you know, we can treat difference and marginalize it or we can embrace difference and allow ourselves to see and experience a full breadth of the human experience instead of one narrow normative aspect.

So my guest today, Blair Amani, she grew up in a house where sitting quiet in the face of any level of injustice was just not an option.

Whether it was advocating for the needs of a sibling or standing up to write a wrong in her community, her parents set a powerful example

and invited Blair to always rise to the challenge. And that's exactly what she has done.

But along the way Blair has also discovered there are different ways to make a difference.

And we each need to figure out how to take up the mantle of change while also honoring our unique circumstances and needs.

And that includes acknowledging our own very personal psychological and physical well being and building on this realization over time Blair,

transition from organizing and activism on the ground to focus on education, but in a way that only she could do harnessing the power and the reach the interactivity and visual impact of social media by creating the short and punchy and informative and entertaining bursts of wisdom and inspiration.

She calls her smarter in second series, which at this point has even become a bit of a movement.

Now a writer, mental health advocate, award-winning educator and historian living at the intersections of black and queer and Muslim identity Blair is the best-selling author of read this to get smarter, making our way home and modern her story.

Her scholarship spans intersectionality, gender studies, race and racism, sociology and United States history.

And she has presented at Oxford and Stanford and Harvard serves on the Board of Directors for the Teenage and Sara Foundation and has been featured in the New York Times and tons of other outlets.

I'm so excited to share this conversation with you. I'm Jonathan Fields and this is Good Life Project.

You from what I understand grew up in Pasadena and while you have been in different places that it's someplace that you seem to return to later in life.

People can't see your face but I just saw your face and there was a look.

I like to call it the Gulf Coast to go to Louisiana State University. At that moment of my life I never, ever thought I would return back home. And then living in a few different places, Washington DC, Brooklyn, New York, a different part of Brooklyn, New York, I realized that I was extremely homesick and it's hard to shake off having grown up in one place with one season.

And then moving across the country to experience hurricanes and winter, I also live very close to my parents. I live in their back house that's been converted to a full house.

So I think a little bit of the look is like the sheer joy of being back home but also like the sheer everything else of being that close to your parents.

It's been a journey like them seeing how much of an influence they've made on me and the things that annoy them about me are the same things that they do that annoy me. So it's like that beautiful around your parents vibe.

It's that fantastic dynamic. It's like you've gone out into the world, you've grown, you've changed, you're becoming your own human being. And then as soon as you get back into the family dynamic it's like, oh we're here again.

Yeah, like why am I asking permission to leave? I keep telling my parents like mom and dad I lived across from the projects in Brooklyn and you felt like that was fine.

So I'm going to drive myself to the gas station alone.

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