know, I'm on my cycle today. I don't feel so comfortable. Even for me, I'm on my own journey learning about my own moodiness and owning it instead of letting other people make fun of us and put us down for it. Instead, I manage my own emotions. I say, oh, yeah, I'm gonna have a great race today. I'm gonna have a great day today because I'm on this part of my cycle. Or I might be self-aware and when I'm with my team, I might say, hey, guys, I'm a little bit uncomfortable today because of my cycle, but I'm here and I wanna do my best and just know that. And to be able to talk to people about it, you know, all genders together because it's all relevant to everybody. Definitely. I think another step that you can take beyond just de-stigmatizing verbally is participate in donating products to your local homeless shelter or to your local prison system. Every Sunday, every fourth Sunday of the month in downtown Los Angeles, we walk a bunch of homeless care packages of menstrual products to different women and people who lead in the community. And that's really important because obviously those folks don't have access to those products, but now they do. And everyone deserves to live in dignity. Yeah, and that's great that you brought that up because we just did this drive at UH with you there talking to our students. And they were really happy to donate their products. We put them in handbags and we gave it to Rainbow Family 808, which is an organization that supports LGBT homeless teens. And we take it for granted. I mean, homeless is a huge issue here, but let's break it down to the smaller things about why is a teenager homeless to begin with and what is their life about? And it's really huge important things to talk about. Now you are performing here. You have a gig at the hotel. Let's talk about that. I'm really stoked. Nella Media Group, which was the sort of force behind Flux Magazine and Lay Magazine, which are here local in Hawaii, they brought me out for a show. They saw my show in New York City and were super amped up about it. And they said, we want you to come do our Christmas party. So for that show, I've put together really something special. Where it's gonna be a seven piece, all female band of half my band coming in from LA tomorrow and then half local musicians. So we're gonna have a band and cover a couple of Hawaiian songs as well as play my own original music and celebrate at the Alohilani Hotel on Friday. And then- We have a flyer, I think. We can show people. Definitely. That's this Friday. Actually, and so this one, the one that you're showing right now is a gig this evening tonight, Tuesday, December 11th, six to 8 p.m. It's gonna be a talk followed by a DJ set at bar 35. Where's bar 35? Is it in Chinatown? You tell me. I'm the new person here. It's just down the street from here. Okay, so if you guys are downtown, bar 23? Yep, 25. 25. 35. Sorry. Bar 35, sorry. What time? Six to 8 p.m. That's tonight. Yes. With a talk. Yes. And then this Friday is the amazing gig with a seven piece women's band. Band, yes, exactly. That is so cool. And for anybody watching, just DM me on my Instagram and we'll try to get you- What's your Instagram? At Madam Gandhi. Tell me why your name is Madam Gandhi. Well, my last name is Gandhi and for Madam, when I spent a lot of time in India growing up, I would see a lot of folks being referred to as Madam. Okay, Madam, come here, Madam. Yes, this, Madam. And there was this sort of like built in, elegant female respect that I really liked. And for me, it's about, instead of women trying to masculineize in order to be perceived as strong and as intelligent leaders, I'm really interested in us as women leading from our femme and leading from the divine femininity in all of us and sort of developing what that even means. And so I liked the word Madam because it has this inherent sort of female leadership energy, much like a Oprah or sort of like the mother of the house. Okay. But taking those same principles and applying them to other spheres of influence. I thought was really powerful. So that's kind of a very strong maternal image there. But how about, how does color come into play? We were just talking, I was talking to Jay about, you know, racism and the implications of color and women, that combination. And so how do you, how does that work in your life and your approach? Does that affect the way your voice is? I explain the question is so big. What do you know? I know. Well, so you're of Indian descent. Yes. Growing up in LA, but you were born in New York. I feel like through your music, there's a lot of strong traditional things in there. I feel the music. Yeah, definitely. There's just this in your blood. And then it's really quite cool. So, you know, you embody this concept of cultural identity and weaving it into your feminist approach. So how does that work for you? You know what? I love that you asked me that question because when I was younger, I actually felt bad that sometimes I connected more with Brazilian and African music than I did with my own Indian heritage music, whether it was tabla or Bollywood music. Now, later in my journey, I love it, but I think it's important for each of us to be super honest about who we are and honest about our identity. And I wanted, instead of saying, oh yeah, I love Bollywood, even if that was a lie, I'd rather say I love the drumming in pangra music. And I love the dancing that I see in the Punjabi region where my father is from, because it's so joyful and uplifting and equal. You know, it feels equal between the men and the women. In a way, I'm sure it's not, but at least the women play a prominent role in both the dancing and oftentimes, sometimes even the drumming. And I felt in Bollywood to this day, so many of the traditional gender roles are very, very stringent and in place and not evolving. And so I don't wanna celebrate that because I reject it, I don't like it. And I think we have to be brave enough to say that's okay. And in us being honest about what we love from our cultures and what we actually wanna evolve, it teaches the next generation to feel safe to do the same. And how was the influence of your parents kind of affecting of your feminist approach on life? Was your dad kind of encouraging you to do the things you wanted to do? I think my dad's feminism looked more like almost raising me like a little boy in a way, encouraging me to always go and drum in public spaces or be fearless to take risk and to go for it and to be doing a bunch of activities all the time and be really good at whatever it is that I was doing. And my mom's feminism looked more like really asserting herself. She was very good at asserting herself in spaces where she felt like she was being disrespected and very unapologetically. We had a family dinner and the waiter or waitress placed the check towards my dad instead of towards my mom. She would shut that down. She'd be like, it's the 21st century. Like why don't you place that right in the middle and I'll take care of it. And so just moments like that where she felt very, very comfortable asserting herself taught me to do the same. And that's why the message of own your voice is on my total next that I sell at my show and very integral to my work. And so to leave the audience with some takeaway, do you want to leave it with that concept of owning your voice? Give us a little shout out of what you mean about that. Definitely. I think the marathon story taught me to own my voice. I think being two years at Harvard Business School which is like the breeding ground of the capitalist patriarchy. That's so ironic that you were there. It is. But sometimes we have to learn how to fight fire with fire. Except when I know how bad things are it allows me to reject what we perceive as like power and privilege and actually say, no, this is not teaching something that I necessarily ascribe with. It teaches me how to live in this world if I want to but it also teaches me what's selfish and greedy in a lot of ways. So I think owning your voice is about being brave enough to speak your truth. To say when something makes you feel uncomfortable. To call something out that you don't think is quite right. And to be brave enough that you might be wrong but that you might be right and that bravery might trigger somebody else to feel safe enough to say something. Similarly to how we've seen movements like me too take off or Black Lives Matter. It's so relevant. Madam Gandhi, if you could just take a little essence of what she just said there, you're gonna take away a lot. Remember her beautiful performance here tonight at bar 2035 at six to eight. And this Friday. At the Aloha Lani Resort, 8 p.m. Okay, thank you so much. We wish you the best, best performance and experience here in Hawaii. Thank you so much. Thank you. Okay, thanks for tuning into Clock Talk. See you next time. Go see the show.