- Minorities really get a disservice done to them
in this country because our history is often
glossed over or lightly mentioned.
Knowing your history is so important
and I think that's why people often try to hide it.
It's like once you know your powerful history,
you can use that to fuel you.
- Hey, welcome to "Third Culture Conversations."
I'm Leslie Ambriz.
- And I'm Manolo Lopez
and this is a show about belonging
and embracing your identity.
- And I'm Esteban Gast or Esteban Gast.
I think it's like tomato, tomato.
- I think you're the one
who should solidify which name you wanna be recognized from.
- Here's my reasoning.
When I go Esteban, a lot of people say,
if they're not Spanish speakers, they go Esteban
and what I think is if you're gonna say it wrong,
say it wrong my way, Esteban,
rather than forcing
I don't know.
- Just sit with them until they pronounce it properly.
- Yeah, you're right.
Every single person, when I order a coffee,
I go, "Hey, do you mind?
"Let's have a few minutes and discuss my name
"before I drink this latte."
- Your coffee gets cold. - They'll never
get it wrong again.
- I think that's really interesting
that thinking, oh, your name is like family legacy.
Your parents gave you that name
and that's what we're talking about on the show,
understanding our history,
understanding our family
and how that informs the way that we live.
Do you guys remember a time
where you learned more about your history or your family
and you're like, well, this is a game changer?
- That's a good question.
Hmm, Manola, do you wanna go first?
I need to think about this.
- I always reference that move that I did
from Puerto Rico to New York
and I was influenced by a lot of books
that talked about Puerto Rico's history
before the US invaded
and then when the Spanish invaded
and there was a book called
"The War Against All Puerto Ricans"
that really just compressed our history
in that 250 pages
and I kinda understood where my values needed to lie
in order for me to continue helping and uplifting my people.
- Dang, so you read this book and you were like, eyeopening,
I'm understanding more about the Puerto Rican people
and our history.
- Yeah, definitely.
I think a lot of the issues that are coming up
and arising right now is because we don't understand history
and it's very important that we step back
and before we even talk and before we even listen,
we're actually educating ourselves
with the right type of content.
Our parents and their parents and so on,
they sacrificed so much for us to be here
and sometimes I just think of the opportunities
that they would have had if they would have been born now,
if they were us.
What would have they been able to do with social media,
with all these movements, with knowing
that you can be proud of where you come from
and not having to hide it
and not just having to settle for that dream of like,
I'm moving from one place and I just want a roof
and I want my kids to go to college
and they become the first generations
that go to college and break that kind of like systematic
and generational chains.
I think the best thing that we can do to honor them
is to become the best versions of ourselves.
- And our next guest has been the best version
of herself for as long as I can remember.
Milan Murphy, who is not only an amazing human being
and I love her and I'm a little biased
but she's also a filmmaker, an artist, a musician,
all around wordsmith.
This woman can take a super simple article
and turn it into the most beautiful thing
just with her very vast vocabulary, I guess you could say.
She literally knows every word in the dictionary
but on top of all of that,
Milan has successfully released a trailer
for her latest short film,
which is called "Verisimilitude"
and really dives deep into social media
and how our generation interacts with it.
So that trailer's out you guys can check it out
after this interview
and she's really empowering her community
through storytelling.
So I'm so excited for you all to meet Milan.
- I know you are working on like a bunch of projects now.
I'm curious what that tangibly looks like.
- Yeah, so most recently
I did a short film called "Verisimilitude"
which is the appearance of being true or real
and also trynna create teams behind the scenes
that are women or people of color.
Primarily there was a lot of black women
that helped me on this project.
A lot of help, a lot of love
from the Latinx community, women.
My editor is a Latina woman.
So I really try to empower people
and give them the opportunities
that they may not otherwise have.
- Can you talk about how or talk about the first time
when you really had that inclination of,
yes, I'm black in America
and now I understand why it is
that I'm being treated differently
or understand why in the future I'll be treated differently?
- When I was about eight years old,
my grandmother who was really into black history
and knowing yourself,
she made me read the story of Emmett Till
and she had a book, a picture book, it was really graphic
and I just remember being really traumatized by that book
and that experience and I didn't understand,
why that happened to him.
He was a little bit older than me.
So I was like, I really felt affected by that story.
It was in a corner of her house
and I didn't even wanna go in that side of the room.
I avoided that side of the house
and that's when I realized that,
being black in America means something different.
I always knew that I was black
but it didn't have any context and meaning to me
and in that moment I realized,
okay, my experience and my people's experience
is a little bit different.
- Something we talk about in this show
is sort of the struggle of embracing
and rejecting your culture in this loop
that sometimes makes you feel you're less than
and sometimes you're really proud and all in.
- Yeah, so I had always been a gifted child.
When I was in school, I was put in the accelerated classes,
I was in the Magnet programs
and so when I went,
I went to a really competitive Magnet in high school
and I got there and I was used to being top of my class
and always knowing the answers
and my peers were seemingly leaps and bounds ahead of me.
Just the questions they were asking,
the knowledge that they had, I felt really inferior
and it was really kind of traumatizing,
another traumatizing experience because I felt like me
and my black peers, we felt a little bit lesser than.
