Natasha Alfred and I have run in concentric circles for years.

A mutual friend connected us when Natasha was making her transition into media.

Now as the VP of digital content and a senior correspondent for

the Greo and a political analyst for CNN, Natasha is doing what she was always meant to do,

tell stories that inspire and inform. That includes her own story of identity and self in her new

book, American Negra. Natasha and I talk about perspective in journalism, what happens when people

stop seeing you as an underdog,

and how she's thinking about what it means to be black and Latina, now that she's a mom herself.

Natasha, howful circle that we are finally here?

It's incredible.

I want to start with some of the context of American Negro, which is that your dad is African-American, your mom is Puerto Rican.

How was race explained to you or discussed in your home?

It's so interesting. I think for the longest time, I didn't make a distinction between race,

ethnicity, and nationality. And that is just part of the American condition. Like we talk about these things interchangeably, which could be a little bit confusing for a kid.

And my mother told me when I was a child that you are black, you are Latina, and you are a girl.

Essentially, you have three strikes against you because of this.

And so it wasn't until a bit later that I had a more nuanced understanding of Latinidad and understood that Latinos come in all colors, right?

There are many different people who could be categorized as a different race under that umbrella of Latinidad.

Yeah, it is interesting to me that in some ways your academic work is actually what begins a real

personal evolution flowering. There's also something interesting that happens around 13,

which is you'd start developing a central ethno-racial identity and you feel sort of pressed to

choose. What is it that happens at that moment?

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