Breaking Borders, Creating Identity: A conversation with John Paul Brammer
The Steve Harvey Morning Show
iHeartPodcasts
4.5 • 2.2K Ratings
🗓️ 15 December 2021
⏱️ 22 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
For John Paul Brammer, there is no one right way to be yourself. Growing up in the South, he lived the complexities of being Mexican American in a society that wanted him to choose one culture over the other. In this episode of “In the Deep: Stories that Shape Us,” we hear how John Paul rejects this idea and proves that identity is less tethered to borders and stigmas, and instead focuses on the premise that people should be free to be themselves. As an author, editor and journalist, John Paul stresses the importance of building safe spaces that take the best parts of ourselves and multilayered experiences - creating an identity that leaves pain behind and instead, fosters health and healing.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Have you ever wanted a safe space where you can just exist? |
| 0:06.0 | Where for a moment in time you can be you with all the intricacies and parts of you that people don't always understand. |
| 0:14.0 | Welcome to In The Deep, stories that shape us. I'm your host Zach Stafford and each |
| 0:19.0 | episode we create a space to be you, all of you, and all your messy and complicated glory. |
| 0:24.3 | Every story shares what it means to be a black and Latinx man living with different |
| 0:28.8 | hardships, whether it's the struggle of identity, discrimination, or health, and how they've managed to push forward despite the circumstance. |
| 0:35.6 | We hope to get closer, even if it's just, and I'm sure many of you listening to the show. I'm a black man from the South and my whole life I have felt like I've been living between two borders and I'm not talking about the borders that necessarily physically divide two |
| 1:04.8 | neighboring countries. I'm talking about borders that people like me learn to |
| 1:08.6 | navigate daily, the border of two perspectives, two ethnic groups, to craft our own story. |
| 1:14.0 | Meet John Paul Brammer. |
| 1:15.3 | He's a columnist and an author. |
| 1:17.1 | His story really stands out to me |
| 1:18.6 | because he's a combination of so many identities like myself. |
| 1:22.2 | He's Mexican, he's American, he's both and neither |
| 1:25.1 | all at the same time. |
| 1:26.9 | And he infuses his work with the same idea |
| 1:30.1 | that we can be who we are, |
| 1:31.6 | even if that's a combination of many things that may feel like contradictions to some. |
| 1:39.6 | I am a person from rural Oklahoma. I grew up in a Mexican family. My dad is not Mexican, but I don't know that side of my family very well. |
| 1:51.9 | Aside from my dad, very close with my mom's side of the family. |
| 1:56.9 | We grew up in a very rural part of the country, my sister and I did. |
| 2:01.9 | A very isolated, kind of high up on a hill, not a lot of other houses near us. |
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