I saw a lot of my fellow students, black students
and some of the Latinx students
kind of melted into themselves
and kind of underperformed or felt inadequate
and so they kinda shut down.
For me, I remember making the conscious decision of,
okay, I feel behind, I feel out of place,
I feel uncomfortable but what I'm not gonna do
is be a statistic or be a stereotype
and I really just put in the extra effort to excel.
I did extra work, I got up to speed
and I really leaned in to myself and my culture.
So I was really about educating people.
I've always been really into the black power movement
and racial inequality and revolutionaries
and all the things that are in guys now,
I've always been into that stuff.
So I really kind of took it upon myself to educate my peers
and represent for my culture and myself.
- I think it's so powerful
that you started talking about history.
I grew up in Puerto Rico and then I moved to New York
and I always thought of myself as a Puerto Rican
and then it's only when I submerged myself
into the history of Puerto Ricans,
then in overall is that I understood,
it's not from the island and the diaspora
and that's when I learned about The Young Lords movement,
which are the counterparts of the Black Panthers
and how they were fighting side by side.
So it's up to us to actually dig out the real history
of our people and I remember a conversation that we had,
you spoke about how you move forward into a black college
and then they made you learn your history prior to slavery.
- I think that minorities really get a disservice
done to them in this country
because our history is often glossed over
or lightly mentioned.
I went to Howard University and one of the first things
they tell you is that we're here to teach you
about your history before slavery.
So every freshman has to take a freshman orientation
where they learn in depth about the fullness
of their history, about what your people have contributed
to the world and I think that that is really revolutionary
and I think that all people should have that.
I think that all people,
because all people have contributed to society
and society's advancement
but it's different when you are conditioned
to see only images and only a history of yourself
that is negative or paint your people in a bad light
or depict struggle, that weighs on your psyche
but when you know that your people
have contributed good things to society,
that you made innovations,
you made contributions, that also can affect your psyche.
So I think that knowing your history is so important
and I think that's why people
often try to hide it from people.
It's like once you know your powerful history,
you can use it to fuel you.
Also another pivotal time for me,
which wasn't necessarily in college
but it's when I learned about the bombing
of Black Wall Street in Oklahoma
because oftentimes I feel like,
well, why can't black people just get it together
and why can't we like get our own economy going?
And what really would opened my eyes
about the bombing of Black Wall Street is that we've tried.
We tried many times and we were literally opposed
by the government and they dropped a bomb
on those people and that's terrorism.
So I think that really realizing
the systematic oppression is real
and that people have lost their lives for the liberties
that I have now really made me understand,
who I am in this world
and what people have sacrificed for me
to have the opportunities that I have.
- I love the power of learning your history
and then writing your own story.
Do you wanna talk about how you came to become a storyteller
and all that you do and all the incredible art
that you create?
- Yes.
- Yeah, and how that's an extension of knowing your history.
How all of this background contributes
to the way that you move forward.
- It was just a way for me to combine all of my interests.
I was always a really good writer,
I was a strong writer, I could always read fast.
I had good reading comprehension.
So I knew writing was like my core talent
and then I loved music and I used to just watch movies
all the time in the summer
when I would be at my grandma's house.
That just made me wanna be a storyteller.
And I've always been a good listener.
I've always listened to people.
So all the people that I've met in my life,
I would hear and take their stories off of Inglewood
and I'm able to watch.
So there's people around here, around my way
who I've known in my life, people in my family
who won't get the opportunity to tell that story
and I feel like it's my responsibility
to carry that out for them.
- Milan, what do you hope that the next generation
of black female and male artists, filmmakers
take from you and your work?
- I want them to see a world with no ceilings.
I really want filmmakers to be able to say,
I can make whatever kinda film I want
and it doesn't have to be about my blackness.
It could be about me, it could be about my friend,
it could be about whatever
and this is through the lens of a black storyteller.
So I want people to know from my art
that they can do whatever they want,
they can say whatever they want
and that they can create high quality art
that resonates with people.
- Thank you Milan for sharing your story with us
and just for being so vulnerable and open
and literally bringing us into not only your upbringing
but also into your creative process.
- Yes, I wanna thank Leslie
and the "Third Culture Conversations" team
so much for the opportunity.
- She is so cool.
- Milan's the best.
I'm her number one fan.
- Yeah, we can tell.
During the interview, just like this.
- Yeah, just the whole time.
Just tell me more, please.
- I love the way that Milan honors her family
and the way that her family has stuck together
through thick and thin and how they addressed serious issues
at a very young age.
I think that's very important when we do the same
for our family members and for the next generations to come
and that's what I really took out of this.
We need to address these issues
from the earliest point that we can.
- Yeah. - Yeah,
there's something powerful about being realistic
and illuminating the history
and still being sense with this sense of opportunity
or creation or expansion.
It's like those two can coexist where we can be like,
our history is dark but that means our future
can still be bright.
- Yeah, so honestly, if any parents are watching this,
start having those conversations with your kids.
Don't be too scared to start it
because you don't know the positive impact
that it could have and just reference Milan's story,
if you're a little hesitant about that.
- And the world needs more Milans for sure.
- More Milans!
- More Milans! - All the way!
But thank you guys so much for tuning in
to this episode and we'll see you next time.
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