🫂Embracing the Nuances of Race
Sounds Like Impact: A newsletter for audio and action
Welcome to Sounds Like Impact!
This edition we have a guest curation by LAZOU from Nuances: Our Asian Stories and an interview with Melissa Giraud & Andrew Grant-Thomas, the creators of EmbraceRace.
Post-Publication Note: The title of LAZOU’s curation has been updated.
ICYMI:
This month we had a guest curation from Nationly podcast, I interviewed Laurel Morales from 2 LIVES podcast, and I shared some recommendations you can watch.
Our May guest curator Payne Lindsey, has released part two of Up and Vanished: In the Midnight Sun. Listen to the show trailer or new episode.
Read:
Ex-audio journalist Bethel Habte is helping us to “deconstruct money” with her new Substack
. I used to work with Bethel at Spotify and I am glad that she’s bringing us along on her career pivot to financial counselor, while still tapping into her journalist skillset. You can see what I mean for yourself by reading her series on student loans, an issue we’ve covered here (ironically—in this case—from an audio perspective) in our higher education and debt curations. Congrats Bethel!I’ve been following
(both available as a Substack and a podcast) for a minute now, and I wanted to share one of his recent posts, “We Cannot Ignore the Sandwich Generation”, which is about the state of caregiving in our country. We’ve covered that topic here as well, through our curation on caregiving and interview with CareTalkers co-host Anita Flores (in same edition here).
Opportunities:
The Democracy Group Podcast Fellowship is a 12-week remote program for Gen Z leaders who want to start a podcast and build an audience to strengthen democracy, engaging diverse viewpoints, and bridging political divides.
Therapy for Black Girls podcast is looking for a part-time producer (remote, $35k/yr)
Reminder: To guest curate, be interviewed, advertise and more, click here.
🎧 #AudioForAction Guest Curation: LAZOU
Asian Mental Health
July was National Minority Mental Health Awareness Month. This curation aims to highlight the nuances to Asian stories that often go unnoticed. Every podcast here sits at the intersection of identity and culture, offering healing to those in this community and beyond.
-LAZOU, Host of Nuances: Our Asian Stories
You can stay up to date with LAZOU and the Nuances podcast on Instagram @nauncespod.
Nuances: Our Asian Stories is an award-nominated audio space where diverse guests join host LAZOU for fun, uplifting, yet thought-provoking conversations at the intersection of career, culture and community
Hosted by licensed therapists, this podcast focuses on creating space for the Asian diaspora and addressing issues that are faced by the community.
Interviews with the queer Asian diaspora where guests share their experiences navigating queerness and culture.
Hosted by licensed psychotherapist Rita Phetmixay this show explores the intersections of the Lao and broader Southeast Asian diasporas storytelling x healing x tools for sustainability.
Dive into the fabulous world of queer Asian creatives and change-makers on #YellowGlitterPodcast. Join us as we chat about our Queer & Asian identities and culture, social activism, mental health, love, creativity and more.
📣 Spotlight
Melissa Giraud (she/her) is co-founder and co-director of EmbraceRace, an organization that curates and creates tools, community spaces and networks for adults to raise kids (of all colors) who are thoughtful, informed and brave about race.
Melissa has spent a lifetime trying to center the voices, experiences and concerns of children and families - with a particular interest in immigrant kids of color and first-generation children - through her work as a 4th grade teacher, an NPR radio producer, an education equity consultant, and now with EmbraceRace. Melissa is multiracial (Black/White) daughter of immigrants from Dominica and Quebec. She is raising two amazing kids with her EmbraceRace co-founder and life partner, Andrew Grant-Thomas.
Andrew Grant-Thomas (he/him) co-founded and co-directs EmbraceRace. He is a long-time racial and social justice researcher and advocate who has worked on issues from mass incarceration to PK-12 educational segregation, immigration to death penalty abolition, race and redistricting to structural racialization. Through it all, and now at EmbraceRace, he champions efforts he believes can make a meaningful difference for real people and communities - not 100 years from now, but in his lifetime and the lifetimes of his two tween children.
Andrew is dad to two amazing kids, a partner to Melissa, an only child, a long-time racial justice guy, a Black man of Jamaican origins in the United States, born on the 4th of July.
One of the obstacles to racial justice is misleading information and myths that predominate about race and kids. Myths like, “young kids don’t see race,” or “talking about race makes you racist.” We were excited to start the podcast with Season 1 where we took down some of those myths and talked about how kids ACTUALLY learn about race. Countering false or misleading notions with research-backed information, and making clear what we know and don’t know, is critical to doing this and any race work in a country where the counter narrative runs so deep.
Read our interview about race-related myths and what resources EmbraceRace has to help us navigate the upcoming U.S. election, back to school, and more.
🌟 Classifieds
Nothing to promote but still want to support? You can donate here.
